Why the Democratic Party Platform Should Call for End to Mountaintop Removal Mining

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-democratic-party-platform-should-call-end-mountaintop-removal-mining



The Democrats have nothing to lose. And everything to gain--especially the health and lives of residents in the coal mining areas of central Appalachia.

Calling it "Judy's plank," in honor of beloved West Virginia mountaineer Judy Bonds, whose untimely death in 2011 served as a wakeup call to the mounting humanitarian and health care crises from mountaintop removal mining, the Democratic Party platform should officially include a commitment for an immediate moratorium on the devastating form of strip mining at their national convention in Charlotte on September 4th.

Ending one of the most blatant civil rights and environmental crimes is not just the right and moral thing to do. It would be a smart move for the Democrats and President Obama, whose recent pander to Big Coal in a bizarre Ohio ad against Romney was rightly denounced by environmentalists and health care advocates as a disgrace.

And Charlotte, whose bright lights and big city operates on coal-fired plants from mountaintop removal operations, would be a symbolic place to start.

Let's be real: Obama doesn't have a chance of winning West VIrginia. A prison inmate gave the President a run for his money in the Democratic primary. Most of West Virginia's top Democrats, like US Sen. Joe Manchin, Rep. Nick Rahall and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, are such sycophants to the Big Coal lobby that they aren'teven attending the convention.

[HopeHoops]

1. How about because it's a cancer on the earth?

[redqueen]

2. K&R

[Overseas]

3. K&R.

[limpyhobbler]

4. It should call for a new New Deal that creates full employment by building wind & solar.

And also ends mountain top removal.

[DLevine]

5. Absolutely agree. K&R. n/t