Seventeen years ago, on this day, June 23rd, 2009.
2009: Mountaintop Removal Mining Protest, Raleigh County, WV
A small, but vehement group staged a protest at the Goals Coal plant owned by Massey Energy against a type of mining called mountaintop removal. At least 30 demonstrators, including actress Darryl Hannah and James Hansen, then the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, were arrested for trespassing and other misdemeanor offenses like impeding traffic.
http://www.mensjournal.com/travel/events/a-brief-history-of-climate-change-protests-in-the-u-s-20140919#ixzz3J9TFuKjq
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 387ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that in order to get at coal under mountains in the cheapest way, just remove the top of the mountain. Very clever.
The specific context was that James Hansen and others were helping to try to defeat these proposals. This was shortly into the beginning of the Obama administration, and Obama was pushing cap and trade ahead of the Copenhagen conference,
What I think we can learn is this: we have been trying to stop the rest of our species being insanely fucking stupid, and we have largely failed because stupidity and greed and fear and hate are easily accessed emotions. We are easily riled up apes.
What happened next: Don’t know. Google didn’t tell me. Presumably the bad guys won…
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 23, 1969 – Cuyahoga river catches fire. Again –
June 23, 1980 – G7 in Venice aims to sink Venice…
June 23, 1988 – it’s time to stop waffling and say the greenhouse effect is here
June 23, 1989 – Richo gonna save the world…
June 23, 1991 – Japanese propose pledge and review