Mountaintop Removal & Obama

This is really sad, but absolutely foreseeable.  Many mountaintop removal critics (environmentalists) took this comment made by Barack Obama during the 2008 election season as a sign that Obama was against strip mining coal from the Appalachian Mountaintops.

During an August 2007 stump speech, for example, Obama made it clear he disapproved of the destructive practice, which so far has leveled more than 470 peaks across Appalachia.

“We’re tearing up the Appalachian Mountains because of our dependence on fossil fuels,” he told an approving crowd in Lexington, Ky.

Now, they are left scratching their heads as to why the EPA under Obama has decided to approve more mountaintop permits than were approved during the entire Bush Administration.

Now comes word that EPA is set to approve 42 out of 48 MTR permits — more than were approved during the entire Bush administration — which could lead to the destruction of hundreds more miles of Appalachian streams and thousands of acres of forests — along with the flattening of peaks and filling of valleys.

They should have seen it coming. First off, Obama never said he would end mountaintop removal. Although as a democrat with the ‘words’ that sound good and Al Gore saying how wonderful he is, I can understand why they were fooled. But as we know, you must truly listen, investigate, truth check every single thing that comes out of that mans mouth. As we learned the hard way, a (D) at the end of the name doesn’t mean what it use to.

It was too late before they realized they had been had and Obama kept them good and confused until he decided to throw them under the bus:

But since taking office this year, the Obama administration has sent mixed signals about its stance on mountaintop removal, troubling activists working to stop the destruction.

On the one hand, the Environmental Protection Agency announced in March that it was asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take a closer look at mountaintop removal’s “potential harmful impacts on water quality” through its permitting process.

Then last month, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the 4th U.S. Circuit court of Appeals opposing further review of a lower court ruling that would have more strictly regulated mountaintop removal, as Ken Ward of the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette reported at his Coal Tattoo blog.

Adding to the uncertainty, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar held a press conference recently to announce his agency plan’s to reverse Bush administration’s changes to a rule that allowed mountaintop removal operations to dump waste in streams. But at the same press conference, he reassured the coal industry that the President didn’t want to hamper production.

“Basically, we’re totally confused,” said Julia “Judy” Bonds of Coal River Mountain Watch, a grassroots group fighting mountaintop removal in West Virginia. While the federal government dithers, coal companies appear to be stepping up operations, she added.

I understand there is an economic factor and that some want mountaintop removal to continue, but after watching this video, it is clear this activity should be outlawed. It is a travesty and a crime against nature.  470 peaks have been destroyed across appalachia.

Obama is a bought and paid for corporatist lackey.

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