[TidesHoss32]

Your right...It was an idiotic question. But you environmentalists insist on us listening to your idiotic rhetoric about destroying these mountains. And quit blaming all of peoples health problems on coal mining. I guess you forgot to point out that this place (the Appalachian region) is #1 in the ENTIRE NATION in drug abuse. Mix that in with inbreeding, high rate of smoking, among many other self-imposed hazards and VIOLA! There you have it, an instant answer to WHY Appalachia has health problems. Your in pre-med, and I guess that makes you smarter than me in a sense. But you people want to shut mining down (no matter what you say) before we have those alternative methods for energy. You want repeating? You CONSTANTLY say "theres got to be a better way". Well no kidding! Why arent your people on it? Chop Chop..And you want absurd? Tourism will bring in enough money to run those alternative methods? :lmao: ...No offense, but that is the most hysterical thing I have read in my year and a half on BGR. I live in Letcher County, but how will tourism bring in that kind of money, when Jenkins has one restaurant, Whitesburg has a handful, Knott County has what? A handful? What will these tourists do around here? What DO they do here? Did I forget to mention that these tourists have about 8 hotel choices in four or five counties? Theres only so many mountains you can look at, and for only so long. Go ahead and tell me Im repeating myself, but my repeats make a helluva lot more sense than yours. You name the same old facts every single time you post anything. And so do I. You say that I dont know what Im talking about, that I speak from my "gut". Pal, let me give you something to chew on. I am trying to protect my job. I have been completely blessed because I have been given a job. And if that means that I have to go head to head with some pre-med student trying to take my job (which you are), then by God, so be it. You say I told you nothing, because you refuse to believe that the area that you REALLY LIVE IN, is a drug-infested, poor, crime-ridden area of lazy welfare cases that refuse to work, and destroys any hope of anything OTHER than mining to open doors for our future. That, my friend, is the REAL Appalachia. Call me whatever you like, but NOBODY can deny that.

Tidehoss, you still didn't prove anything beyond the point that you are ANGRY and baised. All you are thinking of is the NOW, and yourself. I totally agree with a lot of what you said. Yes this generation is greedy, wasteful, and lazy, which is big reason for why we are in such an energy mess at the moment. To answer your idiotic question " would I want a sports car that went 200 mph and and got 60 MPG", I sure as hell would, as long as it ran on "green" fuel. lol, youre actually funny, you spent so much of your time to write that long reply, and you told me absoultely nothing. You just keep repeating yourself. All you MTR supporters keep saying the same thing, you all use the same old worn out slogans.
All you have said this whole time is "take coal away and we have nothing". Where did I ever say to take coal away, all I want is to stop the destruction of Appalachia until a better source of energy can be ready for mass consumption. You're whole argument lies on the theory that without coal we have nothing, I want to know why people think that? Are we so dumb and dependent, that we cant find nothing else to do besides mine? Or do people believe that coal is our "savior" because we were feared into thinking that? People of this region are repeatedly told we have nothing without coal. Thats totally absurd. We have the ability to build an economy without coal, tourism could be a start, but no one wants to see flat mountains.

You're whole argument is actually absurd, yes I know that your job feeds your family, so what, every person that has a job relies on that to feed their family.
I'm sure you are a hard working man, just like the dozens of family members I have that work in the mines. But things are different now, it takes a handful of men to do the job that hundreds used to do. Coal is not our savior right now, were one of the poorest regions in the country, our unemployment rate has been the same for the last 30 years, and the future doesn't look any brighter, how is that a savior?


Now to the points you made, the big reason other energy sources aren't being used, or being further researched in this area is because of the greedy oil and coal companies. Too much money is being made to get away from mining. It's that simple. Now you agree that Appalachia is one of the poorest regions in the country, and you know exactly why that is, It's mining. There aren't any other job opportunites here because we don't have the trained workers to do them, most people who get an education move away from here to get jobs, including me. The average age of a coal miner is 55, which shows that young people arent working in the mines, and since you claim mining is our "savior" what happens when all those workers retire, there wont be anyone to work in the mines. We need to get better jobs in this area, which wont happen until MTR practices are controlled.

I'm currently in pre-med, I would love to come back to this area and work, and with the way mining is going I would never be out of work, our streams and air are polluted, so I would have a constant stream of sick patients. Just to let you know 6 counties in eastern Ky rank in the top ten nationally in lung cancer, children here are 50% more likely to get asthma, and mothers are more likely to have birth defects, and why is all of this happening, it's because these "great" coal companies are polluting Appalachia. I ask a lot of people to do this, and I would guess that very few do, but I will ask again, go look at google earth and view the destruction.

The point im trying to make is that MTR needs to be controlled and stopped, yes as of right now we need the coal, but there has got to be a better way, MTR takes away jobs, and destroys our environment, and is rapidly destroying our culture. You admitted that you dont use facts, and that you think from the "gut, which shows that you don't know what you're talking about, all you're doing is trying to protect your job, which I completely understand. I know that a lot of people here wont listen to me, a lot of people will write me off as some crazy "tree hugger", which is fine with me. There is a group that sides with me, and it's a rapidly growing group of people just like you, people who want better for this region. this earth is god given, and all im trying to do is protect it and it's inhabitants.

Now I didn't put a lot of facts into this argument, but I do know what I'm talking about, anytime you want to debate over the practice of MTR just ask. The bad totally outweighs the good in the case of MTR, I can give you thousands of incidents, and stats on just how MTR is destroying this region. MTR is accountably for floods, mudslides, contaminated water, and many other things. The property value of a home near a mine site drops on average by 90%, most people here have very little, and their home is their only possession, imagine how they feel when the lose all the have. Here is one you can probably understand, and it should hit home, Mining jobs have decreased by over 50% since 1970, thats when MTR really started. Is that the great job maker coal claims to be?