Blowing the peaks off mountains to remove coal is one of America’s hottest environmental flashpoints. Now Kennedy is shining a light on mountain-top removal in Appalachia nearly four decades after his father campaigned against strip mining there.
Kennedy and filmmaker Bill Haney traveled for several years to West Virginia and compiled nearly 500 hours of footage in the heart of coal country. They hope the resulting new documentary, The Last Mountain, will lead Americans to understand how they are connected to the lives and landscapes in the film.
The federal government has gradually tightened restrictions on mountain-top removal, and there is essentially a national moratorium on building new coal power plants. But America is still largely a coal-fired nation, and Kennedy and Haney contend that there is a cleaner way to power our economy.
Join us for an evening with one of America’s most passionate environmentalists.
Bio
Greg Dalton
Gregory Dalton is chief operating officer at the Commonwealth Club of California and Director of The Club's Climate 1 Initiative. He previously was international editor at The Industry Standard magazine, an editor for the Associated Press in New York, and a correspondent in China and Canada for the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper.
Proficient in both Mandarin and Cantonese, he is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. is an attorney specializing in environmental law and was co-host of Ring of Fire on the Air America Radio network.
Excavation of materials from the Earth's crust, including those of organic origin, such as coal and petroleum. Modern mining is costly and complicated. First, a mineral vein that can likely produce enough of the desired substance to justify the cost of extraction must be located. Then the size of the vein or deposit is determined, and mining engineers decide the best way to mine it. Most of the world's yearly mineral production is extracted by surface mining, which includes open-pit mining, strip mining, and quarrying. For ore bodies that lie a considerable distance below the surface, underground mining must be considered. In both techniques, excavating and extracting mineral substances involve costly combinations of drilling, blasting, hoisting, and hauling, as well as measures for health and safety and reduction of environmental impact.
Landform that rises well above its surroundings, generally exhibiting steep slopes, a relatively confined summit area, and considerable local relief (inequalities of elevation). Mountains are considered larger than hills, but the term has no standardized geologic meaning. Mountains are formed by the folding, faulting, or upwarping of the Earth's surface due to the movement of plates (seeplate tectonics) or by the emplacement of volcanic rock onto the surface. For example, the Himalayan Mountains where India meets the Eurasian Plate were formed by a collision between plates that caused extreme compressional folding and the uplifting of large areas. The mountain ranges around the Pacific basin are attributed to the sinking of one plate beneath another. See alsoplateau.
Americans can choose to break the power of the corporate america to own politician. All they have to do is turn off the tv or change the channel every time there is a political ad on tv. With tv advertising having no value, politicians would waste their money on them and they'd need a lot less.
Insurance companies aren't the ultimate deciders of risk- they are fools about risk. They pay too much money out on drugs whereas its been shown that pschiatric counselling plus drugs is much more cost effect. Obama created the comparative medicine institute which will save bundles of money not insurance companies. Its the fear of getting sued by lawyers like Kennedy and the corrupt judges who let this cases start up that makes nuclear uninsurable. Insurance companies never want to payout and nuclear is something that they can easily exclude.
Smartgrids will not overcome the fundamental unreliability of solar and wind- will alleviate it a bit- energy storage is very expensive for the energy it stores. Great mention of fascism- you have to lose your hot water system so the peak can be cut back. Assuming large amounts of solar/wind energy, the alternative when its cloudy or winter are blackouts or baseload suppliers will have to increase their output at great cost and increased CO2 overall or massive oversupply of solar/wind power production capacity which is totally uneconomic.
Fascism isn't corporate government- its a small group imposing their view of what people should be like especially ethnicity. Mussolini took over companies not the other way round. Nazi referred to western democracies as rule by the rich. Communism isn't big government. The Kymer Rouge were ultimate communists- they killed anyone who had potential to be part of a government. Big government is a rule by bucreacrats.
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