I received a copy of Erik Reece's Lost Mountain today, a book I'm hoping to review this summer for Bookslut along with Jeff Goddell's Big Coal. I actually wasn't sure I wanted to read these books for purely personal reasons. After reading Reece's article in the January issue of Orion I was so pissed off about the coal industry in the US and the weakness of the EPA and how so many rich industrialists and slimey politicians don't care at all about the planet (and so many people just want their power regardless of the environmental cost) that I honestly didn't think I could stand to read more on the subject. That sounds so weak, I know, but it's bad enough to read about politics these days and I just came off of two books on Afghanistan that have completely infuriated me (Come Back to Afghanistan and Kabul in Winter - still working on this review). I just couldn't help but think that maybe I was due for a break from all the heavy issues and what this "mountaintop removal" form of coal mining is doing to parts of this country is so awful.
I just wasn't sure if this was something I wanted to know about at all.
I can't believe how wimpy that sounds but it would be nice to think that as long as I recycle everything and turn the lights off in the house and buy organic that I'm doing enough to save the planet. Sanity returned though (in of all things through Elle magazine, which is guest edited by Laurie David and has an amazing amount of environmentalist info this month), and I have both the coal books now. And I'm going to read them and make notes and send questions to the two authors and hopefully write something that is persuasive enough to get other readers to buy the books and learn about what coal minining is doing to this country.
And then maybe we can do something about this industry which, quite frankly, has been getting away with murder.
I know I have to change the world, I know we all have to change the world and if Goodell and Reece can go to the effort of writing these books then (and doing the enormous amount of research involved) then how can I whine about the burden of reading them?
How can I be that weak?
But man, I just know this is going to be some tough reading.
