EARTH club to host Valentine date auction
Posted on February 14, 2008
The EARTH Club is kicking off Valentine’s Day this year with an old-fashioned date auction at 6 p.m. at Taylor Down Under, benefiting Mountain Justice Spring Break.
MJSB is a week-long trip of 100-200 students from around the country serving communities impacted by the coal industry, learning how to resist the industry and empowering people to make change through direct action, according to MJSB coordinator Eric Blevins.
In its second year, it will be held in Damascus, Va., March 1-9.
“One of the biggest goals is to bring national attention to the story of mountaintop removal and to the community impact that coal has on people’s lives,” said junior Marley Green, who attended the first MJSB last year.
Mountaintop removal has been occurring in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania for over 100 years. The mountains are blown up to retrieve the coal from inside for it to be shipped out and burned so that it can provide electrical power.
If Mountaintop removal continues, half of the mountains in southern West Virginia will be gone by 2015, according to Green.
“These are real, natural assets that provide habitat, culture and amazing recreation that are literally disappearing every single day,” he said. “Anybody should be frightened by the idea.”
Besides destroying the natural beauty of Appalachia, home to the most bio-diverse forests on Earth, mountaintop removal has an effect on climate.
Coal is toxic, unregulated and the biggest contributor to global warming according to Blevins. It is also the United States’ largest source of electricity.
Cancer risk is 10,000 times higher near coal disposal sites, according to an EPA study. Coal-fired power plants release the largest proportion of mercury toxins in the US at 40 percent, according to MJSB.com.
The pollution from existing power plants causes 24,000 premature deaths each year, and there are plans for 150 more coal fired power plants to be built, including one in Virginia.
Both Green and Blevins have a positive outlook regarding the future of mountaintop removal.
Green said that he foresees a ban on the process within a couple of years of the presidential election.
“Bush is a massive roadblock,” he said.
Affected communities are beginning to seek help and file lawsuits. Junctions have been placed on coal power plants and reform pieces of legislation have been proposed in Congress.
In 2007, JMU and hundreds of other colleges signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, pledging to decrease their amount of emissions and increase awareness of global warming.
“It’s really at a critical moment right now because there is so much awareness and involvement,” Blevins said. “It will be interesting to see how well we’re able to resist this industry.”
Green said that voluntary conservation is the first step in outlawing mountaintop removal.
“Everybody needs to realize the connection that they have to this process. Every time anyone turns on a light switch anywhere, you’re calling forth energy from rocks from coal being burned.”
