If you’re green-minded, it’s easy to hate coal. What’s not as easy, though, is discovering that — as light an environmental footprint as you try to leave every day — you’re probably part of the coal problem.
After all, coal might be dirty, deadly and environmentally destructive, but it also has a purpose, one of which is to fuel the power plants that generate our electricity. So unless you’re living and working completely off the grid, you too are a cog in the dirty coal machine. Ignorance is no excuse.
And now there’s no excuse for even claming ignorance: A Website created by the environmental group Appalachian Voices and Mathew Gross, Howard Dean’s former director of Internet communications, lets you find out exactly how you’re connected to the world of coal. It’s both fascinating and disturbing.
Just type in your Zip code and click “Show My Connection,” and you’ll get a detailed map showing the locations of coal-fired power plants in your area. You’ll also be able to find out whether your local plants are direct users of coal mined through mountaintop removal, or whether they’re indirectly connected by buying coal from companies that operate mountaintop removal mines elsewhere.
Once it’s left you feeling appropriately guilty, the site offers several ways in which to redeem yourself. There’s information about House Resolution 2169, the Clean Water Protection Act that would help protect the health and welfare of people who live in Appalachia’s coal regions, along with a list of which U.S. representatives have so far lent their support to the bill. You’ll also find links to help you email your House representatives — either to thank them for backing the bill, or to ask them to come on board.
The site also offers plenty more: email forms to recommend the site to friends and family; a “Go Tell it on the Mountain” page to offer your own prayers and prayer requests “for the people and mountains of Appalachia”; comments from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wendell Berry and others about the high cost of coal; an online National Memorial for the Mountains that uses Google Earth’s mapping software to illustrate how mountaintop removal mining has affected individual communities and regions; and videos, photos and more.
Oh, and if you want to help a bit more and still have a few holiday gifts left to buy, you’ll also find a link to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy’s online store, which offers “I Love Mountains” t-shirts, bumper stickers, books, hats and more.
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Shirley Siluk Gregory
Shirley Siluk Gregory, a transplanted Chicagoan now living in Northwest Florida, represents the progressive half of Green Options' Red, Green and Blue segment. She holds a bachelor's degree in Geological Sciences from Northwestern University but graduated in 1984, just when the market for geologists was flatter than the Florida landscape. Just as well, though: she had little interest in spending her life either in a laboratory or, heaven forbid, an oil field. So, of course, she went into journalism. After extremely low-paying but fun and educational stints at several suburban Chicago weeklies and dailies, Shirley and her then-boyfriend/now-husband Scott found themselves displaced by a media buyout and spending the next several years working as freelancers. Among their credits: The Chicago Tribune, a publication for the manufactured-housing industry, and Web Hosting Magazine, a now-defunct publication that came and went with the dotcom era. Shirley's always been concerned about nature and conservation (and an avid pack-rat, as her family can attest to), but became even more rabidly interested in the environment primarily due to two factors: the growing signs that global warming was real and threatening, and the birth of her son, Noah, in 2003. Suddenly, the prospect of a world that might not be quite as habitable in 40 or 50 years took on a whole new, and personal, meaning. Living where she lives now also helped light the fire of Shirley's environmental awareness: her hometown was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and beaten up again by Hurricane Dennis in 2005. That, and the fact that she and her family were vacationing in New Orleans until the day before Katrina -- and spent 12 hours driving home for a trip that normally takes 3 -- has made Shirley deeply appreciate how fragile our lifestyles are, and how dependent they are on sound management of natural resources and sustainable living practices. That's why she's become a passionate reader and writer about all things green and sustainable.
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