Sunday, September 03, 2006
Destroying the everlasting mountains
From the RoundTable blog
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Deborah Jones
Jones, of Richmond, is an early childhood special education teacher and church musician.
"God, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the Earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God."
-- Psalm 90
"Glorious are you, more majestic than the everlasting mountains."
-- Psalm 76
Reading my Bible, it's obvious the psalmists never imagined that mountains could disappear. Sometimes mountains "melt like wax before God," sometimes God will "touch the mountains so that they smoke" or they "shake in the heart of the sea."
But most references to mountains are testimonials to God's eternity and the Earth's response to God's goodness and glory: They rise and fall at God's command; springs gush forth in valleys and flow between hills, providing a refuge for living beings. I especially like the happy images of Psalm 114 of "mountains that skipped like rams, the hills like lambs," reminding me of the blues, greens and dark purples of the Appalachians stretching into the distance.
My heart is soothed by images of God's steadfast love: "Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains ... you save humans and animals alike, O God."
Yet we are allowing destruction of the mountains in Southwest Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky on an unimaginable scale. Unlike Wall Street scandals and lurid murder cases, taking care of land usually doesn't make headline news.
They call it mountaintop removal, but it's just the latest form of strip mining -- sophisticated explosives do the dirty work of blasting off entire hilltops. Resulting waste piles are dumped over hillsides and bury streams. So-called "valley fills" are sometimes miles long, hundreds of feet deep.
Drag-line mining machines, long as football fields, extract coal after mountaintops are decapitated. The practice allows coal companies to mine at a fraction of normal costs, but the toll on real people is steep: polluted water, round-the-clock noise and the sense that their mountains have been torn from under them. Mountain people have always been dismissed as expendable.
Although mountain residents and church and environmental groups have tried to stop mountaintop removal, this is an uphill battle. Federal courts have blocked permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the years, but mountaintop removal accelerated during the Bush administration.
There's no way these mountains will ever be the same. The land cannot be reclaimed, no matter what the law requires. Don't believe it? Get online and look at www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/010/index.html.
As someone who lives in Richmond, away from my home state of West Virginia, I ask myself: What can I do to stop the destruction? What does God require of me?
In the face of our tremendous need for energy, how do we care for the Earth? Can anyone stop business interests and energy needs from destroying parts of the country where poorer people live and where job opportunities are limited?
Why do political leaders in Virginia and Kentucky ignore this attack on the land? How can a state advertising "Wild, Wonderful West Virginia" ignore the devastation, while promoting beautiful parks and outdoor recreation opportunities elsewhere?
What can people with no voice do? This issue divides families in coal fields. Some argue that the need for jobs outweighs protecting the mountains and valleys that only God can create. But what's the point of having jobs if energy companies are ruining the land we love? Why aren't we investing in technology to free us from fuels that destroy health and climate?
Are we so short-sighted as a nation that we cannot see the mountains for the coal?
Can we bring God into this equation, as stewards of the Earth? Our greed for easy energy sources is at direct odds with responsibility to love our neighbors.
With God's help, there is a way out of this cycle of greed, materialism, destruction and ignorance. Through work, prayer, education, worship, perhaps we can return to the psalmist's state of mind:
"In God's hand are the depths of the Earth, the heights of the mountains are God's also ... May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness."
