Coal Country Music

Here's something to get you environmentalist's (and thinking people) all pissed off. You know the story of Big Coal blasting and bullying it's way to sky high profits at the expense of children. "Coal Country" is a new doc that looks into the truth about modern coal mining in Appalachia. It focuses on the process of mountaintop removal mining, the families it destroys, the rivers it pollutes, even the mountains it levels. The story is told by both working miners and activists, and whatever side you come down on, one point cannot be argued: coal generates half of this country's electricity. That's right, that old worn out dinosaur poop is still number one in big energy. As author Jeff Goodell (Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future) said, "our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks." And that means it's not going anywhere soon....

Here’s something to get you environmentalist’s (and thinking people) all pissed off. You know the story of Big Coal blasting and bullying it’s way to sky high profits at the expense of children. “Coal Country” is a new doc that looks into the truth about modern coal mining in Appalachia. It focuses on the process of mountaintop removal mining, the families it destroys, the rivers it pollutes, even the mountains it levels. The story is told by both working miners and activists, and whatever side you come down on, one point cannot be argued: coal generates half of this country’s electricity.

That’s right, that old worn out dinosaur poop is still number one in big energy. As author Jeff Goodell (Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future) said, “our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks.” And that means it’s not going anywhere soon.

“Coal Country” premiered on Discovery Networks’ Planet Green over the weekend (my bad I got caught up in Beatlemania) but you know how cable programming works, it re-airs every week through December including this week Thursday, November 19 at 10:30 pm.

It’s also a country album, called Coal Country Music featuring the likes of John Prine, Natalie Merchant, Bonnie Raitt, Diana Jones, and the genius Willie Nelson – who performs Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In the Wind.” The album is a collection of music inspired by Appalachian Mountains and the important place they’ve played in American history and music. A place that is literally being blown away.

You must dig Woody Harrelson’s quote on the album, bless his crazy heart:

“Mountaintop removal is the most devastating peacetime activity in human history — in fact, if the destruction to our nation’s natural and cultural heritage were being perpetrated by a foreign power, it would be considered an act of war — because in a very real sense, it is — it is a war against the Earth. Every week, mountaintop removal coal-mining detonates more explosive force on the land and the communities of Appalachia than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; to extract the coal that is warming the planet and poisoning the water, air and land.”