2008 Energy Forum

When children are naughty, a parent rightly admonishes them. They get the message. When Mother Nature admonishes her children (us), we sometimes don’t understand what she means.
Kids can dig a hole in the sand at the beach and nobody minds; but when the commercial coal industry chops off the whole top of a mountain to harvest an unrenewable fossil fuel, then leaves a gaping wound in the planet, it injures Mother Earth.
Most people never see the scars left from mining. Their locations are usually out of public view, far from big cities, often in areas of pristine beauty. And the aesthetic damage to Mother Earth is just the start.
The process of mining coal releases methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Chemicals used in the mining process can leach into the ground and pollute water sources.
The effects of mining on the environment do not cease when the mining stops. The denuded landscape is much more prone to erosion by wind and water. In particular, the reaction of rainwater with the exposed coal seam produces sulphuric acid, and this runs off into rivers and streams causing acid pollution. And of course there is the adverse effect of the destruction of vegetation on wildlife.
The gashes in the earth created by some kinds of mining will take decades to heal, if they ever do. The ecosystem has been permanently disrupted, and though vegetation and wildlife may return, these areas will never be the same way they were before mining.
Mother Earth may be more subtle in her approach than most parents. She has warned us with some of he preliminary effects of global warming. But she also offers a carrot to go with the stick: renewable sources are there for us to utilize—if we choose to.