OVERBURDEN: That is the industry jargon for the mountaintop that lies over the coal--hence all that needs to be removed in mountaintop removal mining as here at Kayford Mountain in West Virginia.
Image: © J. Henry Fair
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Mountaintops leveled. Tar sands scraped and boiled. Water taps aflame. These are just a few of the ways that mankind's quest for fossil fuels manifests itself, beyond the obvious utility of being able to power a home or business or drive a car.
Industrialized civilization relies on coal, oil and natural gas—the stored sunlight collectively known as fossil fuels—for more than 80 percent of the energy that enables everything from driving to reading on a computer screen. For all its many benefits, that energy can also have hidden costs—invisible CO2 forming a thickening blanket in the atmosphere and causing climate change, asthma in inner cities, to name a few—along with the more visible impacts.
Photographer J. Henry Fair has documented the landscapes left behind by the industrial processes that feed the world's fossil-fuel addiction—as well as many of the necessities and luxuries of modern life that energy makes possible, from plastics to paper towels. His work is currently on display at The Cooper Union in New York City, presented by the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design and the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture.
Of course, alternative energy sources—the wind, sun, hot rocks and nuclear—are hardly impact-free. Giant wind turbines clutter the once-pristine sight lines of ridgetops; vast solar farms soak up rays in the desert, blotting out the landscape and impacting habitat; and deep uranium mines dot northern Canada with environmental effects matching any other resource-extraction enterprise, like tar sands. Which is why being more energy efficient—recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to light a 100-watt lightbulb for nearly a day—is so crucial.
View a Slide Show of the Environmental Damage Wreaked by Fossil-Fuel Extraction and Heavy Industry.
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26 Comments
Add CommentEvery one of those images is astonishingly gorgeous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the next ten years, the population of the world and even the U.S. will have tripled since I was born in 1950. This is by far the largest human population that's ever existed. Urbanization around the world has compounded population growth to produce increasing population density, especially in coastal cities with now greater economic opportunities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPopulation growth in China has now been restrained, but as the benefits of urban infrastructure economic opportunity are extended to what had been an enormous, mostly rural, population, consumption of natural resources and environmental pollution exponentially increases. India similarly offers increasing opportunities for its growing population.
The global consumption of natural resources and pollution of the environment is now compounded by the enormous population base, its continued growth and extensive economic development.
These demanding conditions in conjunction with the depletion of petroleum reserves threaten to reduce our now highly optimized agricultural production, now highly dependent on diminishing fossil water aquifers also threatened by the desperate extraction of the remaining oil and gas reserves to provide power for the enormous global population.
The human population is precariously balanced on the precipice of a collapsing landscape being dug right out from under it. The obvious risk is we now face is that the now critical mass of humanity will be catastrophically diminished if we do not somehow soon reduce our global demands on the environment. This, rather than personal achievement, should be the focus of all education throughout the world. Individual achievement at the expense of others can no longer produce sustainable economic achievement for anyone.
I tried to find the Darrow La bauxite plant outlet using google earth and could not. A geographic position would be helpful and a date would be interesting. Scale was tough to determine on this one also.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jtdwyer: Doom and gloom, man. If even a fraction of the environmental predictions from the 70s and 80s came true, the world would be uninhabitable now. We were supposed to have no drinking water, no food, no animals left, no gas, and be living underneath a layer of trash.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstead, we've had only 2 or 3 species go extinct in North America, and none of the other problems even remotely came true.
The human population has nearly doubled since 1970, but if you think we should simply dismiss dismiss all of concerns then we can continue, business as usual. Is that your assessment and recommendation? Do you have some objections to my assessments?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, like most, am guilty of disregarding growing global issues in the past to pursue my own interests. Those issues have only compounded now. I'm terribly concerned for the future of my grandchildren and the rest of this enormous human population.
I suggest that things are much different now and that any one of many potentially critical failures may produce suffering and death for hundreds of millions if not billions of people.
Alternatively, as you point out, we can continue to ignore these concerns. Overpopulation will remedy itself with no effort on our part.
With the introduction of the computer and advanced applications (apps), we no longer need news papers, magazine paper or writing/drawing paper. If companies who use paper in this manner just stopped using it and went totally digital, we could save millions of acres of forests and prevent million of acres of pollution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is dangerous to use oil to make plastic food containers. If we went back to glass containers to store our food, we could eliminate billions of tons of plastic pollution and save billions of acres of land that can start regrowing trees.
Using the pathetic excuse that we are 'addicted' to these products is a very stupid cop-out and only valid to those who want to continue destroying our planet and our environment. Smart people know better and is fighting tooth-n-nail to usher us into an era of clean/safe energy. Clean energy that doesn't block/mar/damage our landscape exists and all we have to do is start building it. Geothermal, surface-thermal (molten salt), and sub-terrain thermal(under large buildings that takes up a couple of city blocks) can all be implemented into cities and you would probably never know they were there. Solar can be placed on business skyscrapers and homes instead of in deserts blocking the landscape and interfering with ego systems. Solar can be designed to blend in with the environment and you would never know they were there by looking at them. Wave turbines can now be used safely around fish and other marine animals and can produce enough electricity for whole communities...every state has rivers of some kind that can implement these turbines and you would probably never know they were there.
All we have to do is just start doing it and we can save our planet before the babyboom generation dies off. We can do it that quickly.
"...the now critical mass of humanity will be catastrophically diminished if we do not somehow soon reduce our global demands on the environment."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould it be that the earth as an organism may well (by necessity) get a break from our species to recover and heal no matter what we do/don't do? Could this be referred to as ecological selection? Great comment there...
All paper mills does not have to consume waste
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisamounts of water and energy.
Actually in Sweden we have had paper mills that
run on almost no external energy and uses very little
water for quite a time now.
By recycling the waste water (cleaned biologically
in this process) you will be able to save both water and energy. By also burning the residue from the paper making, you would actually require no extra energy input.
Humanity is betting on the availablilty of Fusion energy to continue living beyond its means. There's no guarantee that fusion will be manageable, in which case, Malthus was right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"With the introduction of the computer and advanced applications (apps), we no longer need news papers, magazine paper or writing/drawing paper. If companies who use paper in this manner just stopped using it and went totally digital, we could save millions of acres of forests and prevent million of acres of pollution."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood point, however in the Canadian example above the wood was to be processed into tissues. How would you blow your nose on an email?
I wouldn't put nuclear power in the same box as wind and solar. It's ecological damage is far larger, and far longer lasting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for wind turbines cluttering the landscape - that's an aesthetic thing. Not the same as damaging Earth's ability to support our civilization. And it's fairly easily reversed if we find something better someday (just take them down).
By contrast, we don't have any good way of reversing the damage being done by nuclear and fossil fuels.
Only a complete moron would assume that the results of the science of the 70's would still apply. The predictions were based on what evidence they hasd in conjunction with the models and knowledge at the time. Sa they tested the ideas they revised their finding and continue to do so, that is why it is science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the pictures, #1 is the only prrof you need to know that the fact is there is no such thing as clean coal. You might be able to bun it cleaner than you use to, but you cannot get it out of the ground clean, Impossible.
What they never tell you in the "clean Coal" ads is how wonderful rock is at sequestering poisins and toxic elements, that when exploded into fine dust release arsenic, mercury, lead, copper, and chromium into drinking water and the air the residents breathe. There are pictures of people's property looking like they had just been dusted with volcanic ash from the mining process, and their children play in it. The poisons coat everything, including playsets and day care playgrounds. How is that "Good for America"? How is poisoning our fellow citizens and children partriotic?
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rperks/media/coaldust.jpg
If you want to be patriotic buy American Made Solar panels.
More information: Click on the following link to watch an 8-minute video on the environmental consequences of mountain top removal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPixjCneseE
Not entirely true. That is only if we stay with the current technology. If we were to follow the lead of China and France, which are using technology invented in the United States, we would be switching to Fast Breed Nuclear Reactors. The reason our current reactors are so horrible is that after only 5% (yes FIVE PERCENT) of the fuel is spent it is no longer viable to produce electricity. Can only use particular isotopes of uranium and generate plutonium as a waste material.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFast breeder reactors on the other hand can accept Uranium and plutonium, the fuel goes through a recycling process that our systems cannot do and they eventual spend 95% of the fuel.
Let's put that in perspective. Uranium is not a renewable energy source. Going as we stand today with the known sources of uranium ore in the world we can operate with the same number of nuclear power plants for about 200 years. If we were to convert to fast breed reactors we could go for 3,000 years. (Scientific American)
Add to that a 3 mile island or Chernobyl like disaster is possible due to a meltdown and the explosive release of radioactive steam and particles.
A meltdown in a fast breed reactor using liquid sodium instead of water is not explosive. It just melts into a big glob and then cools to contain itself. No explosive release.
In the late 1960's the Great Lakes was a hive of industrial activity and the heaviest portion was in steel, and this was especially true for Lake Erie. I grew up in Buffalo, New York and lived on the lake front on the Canadian border. The pollution from the factories was so strong and the dumping so sever that there came a breaking point where Lake Erie could not absorb the sulfur, dioxin, industrial oils and other contaminates. The death of Lake Erie, the pristine area of Sports fishing for generation had a massive kill where all of the fish in the lake died. I remember having to wake up every morning to the smell of dead fish and going to the Niagara River and seeing so many fish that was a good 25 yards deep and ran the length of the water front; everyday. The Great Lakes is a shadow of its former self as a site where stripped bass, pike and other fishes flourished;gone forever never to return. There is a cause and effect to the madness that is done for the sake of the "almighty dollar" and at the pace that big business is going the events of the Death of Lake Erie will be repeated again; except on a global scale.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe reap what we sow and we are reaping the whirl wind.
Is all the money in the world worth the end of humanity and the end of our planet Earth?
Blow into a handkerchief, save a tree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI say if you are Pro-Coal then we will use your yard and swimming pool to store the waste.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for me I will be off the grid generating all of my own electricity by the end of the year and selling the excess back to the grid.
ShakaUVm is correct ... you keep giving doomsday predictions that don't even remotely hit the mark and you are bound to loose credibility. Also, for some reason the US Citizens which comprise 4.5% of the population for some reason are expected to be the ones to solve all the woes of the world. It can't be done. We no longer have the power or ability ... shallow mushy thinking from our supposed intellectually elite is disheartening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe enormous over population will take care of itself as it is not 'sustainable' (a very tired and now meaningless word)and nature has a way of correcting those sorts of problems without our assistance.
The population of the US is not growing at the rate that jtdwyer suggests, we are narrowly over replacement levels. The suggestions of the environmentalists have caused more problems than they have solved to date and at great costs. Their failed ideas work against their stated intentions.
The only winners are those seeking more political power and money. And that seems to be what it is all about in reality (ie Global Warming).
The only solution I can think of is education. Something we don't seem capable of doing any longer as the schools are run by governments who use them and their teachings to suit their own ends. If you are going to teach lies and try to live with those lies, you will have to suffer the results of what you have ignorantly done. AMB
Go to http://webecoist.com/2010/03/16/fuels-paradise-thums-islands-help-big-oil-look-good/ to see how beautiful the results of energy extraction can look. The oil islands off Long Beach California are fantastic, and the public would rebel if they were removed. They've even graced a record album cover.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot every act of mankind is ugly. And without the energy recovery, you wouldn't be reading this post, nor able to drive to those vistas you like so much. So stop being a hypocrite. Life is about change - deal with it!
ShakaUVM,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not even worth replying to your comment. Go check your facts before dumping the contents of your dreams here.
As for using e-readers like Kindle, look at the industrial pollution/scarring to mine the materials to make such sophisticated products in the first place. And the energy consumed to make and recycle broken or upgraded devices. (current ones do handle graphics or color so upgrade we will, I do not notice SA digital offered on any e-reader except on my computer desktop which uses a fair bit of electricity).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally global warming has allowed the pine beetle to destroy Canada's boreal forest. Millions of hectares of dead trees. These beetles are now attacking spruce trees since they have run out of lodgepole pine trees to attack. Just drive through the mountains and see for yourself. These logs are being harvested ASAP as they are a massive fire hazard. Just 4 days of consecutive -40C winter weather needed to kill them. Fat chance of that happening now.
As for using a handkerchief to blow your nose, tissues are used for more than blowing one's nose.
You stated:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The population of the US is not growing at the rate that jtdwyer suggests, we are narrowly over replacement levels."
Apparently you've never accessed the U.S. Census data. Here some relevant summary information:
U.S. Population (thousands)
source: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/
1950 151,868
1970 203,984
2000 282,172
2011 310,791
Current World Population: 6,899,009,545
1910 est. World Population: 1,750,000,000
1500 est. World Population: 425,000,000
As clearly indicated in this representative sample data, this is by far the largest population that's ever existed. While global birth _rates_ have been in decline in the U.S., Europe and China, population are still increasing. It just so happens that the U.S. population has increased by almost exactly 10% since 2000, well over "replacement levels".
I'm not an environmentalist and I wasn't making doom & gloom predictions in the 1970s when the U.S. population was less than two-thirds its current level. However, I am a pragmatist who spent a couple of decades forecasting requirements for one of the worlds largest and fastest growing computer centers. I recommend that these issues not be dismissed or ignored: population growth will not continue but more likely collapse with great human suffering, especially if the climate changes for any reason.
Impressive and horrifying though these images are, most are based in the 'New World'. I just wonder if the same kind of images could be taken in China today, how many worse horrors would be shown. I can think of many dreadful scars on the landscape in Europe too, where the scale may not be as great but the impact is even greater. Simply removing stone has led to a lot of the Mendip Hills in Britain being reduced to nothing but escarpments with huge holes hidden behind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ShakaUVM I am often surprised that the "look what they said in the 1970s and it did not happen" is used as any sort of argument. It is a complete logical fallacy. It is like taking a revolver used for playing Russian Roulette spinning the chamber, pulling the trigger surviving, then handing the gun over to someone else and saying “See it’s completely safe, nothing happened.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs the population increases the buffer for coming up with solutions diminishes. The “doom and gloom” scenarios of the 1960s and 1970s were generally stated “if the current trend continues” … and in many cases the trend did not.
But, that does not mean we are suddenly “safe” … in fact because we invented and regulated (yes the reason the U.S. did as well as it did are things like the clean water bills, the EPA, etc.) doesn’t mean the hard work has disappeared.
If you are raising a family and it is a family of three and a new one is born and your spouse says…I am worried with our current income we can’t afford a new baby, but you get a better job and your spouse has to work too and you end up getting by, maybe even saving more, then you find out your wife is pregnant again. With triplets. Do you wave your hands and say, “you were all gloom and doom before, come on, no problem last time, no problem now?” If so, I sure would hate to live in your household!!
Thank you for this link. I've been looking for good pictures to show to my Environmental Science classes. The videos are just what I wanted. People don't understand the level of damage done by mountaintop removal until they can see the world from above. Fossil fuels, minerals and other non-renewal resources are extracted in ways that the average person never witnesses. Perhaps more will recycle or reduce use if they become aware of the aesthetic and environmental damage done. Open pit mines around the world are also things that everyone should see from Google Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe bauxite mining image is in Hungary... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/j-henry-fair/hungarian-bauxite_b_755613.html#s152996&title=2348052__Untitled
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHumans right now are destroying more than they are creating. It cannot continue without consequences. The hubris of industrial western civilization needs to be challenged and stopped.. there is a movie people need to watch called "End: Civ" full documentary is available online. http://submedia.tv/endciv/ it certainly will clarify things.