Appalachian voices

KP
by Kristeen Pawly7 views·Updated Apr 11, 2021
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  1. Hi today, I'm going to talk to you about an
  2. organization called Appalachian Voices which is using google earth outreach
  3. to complete its missions.
  4. So the Appalachian Mountains pronounced Appalachian as I've learned today.
  5. Not Appalachian includes a huge mountain range leading from Georgia
  6. to maine.
  7. However, this organization specifically works in north Carolina Virginia Tennessee
  8. Kentucky and most importantly west Virginia.
  9. In this photo here you can see a beautiful image
  10. of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
  11. Okay, so organizations, big mission to end mountaintop removal coal
  12. mining. Until today.
  13. I did not, I didn't know what mountaintop removal, coal
  14. mining is and now I'm really angry about it.
  15. So mountaintop removal coal mining is when you use explosives
  16. to literally explode a mountain to get the cold from
  17. the inside.
  18. That sounds like the plot to some evil genius movie,
  19. but it's not, this is real life and it's happening
  20. in our own backyard here.
  21. You can see the image a little bit bigger.
  22. Um, the flattening of the tops of these mountains, it
  23. uses a lot less people than traditional coal mining did.
  24. And it is seen or sold to us at least
  25. as a safer way to access the coal in these
  26. mountains. As we know, uh, conditions for coal miners back
  27. in the day.
  28. We're not so good.
  29. So this is seen as a positive in that industry.
  30. Um, of course, the biggest positive in the industry is
  31. profit. So they are using google earth to create some
  32. advocacy and education in this realm.
  33. In this image, you can see on the left hand
  34. side current day, on the Appalachia And on the right
  35. is 1984 when they were full formed ridges and mountaintops.
  36. So of course when people see this, they can write
  37. to their legislators, they can vote against companies that can
  38. do things like this.
  39. They also use google earth to create maps for life
  40. expectancy. Once again, this is all about advocacy and information,
  41. right? The more that the people in these communities are
  42. educated about what's happening around them, the more they will
  43. fight against it here, you can see a lot of
  44. red, which means a decrease of life expectancy.
  45. Um and that's because of in the green, all of
  46. those mountaintop removal mines.
  47. What happens when these companies explode these mountains to get
  48. to the coal on the inside is all that sediment
  49. and rock on the top has to go somewhere.
  50. Unfortunately, they're not shooting it off to space quite yet.
  51. They're throwing it down into the valleys, which is trickling
  52. down into their creeks and rivers, polluting their drinking waters
  53. with metals and toxic chemicals which exists naturally in nature.
  54. But they are intended to kind of stay in the
  55. middle of the mountain and not in our cup of
  56. water. Also using google earth outreach to create maps where
  57. you can see where your energy sources are coming from.
  58. So here is an image example for north Carolina.
  59. Uh if you see the little axes, that is where
  60. the mountaintop mining is happening and then the little buildings
  61. are your energy factories, um where the coal is being
  62. processed, I did it for south florida and bingo ftl,
  63. of course is guilty.
  64. If you take a look here at this image, um
  65. I put in my zip code to get some information
  66. picked F.
  67. P. L.
  68. Which is who I pay for my electricity.
  69. And yes, we are using coal from mountaintop removal mines,
  70. specifically from K for the mountain west Virginia along with
  71. many others.
  72. I'm sure what's cool about this website is that they're
  73. gonna let you learn about the price of your power
  74. and what is actually affecting for the residents in the
  75. cafferty mountains.
  76. Mhm. So of course we need energy, we need electricity.
  77. And that's why this organization, it's working for its clean
  78. energy for all.
  79. So they work with companies to get low income people's
  80. um free or reduced cost um solar panels, they're building
  81. wind turbines.
  82. Unfortunately, it's just not moving fast enough because these companies
  83. are exploding mountains every single day to get cold.
  84. Other things that they're doing in this organization is they
  85. are fighting fracking, There have been multiple pipeline plans for
  86. the atlantic seaboard and for the Appalachia Mountains.
  87. So fighting that fracking is another big part of their
  88. advocacy. You want to learn more about this?
  89. You can go to a pp voices dot org and
  90. this image you can see that is a layer of
  91. ash on top of water.
  92. Um and that's just one thing that they're doing.
  93. They're cleaning up ash, they're cleaning up all of the
  94. disgusting leftovers that these companies leave behind.
  95. Um, so definitely give that website a visit and learn
  96. a little bit more about how they are working with
  97. google earth outreach to end this mountaintop removal mining.