James Hansen, among other big name people, was arrested today in West Virginia protesting mountaintop removal coal mining. Hansen is a NASA scientist that I actually saw back in the early 1980s in a presentation with Al Gore, Barry Commoner, and Jessica Matthews at the Louisville Arts Center doing a panel discussion on global warming. I still have the handouts from the presentation, and those have the exact date. It was very early in all of this.

Hansen, a climatologist, has been at the forefront of warning of what is coming with global warming if we keep doing nothing. Hansen was one of the scientists whose reports were altered by Bush administration industry hacks whose companies might have to change what they doing if climate change awareness grows. So, in order to stop that from happening, agency reports prepared in a scientific manner were being altered based on politics to make it seem like global warming wasn't really that much of a threat.

But global warming is only part of the fight to stop mountain top removal coal mining. It's just so horrendous to blow off the tops of mountains. Can you believe that our society allows that? Commonly it is associated with parts of the Appalachian mountains, but it also goes on elsewhere. For example, a lot of the coal burned in the eastern U.S. comes from the mountaintops of Wyoming. Believe it or not, they mine the coal in Wyoming and put it on very long trains and ship it continually to the eastern U.S. for less money than it takes to install scrubbers on the old coal fired power plants.

The Wyoming coal is "lower sulfur" and therefore can be burned in the "grandfathered in" old coal powered plants that dot the major rivers in the eastern U.S. It's just so dang ugly when you destroy the mountains, and many folks have visited the Great Smokeys and Rockies and have a nice romantic view of the mountains. There is a strong aesthetic ethic that is also at work here, as well as concern for the local neighborhoods that are being ruthlessly pushed aside for this money making venture. The opposition is multi-faceted.

But while what is happening in Wyoming is bad enough, it's what is happening to section of the Appalachian mountains in the eastern U.S. that is becoming the subject of more and more celebrity action and wider and wider press coverage.

This is what happens to a movement that becomes nationalized and moves closer to some kind of national action on the problem. It's happened numerous times across a number of movements in the last century, so one can try to predict a pattern as to how a campaign will proceed depending on what stage it is in. One would think that the pressure is sufficient to stop the practice in law. Oh, but congress is so bought off by the coal industry, it's pathetic. "Progress" is slow.

But, considering all the data out there about how damaging to the environment burning coal is, combined with the gruesome aerial photos of mountain top removal sites, it is amazing that the practice is as persistent as it is. While on it's face, one might think that because of all the cost and the small amount of coal that is said to be recovered from MTR, the resistance growing from local communities, and the overall national campaign against it, that it would have by now been stopped.

As John Belushi would say..."but nooooooooooooo...." And while the Obama administration made some noises early on about trying to reign in the practice, it now seems to have backed off it's more aggressive stance. This is what lead Hansen and the other celebrities, such as Darryl Hannah, to get arrested today at a MTR site. Obama needs to forget the moderation on some things and cut to the chase. He's too soft.

It's simply really dumb that we are still burning coal. There are plenty of alternatives. And I'm not talking about nuclear. That's a pig in a poke - a trojan horse - a pondoras box. I'm talking about a number of ways that we could produce electricity without coal or nuclear. It's no secret, and if we put a lot of resources into it, we could refine these and find others.

Most people still aren't taking global warming seriously at all. It's amazing to me that they don't, but they don't. That's why James Hansen is well known - with some folks - but with the average American, probably a complete unknown. Right now economic problems are overwhelming environmental problems. It's a false overwhelming, but it's happening. And, in some ways, the economic problems are connected to the environmental problems - and probably a lot more than we as a society want to admit.

So it is hard to be optimistic that the world is going to respond in a timely way to the global climate change crisis. Hansen and his associates are going to extreme measures to try and get the word out. I hope it works, but I'm not confident that the American mass media, which has the actual tools to reach the people, is ready to whip the American people up into action, which is what is needed.