A man describes growing up in a valley destroyed by mountaintop removal mining, where his grandfather's home now overlooks a toxic lake. A wildlife photographer connects the local devastation to climate crisis, calling for divestment from extraction industries and pressure on politicians to act.
I don't talk a lot about where I'm from or the impact that that has had on me as a person, but I think it's important for me to tell this story. I'm standing in the backyard of the house that my grandfather built back in the 1970s. When it was built, this hillside here and everything below it was this beautiful green valley. There were fields off in the distance. Full of cattle and just open farmland, essentially. In the 1980s, the coal industry purchased that valley and began to carve it out and take all the coal that they thought was of any value. With the fracking boom came a series of wells Nearby, as well as the return of the coal company to do mountaintop removal here, which is kind of a misnomer. They would call it strip mining or surface mining, but they have created this massive lake. This backyard, which is now my mother's house, is the site of— The mine. This horrendous toxic lake. And I have no idea how deep this is. I do know that it is certainly toxic. And beyond that, the constant sound of heavy machinery all through the night, the lights, not only ecologically damaging, But it's damaging to my mother who lives here in terms of her health.
This extraction is damaging to everyone who lives nearby and the rest of us because of the imminent climate disaster we're running towards. It's stuff like this that drives what I do as a nature and wildlife photographer. If you also find this stuff upsetting, as upsetting as I do, Then I really hope that you will write those in power, that you will spend your money wisely and reject everything that the extraction economy is based on. We need to choke them out. We need to take their money away from them, and we need to change before it's too late, which it honestly already might be.
