I just watched a 30 Days episode about the coal miners in West Virginia. It was SO depressing. They do this work because it pays $60k a year, but it kills them. And being so ingrained to doing it, they let it.
If this country would cease its dependency on coal fired energy, we wouldn’t have a whole culture of men who give their lives to mining coal. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But NO, Southern Company plies the government with lobbyists who consistently BUY them permission to build more coal fired plants – as well as buy them permission to keep the ones they have running without sufficient pollution controls.
Hey, people, been to the Smoky Mountains lately? Seen the sticks that used to be forests? Yah, that would be pollution from the coal fired plants.
Southern Company is the main polluter of the Southeast and they are pretty much left alone to do as they please because of the frelling lobbyists.
They are currently proposing MORE coal fired plants and the proposals are sailing through congress and the other agencies due to lobbyist money.
It’s sickening.
Why do we allow this?
I vote against anyone even remotely associated with this travesty, but it really makes no difference since the lobbyists control all.
Southern Company is single handedly destroying the South. Does anyone care? Apparently not.
Sickening.
Unfortunately it’s the people who could actually do something about it that don’t care. People like us (those who fucking live here) care. We are sickened everytime we drive through the Smokies and see the treetops eaten away by the acid rain. We are sickened (more literally) everytime we step outside our homes into a city that’s under a warning because pollution is so bad anyone with asthma and old people are cautioned to stay indoors.
When will it be so bad that someone takes a stand and does something about it? Probably when there’s a global disaster that kills thousands. Probably when it’s too late.
You are correct. Money talks and Southern Co. has plenty of that. I tell you, lobbyists should be banned from the Capital. At the very least they should be strictly monitored and controlled. How about no more than $500 to any one person per YEAR? How about only being allowed in the halls of congress/senate every fourth Wednesday? How about voting for politicians with balls – good luck finding one. It’s not sexy to build efficient, clean power plants (nuclear, anyone?). It’s not sexy to fund clean, efficient high speed rail to every major city in this country – no, it’s far more accepted to fund building more roads. Which strikes me as VERY funny, since the ones we got are literally crumbling. Driven across I-40 lately? It’s a pot hole ridden washboard from Memphis to Flagstaff. Same for the wind turbines here and there in the Mid- and SouthWest. They are beautiful and graceful and 5 miles of them can support 83,000 homes. But do we have them all over? NO. If it’s not the godsdamned politicians getting in the way, it’s the morons who claim to be environmentalists and NIMBYs (Not In My BackYard). Did you know that wind farms are blocked consistently – not by politicians, but by NIMBYs who claim they are eyesores and environmentalists who worry that a bird might run into one. I kid you not. /end soapbox :-P