{"id":733114,"date":"2010-05-25T16:01:34","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T20:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=85676"},"modified":"2026-10-04T12:43:46","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T16:43:46","slug":"environmentalists-roll-out-national-ad-targeting-mountaintop-coal-mining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/733114","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalists Roll Out National Ad Targeting Mountaintop Coal Mining"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When most of us flip on the lights (or type into our computers, for that matter), we aren&#8217;t thinking about how those simple acts might affect those living in coal country. Yet nearly half of the country&#8217;s electricity is generated by coal, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eia.doe.gov\/cneaf\/coal\/page\/acr\/table1.html\" >increasingly<\/a> that coal is being extracted not by removing the coal from the earth, but by removing the earth from the coal.<\/p>\n<p>In Appalachia, that means <a href=\"http:\/\/mountainjusticesummer.org\/facts\/steps.php\" >blowing the tops off mountains<\/a> to get at the coal seams inside &#8212; a process that cuts company costs, but also\u00a0<a id=\"i1lh\" title=\"ravaged neighboring communities\" href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/76219\/now-on-stage-the-story-of-coal%E2%80%99s-dirty-deadly-legacy\">ravages neighboring communities<\/a>,\u00a0poisoning wells and waterways, contaminating air, killing off wildlife and\u00a0<a id=\"cs87\" title=\"flooding\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2002\/08\/12\/us\/flooding-in-appalachia-stirs-outrage-over-a-mining-method.html?pagewanted=1\">flooding<\/a> nearby homes. Leading scientists <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/73439\/scientists-mountaintop-coal-mining-is-decimating-appalachia\" >say<\/a> the effects are irreversible.<span id=\"more-85676\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This week, a coalition of Appalachian environmentalists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ilovemountains.org\/tv-ad\" >launched<\/a> a campaign they hope will mitigate the disconnect between the electricity Americans use and the devastating processes that keep it so cheap, unveiling a national TV ad that could bring mountaintop removal into living rooms nationwide. The idea is simple: If consumers knew they were contributing to the destruction of the country&#8217;s oldest mountains, perhaps they would demand an end to the practice.<\/p>\n<p>For effect, the ad borrows from one of the most famous commercials in the history of television: Lyndon Johnson&#8217;s 1964 &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Er5h_TXun6o\" >Daisy Girl<\/a>&#8221; spot, in which a young girl plucking flower petals looks up to see a nuclear explosion in the distance. (In the MTR version, of course, the nuclear blast is replaced by the elimination of an Appalachian peak.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These are the stakes,&#8221; the narrator says. &#8220;We can allow the land, water and people of Appalachia to be sacrificed. Or end mountaintop removal coal mining.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If the explosions aren&#8217;t enough to captivate interest, the coalition has brought on <a href=\"http:\/\/switchboard.nrdc.org\/blogs\/rperks\/AshleyJudd2.jpg\" >Ashley Judd<\/a>, a longtime MTR critic, as the narrator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When most of us flip on the lights (or type into our computers, for that matter), we aren&#8217;t thinking about how those simple acts might affect those living in coal country. Yet nearly half of the country&#8217;s electricity is generated by coal, and increasingly that coal is being extracted not by removing the coal from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2763,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-34Iq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834726,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733114\/revisions\/834726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}