Exploding Heritage
KFTC members were prominently featured on "Exploding Heritage," a special radio documentary on mountaintop removal coal mining produced by Bob Edwards and XM Satellite Radio. Here are some of their remarks.
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Where is the morality in destroying God's creation?
“These are one of the most floristically diverse forests in all of North America, unrivaled in terms plant species diversity. In these forests you can see probably in an acre 20 to 30 species of trees. These forests are very complex.  When you replace that with either a grassland monoculture or tree farm you don’t recreate the kind of conditions that you had originally – you can’t do that. These forests are old. It took tens of thousand of years to develop. Once this forest is gone it will take another heaven and another earth for it to be replaced. Once it's gone, it's gone forever. God gave us the world to be stewards of, to care about. Is that what the creator wanted, to blow the tops off the mountains so we can have cheap electricity? Where's the morality of that?” Tom Barnes, wildlife biologist  “When I first saw strip mining 40 some years ago, I couldn't believe it. I couldn’t believe that grown up responsible people could do a thing like that. I’m having trouble believing it still.[The land] … You get it and your children get it and it belongs never to you and never to them, but it belongs always in human terms to whoever is yet to come. And to fail to protect it for whoever is yet to come is a grievous fault — I don't think the word sin is too strong a word for it. It’s a terrible sin to destroy a gift that you cannot make or replace yourself, that is not given to you except in trust for those who are still to come.” Wendell Berry, farmer and writer |
More quotes  Patty Amburgey “Our heritage is our mountains. When mountaintop removal comes into your community you can never replace that as long as this earth stands.”  Mick McCoy “It’s like we’re a forgotten land. It’s like people are willing to sacrifice the Appalachian area so that they can get what they feel is cheap energy.” |