Mountaintop Removal

I have a very special place in my heart for the film FernGully. Although the movie was not nearly as popular as other animated films at the time, it stuck with me through my adolescent years and well into adulthood. I always recommend it to friends with young nieces and nephews as good way to start the conversation about environmentalism.

One of its more powerful scenes is when the shrunken human Zak carves fairy Crysta’s name into a tree. Seeing what Zak is doing, Crysta is horrified and demands he stops and asks, “Can’t you feel its pain?” and places his hand on tree. Zak, being a human, can’t feel the pain and Crysta does not understand how one creature could not sympathize with the pain of another.

Growing up in Ohio Valley and Appalachia, I felt Crysta’s disbelief many times. There are certain events in life that when you see them, you can’t help but gasp in a shared pain and wonder how others can’t join you in your outrage. Any environmentally minded person who has seen a mountaintop removal site knows of what I speak. Mountaintop Removal is defined by Wikipedia as “a form of surface mining that involves an extreme topological change to the summit or summit ridge of a mountain. It is most closely associated with coal mining in the Appalachian Mountains, located in the eastern United States. The process involves using explosives to remove up to 1,000 vertical feet of rock to get to the coal seams. The resulting debris is often scraped into the adjacent river valleys in what is called a valley fill.”



The effects of this mining on the surround areas is devastating. Not just on the environment, but on the people who live and work in these areas.

Knowing this, I was very excited to find out that a screening of a hard-hitting new documentary on the subject was coming to the city. And it’s not just any screening, it’s Lincoln Center’s Earth Day screening. If you live in NYC, you should definitely check out Mountaintop Removal, a new documentary narrated by William Mapother (of “Lost” fame, also a KY native) on April 22 @ 6:15 PM. This day is already very special to me because it marks my 15th year as a vegetarian (I know, it’s soooo cliché to give up meat on Earth Day, but hey, do what works for you). If you’re not in the NYC area, add Mountaintop Removal as a friend on MySpace to see when it will be playing near you.