A Google View of Mountaintop Removal Mining

Written by Dave Burdick

Thursday, 22 March 2007

EcoGeek recently got a haircut. Pretty good one. First good haircut in, say, four years. Typically, it's one of those situations where we drop in to a $10 haircut joint and say "just a little off the top" and then whammo, we're practically scalped. Then we go into about a week-long reclusive period of hiding under furniture like shamed cats, waiting for regrowth.

Well, Fantastic Sam's has nothin' on the mining industry.

Mountaintop removal mining is basically the worst haircut a person could give the earth. It involves clear-cutting and exploding the hell out of the place in order to extract minerals. Now Google Earth has featured content that will show you the extent of the damage in our own country in a few ways.

You can see what the mining scabs in Appalachia look like from above to understand the size of the problem and you can even see what the land looked like before it was attacked.

How? Like this:

1. Download the latest version of Google Earth.
2. In the "Layers" tab, expand "Featured Content."
3. Under that, expand "Global Awareness."
4. Check "Appalachian Mountantop Removal" and explore the other features within that menu.
5. If you get riled up, check out ilovemountains.org, where they're trying to stop mountaintop removal mining in the area.

(Thank goodness Google hasn't yet invented a tool that allows folks to stare at EcoGeek's crappy haircut from all sorts of angles and distances.)

Via BetaNews and Green Options

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Dave Burdick
		About the author:
		Dave Burdick is a New York-based writer and comedian. He's currently pursuing an MS in journalism at Columbia University, performing in the city whenever and writing about being a big dummy at daveburdick.com.
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