Why would you blow up mountains?! I am from the Netherlands (below sea level, no mountains) And when I was going on vacation to Spain I saw mountains and It was just so amazing. From the day I first saw a mountain (this summer) and even now I am still in love with mountains
As far as a place to live, rough terrain sucks. So does a dead flat plane. That's why few people live in either WV or places like western Kansas, Nebraska, or Iowa. You don't have trees, rivers, lakes, or much of anything that is aesthetically attractive on the flat lands. Rugged hills aren't conducive to construction or transportation. You can't live on a 30 percent incline. At least you can't drive on it and you can barely negotiate it on foot. It's a big country but suitable land for human settlement is relatively scarce. Sure, land below sea level sucks, too. That's your problem in the Low Countries.
Russ G you are wrong mate, we got a lot of trees rivers and lakes. The biggest river in the Rhine that start in the North Sea and ends in Germany. We got a huge lake called IJsselmeer (search it up) that is just big. And if you aren't in Amsterdam or Rotterdam you got trees everywhere. And in the east of the Netherlands they have a hilly landscape with nice old farms. But you don't know any thing about my country until you visited it😉
"We're not removing the mountain were removing the mountain top!" How far do you go down? "Sometimes all the way to ground level" he is right tho theyre only removing the top n just destroying the mountain
there are many other ways we can generate electricity if the gov has technology way more advanced than what they telling us then why not let us know, this has more to do with coal they are intentionally destroying Earth Hearth and colonizing Mars once again, using earth's resources to do it soon they will destroy natural because they iknow we can not survive with out it, and now they changing it to artificial planet, begging to wonder who are they really not human obviously
You want to reduce resource consumption? OK, are you then in favor or opposed to high levels of immigration? You can't admit a million more people to the country annually and pretend to care about the nation's environmental footprint.
According to comrade Trump coal is Americas future. He has removed those oppressive regulations like dumping coal ash into streams so now we can finally move back to efficient clean burning coal powered engines YAYYY.
Thank you for this story. My mother cried many tears when we heard the explosions and saw the strip mining. We knew the devestation for that time and place, and for Earth today. Keep going.
The people who comment on vice videos are so negative and ridiculous. Thanks VICE for showing the world in the most truth you can muster. They risk their lives (in other instances) to give us real journalism.
Nickolis Speetzen so you have no ideal what goes on here but yet you show up and tell us how to live😂. Fuck off bunch of idiots. Go without electricity if you don't like it.
It was difficult in a way to watch, but I thank you for exposing the latest round of ecological and economic atrocities that have been visited upon my home state for nearly the whole of it's 152-year existence. Many areas outside of the coalfield regions have experienced substantial population losses. Businesses are regularly courted with the promise of cheap labor, as West Virginians are routinely amongst the lowest paid workers in the nation. Corporations such as Wal-Mart have almost entirely decimated swaths of small businesses in some communities. Rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer and alcoholism far exceed the national average. Healthcare is piecemeal at best, and hazardous at worst. At one time, it could at least be said that West Virginia's schools were rather good, but like so many other places in the country, eventually someone decided that money spent educating children was better spent on less important things... like gilding the capitol dome with gold leaf. I have personally driven around the capitol grounds, which were comically riddled with potholes in some places less than 20 years ago. But that dome still looks nice, so who cares, right? The history of politics in West Virginia could be considered a study in the evolution of political corruption. Much of that corruption is centered around the coal industry, and some timber concerns are also beginning to match coal in it's aggressiveness and greed. There is no greater symbol of our country gone wrong than my home state.
I have an MSc in Geology and a BSc in Geophysics. About slurry injection: There has long been a way to prevent groundwater contamination, but I don't see it in use in wastewater injection monitoring in hydraulic fracturing nor in coal slurry injection. You do two things: you do real-time microseismic monitoring and you also put special markers in place inside the slurry. The first lets you see how the earth "cracks" under the force of the slurry being pumped down. If you know where your groundwater reservoirs are, you can stop the operation before any slurry-filled fractures touches it. How will this help? Well, a 1/4-mile radius described in the video does not prevent anything, as that is measured on surface, with no idea on how close the contaminates can get to the underground reservoirs below surface.The second lets you have scientific proof that the materials from the slurry have indeed come out of the community's wells. If these two precautions would be put in place, all your problems would be solved.
The interview with the Coal lobbyist taking place right outside the office of the state senator was a fantastic touch. Not sure if you planned it, but it was a powerful image.
I was in West Virginia for 3 months when I was a kid and saw this. It is completely devastating to the area. Anyone who saw what they did would be pissed.
Couple of points I'd like to make. 1. Everything that is not grown or made chemically must be mined. We used to understand that. Now so many people live so far removed from where things are produced - like energy, clean water, raw materials - they've forgotten where it comes from. They live in a bubble where they expect everything to be available for their homes, clean water to come from their taps, and metals and minerals to be available for their goods without considering those things require power plants and fuels and mines and reservoirs. 2. There are tens of thousands of mountains. We mine the occasional mountain for minerals or fuels. 3. If we don't want to build nuclear power plants, then we need to burn carbon fuels. Green energy doesn't provide sufficient power. Period. Atomic power is clean, a small footprint plant provides enormous amounts of electricity, and western reactor have been shown to extremely safe. No one was killed at Three Mile Island. No one was even seriously hurt. They're safer than an average highway.
Just be careful when you go near open pits. Production blasting can produce lethal fly rock. Fly rock can travel further than you think. Source I am a mining engineer. :)
We visited West Virginia around 3 weeks ago, and the mountains looked so beautiful. Can't believe anyone would do this. I really wish that I could do something about this one day, when I grow up.
They also get dirt, gravel, cement, cinder blocks, asphalt, etc. etc. I live in NE TN and there is company here that does the same thing. There are so many other things that we get from blasting these mountains. BUT, they do need to make sure that they get all the resource they can out of one mountain before they blast and after they blast. There are quite a few useful things above the ground too.
We only have 62 to 78 years anyway. All of us will be gone before things get to a really bad point. Too bad for the next few generations. I thought ahead. Nobody will be inheriting this toilet of a hateful planet from me. I produced no progeny. Someone else's children will be forced to suffer, not mine.
Not as screwed as it seems. Kids watch those videos, older people dont watch anything on youtube. In 10 15, 25 years those kids will be watching these, and when we are old we still will be. It will balance out.
It's not just Coal. Copper and other metal and mineral are mined in the same fashion. As long as you want to keep living the lives you have today, we're going to continue doing so. Most people enjoy having Electricity, Cars, Toaster and pretty much every thing else to be found in the modern home. The only way to end the mining would be to do away with those things. Live in a Cave and be cold.
That was an amazing and terribly sad story. I commend you on giving these people a voice. How people can believe industry "scientists" in an industry with such little oversight ... i will never understand. Keep up the fine work you all do at Vice.
There isn't a big problem with mountain top removal in WV. You can travel a long distance in WV and not see a coal mine. In economically depressed areas such as mingo and McDowell county coal mining is like this. Lots of places in WV have plenty of other job opportunities than coal mining and working at McDonalds, so people won't take this. So the mines in these area pay better, come with benifits, and cover up better. What you saw is mining at it's worst, and is a small problem in WV currently.
Chuck Finley Thanks for someone showing a reasonable reply, this whole video is a joke. Made entirely to keep the left wings and anti-coal goons happy.
Well as someone who cares about the environment this is good news But you'd think it would be a more intelligent approach to extract it without taking down mountains even though more people will have to be hires
Yeah they do it when the coal is so close to the surface mines just see it as it's more practical to extract it from the top of the mountain. I don't know the whole reasoning and process. It's probably cheeper and more time efficient so they do it like this as opposed to making a mine to save trees. I don't exactly know. I just know what I see. I've lived here 16 years now and I don't see this as a problem here. It is unfortunate for sure bc the mountain is somewhat destroyed, but not a huge impending danger. And if the mine follows protocol it looks great after as well. You know mining in this video is just a product of the environment and the environment is an economically depressed armpit of WV honestly. So if you're someone whose very environmentally conscious I wouldn't worry too much about this. I'd worry more about the logging industry really.
The sheer fact that Derrick Beckles also made Mostly 4 Millennials with Eric Andre and he's here, talking about blowing up mountains for coal is honestly so surreal.
I came back to this to watch it again. I still find it interesting how many here are complaining about the coal companies and petroleum companies. They speak as if they are going to live here for thousands of years when they actually barely have 65 to about 75 years. The petroleum and coal will be here long after we are gone, so will the planet. We are not immortal and will not know the difference whether people switch to something else in the future or not. If everyone is so concerned, simply do not have children and they will not be forced to live in the toxic toilet you are imagining is going to happen so soon. The problem solved. Nobody will suffer through living in this dump because of you. You will not know the difference if your children are having a bad time or not, once you die. I felt the planet was becoming a very undesirable place to live also, but not because of the environment. I felt it a bad place to live because of the majority of other humans that live in it. So, I simply chose not to have any children. Nobody will be forced to live, in this penal colony of a planet, because of me. I could force a child to live here just to have one for myself. I would just consider myself selfish and only thinking of myself, if I did so. Then when I die, I would leave my child in this mess, without me to help, while I blissfully no longer exist to watch my child's suffering nor could I care. It is impossible for me to care whether my name and genetics continue on after I die. So why should I even care about that bit of selfishness? My family tree could end, for all I will care after I die. I can not care. There will be no, "I,."
DJ Marco Andre Unfortunately, we live in a planet where might makes right. Should a normal earning person devastate a mountain range for resources, we would be immediately arrested for life. Since it is a wealthy corporation, they can get away with it. No matter what nation, what government, nor what language or people, there are dual standards for the normal earning person and the mega wealthy. It can be seen everywhere. This is why I gave up a long time ago. I am just waiting my big departure date. I should have only about 30 to 40 years left. Then I say, "Thanks for nothing, planet Earth," and my carcass is thrown in a furnace.
Indrid Cold all the wankers here are using coal and fossil fuel fired power to run the internet that was developed by the military industrial complex. Their wanking and lack of a being able to present an economically viable alternative means no one takes you seriously.
Sugarsail1 The computers are also made out of petroleum products as well. The number one source for plastics is petroleum. What about their clothing? If it has polyester, they also have petroleum. Let's say they are wearing pure cotton. The industrial machinery that spun their clothing is fueled with petroleum products, lubricated with petroleum products and manufactured using furnaces and machinery that also uses petroleum products. Petroleum is in almost everything. The Japanese car called, "Prius," has a lot of petroleum products in it. However, the worn out lithium cells will be far more toxic than any petroleum product could ever be. The list goes on and on. Humanity would return to a hunter-gatherer existence if it were not for petroleum. Billions would die from exposure or starvation and disease. Currently, T here is no getting around petroleum, nor in the foreseeable future.
Indrid Cold We need to just focus on self sufficiency and teaching others. It will keep happening as long as people keep buying. I just got my first solar powered gadget the other day. Lets do this! lol My blog can assist. www.DragonflyKingdom.com/apps/blog
i remember when i was in west virginia, i was in a biplane and i saw many miles away, is that a fire?? the pilot said they are destroying the mountains for coal. it saddens me.
Here's an idea for ya just take all the wasted food in the USA that goes to waste everyday.bring it here and compost it and you could rebuild these mountains with great top soil to put back all those trees and grassland they removed in the first place and get your mountain back.And grow some great crops well your at it.
My father was a small independent coal operator for 37 years & we much preferred to mine underground than to strip mine. Small Independents have to turn a profit & keep their employees happy as well as the folks living in the area they mine in, big coal corporations do not have too. If you look at the big coal corps you’ll see where they often show annual losses of millions of dollars, the mountaintop removal mining is only causing the industry to overproduce & weaken the demand which drops the price of coal. But big corporations can lose $ & keep getting bailed out then sell out or merge, they’ll file bankruptcy but only to deny health benefits & retirement benefits to the miners that earned them. Massey dug itself a hole, Alpha buys it, Alpha loses $ every year & goes bankrupt now there’s just a mess of failed big coal corporations in KY & WV. If locally owned Independent Coal Companies could have been given a chance to dominate the coal industry in Appalachia you wouldn’t have all of these corrupt practices, mountaintop removal on a massive scale, or any of this nonsense & chaos. But in the early 1980’s big corporations in the energy & chemical industries along with the finance & banking industry wanted to independents forced out so they teamed up. The big corporations would refuse to buy or ship the coal mined by independents forcing them to sell out to one of the big guys & the banking world refused to loan money & capital to independents. All the independent operators except for maybe a couple in each state had to sell out or face financial ruin within a year or two.
Does anyone know if they ever built anything on these leveled mountains like they said they would? I know companies like this have a habit of leaving the mess they've made behind after getting what they need.
NO, we DO NOT NEED the coal under the mountains in West Virginia. The coal that is left in West Virginia is of the poorest quality AND it ALL GETS SHIPPED TO CHINA. Where it's burnt in power stations and the smoke and the carcinogenics in it comes back to the USA. And WORST of all, all it does is make the people of West Virginia SICK, while making a few VERY rich people EVEN richer. The mountains of West Virginia are a PERFECT site for wind farms which would provide more energy, and long term jobs, to the people of West Virginia and the USA. As always, the GREED of a few outweighs the health and needs of the many. And when the state government is OWNED and run by the coal industry nothing will EVER change; and WE ALL LOSE.
Bullshit. The best Metallurgical in the world comes from WV. That specific type of coal mostly stays in the US for steel manufacturing etc. That's a fact. There are very little jobs connected to wind farms. I have been to over thirty wind farms in the US. The end price of those farms is unheard of for the little amount of power generated. Just not going to happen.
Keith Richards liver And "Bullshit" to you as well. Tell me where is the coal mined in WV going? And tell me why the Chinese are doing their very best to switch to wind and solar as fast as possible?
Wow, this reminds me of the documentary “the devil we know”. Huge company’s poisoning everything around them, and not willing to admit. Can someone tell me where this exactly takes place in West Virginia?
In situations like that, yes, it takes decades to return, but due to laws , they are "Supposed" to replace top soil and plant trees and grass, not just throw seed on clay. I've seen many local mountains that were mined out when I was young, and now it's blended in perfectly with the rest of the mountains.
my mind seemed to focus onto hendrix's _"voodoo child"_ envisioning a king-kong sized jimi hendrix, tripping out on LSD using his hands to chop down mountains
Well that's because everybody already knows about alternative resources, but it would take a whole separate documentary to cover all of them and what it would take to produce them on a large scale basis. This documentary was meant only to show the public how mining coal in west virginia is affecting the local population.
Sorry if I'm wrong but some scientists think that you cannot tap into the ZPE field. But if I am wrong then please enlighten me and tell me how this "device works".
The facts are simple, unfortunately my parents live in what I call Shitville WV, AKA Hinton. The only resource that place has is the coal, which is pathetic. Try imaging if you will being a high school graduate and getting that education moreless worthless. Each year the state of WVa exports most of it's talent to other surrounding areas where the young people can actually have a future. My dad was a coal mine contractor, he had an outfit that pressure cleaned the strip mining equipment. He was making 50 to 60 thousand a year at that. As the mining continued to decrease the need for his services also decreased. Myself I relocated to the great state of North Carolina. I love the state of NC. WVa will never get any better, between the EPA and the coal company's the state is in a downward spiral. Now Welfare is supporting the families of the state. Over 26%of the residents of WVa get some sort of government aid. The entire state is pathetic, I wish mom and dad would pick up and move to NC so mom could have a better life. When and if I lost my dad mom will move to NC. The people that live there are good people they would work hard, there's not much work up there. It would make a great really big landfill.
i agree ,a better presentation would be necessary for this guy. he could shave at least. He is in a western modern country he could follow few of it's social codes. The guy is followed by a cameraman it's quite enough in this country to be taken "seriously" i guess.
so? that's a biome not a region. and it is not even the second most diverse biome. tropical andes, tropical rainforest, coral reef - all more diverse than temperate forest. i think even the mediterranean biome is more biodiverse. point is, this is a widely inaccurate statement.
This is ignorant I'm a miner the mine once it is reclaimed turns back into forest in 20 years at the most and I promise you that you can see more bucks turkey bear and boar on reclaims than in the mountains and the grass is absolutely beautiful on a spring morning on strips some places are more grassy and they plant tree's back in alot of areas actually so this is just another report with no understanding of how we have to make a living in WV underground is fine but alot of people don't wanna go underground its dangerous but now our schools are suffering due to the colapssing coal industry
Chris Jones so when u blow up a bucket of coal .... Or it rains on that bucket where does the wind or rain take the wash? Would u wanna stand next to it in same air? Or drink water from the same ground.
Hydroseed is just rye grass in a solvent, and the thing about rye grass is it has a very short lifespan. Also rye grass in that form wont properly spread or continue to grow without some sort of general care for the soil around it.
I'm going to say this as someone who was born in West Virginia and still lives in the state. Puting hyro seed on a mountaintop removal sites is like make-up on a corpse.
Everyone hates on the reporters of vice on youtube. This guys one of my faves! I love Hamilton, David Choe, and probably Suroosh the most. They will always have people talking shit about their voices or content choice but they always have a great message to bring to the people.
Amen to that. Free energy for all....and the ruling class shut him down and slandered his name. I pray for the day when humans rise up and take back control of our world from the evil clowns who run things now....
When they are done mining do they replant ? Does it all grow back. ? Do all the mammals come back or any animals that are displaced? . is there any long term studies showing plant life coming back ? .
I live in West Virginia and often work in the areas that this doc was filmed in. This vid is out date, why was it re-posted? A follow up to the doc would be better. Don Blankenship retired almost 2 years ago. The current EPA is waging a war on coal, 29 miners died in 2010. Masey was bought by Alpha....
scary, those young kids are way more uninformed and ignorant than any of the old people. The old guys are actually super educated on it and are wise and mature about the coal industry situation
Here in Norway we use waterfalls for electricity... the only coal mine here is located at Svalbard as there are no other ways of producing power up there close to the North Pole. -You Americans on the other hand, needs coal. You need it for power. What's funny is that many of you don't even know how important that coal actually is to keep the current life standards. Mining will never cease as an important industry if we want to live in luxuary as we do now. -We don't need it, but we want it. We have to make a choice; destroy the land and live in luxuary for a short time, or save the environment and live in a little less luxuary. That said... I hate when people complain about mining. Why do they hate it so much when litterally almost everything you buy is made out of either carbon or metals? You complain about mining, then drive to the store in a car, runned on oil or electricity, (which again is produced with coal) made of metal to buy a laptop made of gold, copper, aluminum, quartz, calcite and iron. -It doesn't make sense. "It it can't be harvested, it has to be mined"
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Why would you blow up mountains?! I am from the Netherlands (below sea level, no mountains) And when I was going on vacation to Spain I saw mountains and It was just so amazing. From the day I first saw a mountain (this summer) and even now I am still in love with mountains
As far as a place to live, rough terrain sucks. So does a dead flat plane. That's why few people live in either WV or places like western Kansas, Nebraska, or Iowa. You don't have trees, rivers, lakes, or much of anything that is aesthetically attractive on the flat lands. Rugged hills aren't conducive to construction or transportation. You can't live on a 30 percent incline. At least you can't drive on it and you can barely negotiate it on foot. It's a big country but suitable land for human settlement is relatively scarce.
Sure, land below sea level sucks, too. That's your problem in the Low Countries.
Russ G you are wrong mate, we got a lot of trees rivers and lakes. The biggest river in the Rhine that start in the North Sea and ends in Germany. We got a huge lake called IJsselmeer (search it up) that is just big. And if you aren't in Amsterdam or Rotterdam you got trees everywhere. And in the east of the Netherlands they have a hilly landscape with nice old farms. But you don't know any thing about my country until you visited it😉
Brandon Lester yeah I guess you are right
Mountain no good
We are talking about an area populated by ignorant half-wits.
Ignorance at the highest level
"We're not removing the mountain were removing the mountain top!" How far do you go down? "Sometimes all the way to ground level" he is right tho theyre only removing the top n just destroying the mountain
we don't "need" what's under those mountains. we WANT it.
there are many other ways we can generate electricity if the gov has technology way more advanced than what they telling us then why not let us know, this has more to do with coal they are intentionally destroying Earth Hearth and colonizing Mars once again, using earth's resources to do it soon they will destroy natural because they iknow we can not survive with out it, and now they changing it to artificial planet, begging to wonder who are they really not human obviously
You want to reduce resource consumption? OK, are you then in favor or opposed to high levels of immigration? You can't admit a million more people to the country annually and pretend to care about the nation's environmental footprint.
here in NY, we use natural gas fired plants, there are a few coal plants left but slowly they are switching over....
natural gas is the same shit, not the same as in the same thing literaly, but the same as in the bad that does to the environment
According to comrade Trump coal is Americas future. He has removed those oppressive regulations like dumping coal ash into streams so now we can finally move back to efficient clean burning coal powered engines YAYYY.
Thank you for this story. My mother cried many tears when we heard the explosions and saw the strip mining. We knew the devestation for that time and place, and for Earth today. Keep going.
The people who comment on vice videos are so negative and ridiculous. Thanks VICE for showing the world in the most truth you can muster. They risk their lives (in other instances) to give us real journalism.
Nickolis Speetzen so you have no ideal what goes on here but yet you show up and tell us how to live😂. Fuck off bunch of idiots. Go without electricity if you don't like it.
I work the mines in WV. Vice did a horrible job
Greed is a powerful thing it can destroy thousands of years of an ecosystem.
says the guy using the electricity provided by coal to post on the internet. More powerful than greed is leftist hypocrisy and low self-awareness.
This was a great documentary, I really love this correspondent but this is the only vice doc of his I've seen, if like to see more of him
Derrick Beckles is one of Eric Andre’s writers.
@@youngsquad3868 yknow it makes a lot of sense, I really see it in his style
did we had such bad cameras in 2012?
youtube only allowed videos to such a quality. in 2008 it was 240p and in 2012 it was 480p
The videography reminds me of a cross between blair witch project and pbs.
breaks my heart to see my mountain getting blown up like this
I think this guy did an awesome job and he is way better than most of the correspondents they feature in their videos now.
Thank you guys so much for all of the work that you do. Your documentaries are fantastic I love using them in my classes.
We will look back on this era as one of ignorance and greed
And unnecessary human and animal death and suffering, you don't shit where you sleep and that's exactly what we are doing with this.
R.I.P to Larry Gibson❤️ He was such a selfless person. Forever remembered as a hero.
Great doc, the sad thing is it will never stop...
It was difficult in a way to watch, but I thank you for exposing the latest round of ecological and economic atrocities that have been visited upon my home state for nearly the whole of it's 152-year existence.
Many areas outside of the coalfield regions have experienced substantial population losses. Businesses are regularly courted with the promise of cheap labor, as West Virginians are routinely amongst the lowest paid workers in the nation. Corporations such as Wal-Mart have almost entirely decimated swaths of small businesses in some communities. Rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer and alcoholism far exceed the national average. Healthcare is piecemeal at best, and hazardous at worst.
At one time, it could at least be said that West Virginia's schools were rather good, but like so many other places in the country, eventually someone decided that money spent educating children was better spent on less important things... like gilding the capitol dome with gold leaf. I have personally driven around the capitol grounds, which were comically riddled with potholes in some places less than 20 years ago. But that dome still looks nice, so who cares, right?
The history of politics in West Virginia could be considered a study in the evolution of political corruption. Much of that corruption is centered around the coal industry, and some timber concerns are also beginning to match coal in it's aggressiveness and greed. There is no greater symbol of our country gone wrong than my home state.
I have an MSc in Geology and a BSc in Geophysics. About slurry injection: There has long been a way to prevent groundwater contamination, but I don't see it in use in wastewater injection monitoring in hydraulic fracturing nor in coal slurry injection. You do two things: you do real-time microseismic monitoring and you also put special markers in place inside the slurry. The first lets you see how the earth "cracks" under the force of the slurry being pumped down. If you know where your groundwater reservoirs are, you can stop the operation before any slurry-filled fractures touches it. How will this help? Well, a 1/4-mile radius described in the video does not prevent anything, as that is measured on surface, with no idea on how close the contaminates can get to the underground reservoirs below surface.The second lets you have scientific proof that the materials from the slurry have indeed come out of the community's wells. If these two precautions would be put in place, all your problems would be solved.
Thank you for producing this. I believe that Chris Hedges has also shed a light on this.
The interview with the Coal lobbyist taking place right outside the office of the state senator was a fantastic touch. Not sure if you planned it, but it was a powerful image.
leave the dam hills alone !!!
Exactly!!!!
Keep up the great work, Derrick. You're a fine journalist. Kudos to the entire crew.
No one would know about this if vice didn't do a report on it. Props to them for shining light on what's left in the dark
I was in West Virginia for 3 months when I was a kid and saw this. It is completely devastating to the area. Anyone who saw what they did would be pissed.
Couple of points I'd like to make.
1. Everything that is not grown or made chemically must be mined. We used to understand that. Now so many people live so far removed from where things are produced - like energy, clean water, raw materials - they've forgotten where it comes from. They live in a bubble where they expect everything to be available for their homes, clean water to come from their taps, and metals and minerals to be available for their goods without considering those things require power plants and fuels and mines and reservoirs.
2. There are tens of thousands of mountains. We mine the occasional mountain for minerals or fuels.
3. If we don't want to build nuclear power plants, then we need to burn carbon fuels. Green energy doesn't provide sufficient power. Period.
Atomic power is clean, a small footprint plant provides enormous amounts of electricity, and western reactor have been shown to extremely safe. No one was killed at Three Mile Island. No one was even seriously hurt. They're safer than an average highway.
Then why blow off a mountain top if there are more efficient and safer why haven't we done so
Open face and open pit mining is safer and easier than tunnel mining.
i love you VICE!!!! you always show me what is going on in this world that i don't know about
No, we don't need renewable energy, we are just fine with coal. lololol. Americans will not cease to amaze me.
Another great video Vice. Thank you for making this and showing us what is going on in West Virginia to get us our coal.
Just be careful when you go near open pits. Production blasting can produce lethal fly rock. Fly rock can travel further than you think. Source I am a mining engineer. :)
Gotta love face blasts as well.
Sorry, face bursts; not face blasts.
We visited West Virginia around 3 weeks ago, and the mountains looked so beautiful. Can't believe anyone would do this. I really wish that I could do something about this one day, when I grow up.
wtf 480p
They also get dirt, gravel, cement, cinder blocks, asphalt, etc. etc.
I live in NE TN and there is company here that does the same thing. There are so many other things that we get from blasting these mountains. BUT, they do need to make sure that they get all the resource they can out of one mountain before they blast and after they blast. There are quite a few useful things above the ground too.
Yeah but the environment gets completely destroyed for thousands of years
This has 114,912 views...... Justin Bieber video gets millions in one day.
We are so screwed as a civilization.
We only have 62 to 78 years anyway. All of us will be gone before things get to a really bad point. Too bad for the next few generations. I thought ahead. Nobody will be inheriting this toilet of a hateful planet from me. I produced no progeny. Someone else's children will be forced to suffer, not mine.
Not as screwed as it seems. Kids watch those videos, older people dont watch anything on youtube. In 10 15, 25 years those kids will be watching these, and when we are old we still will be. It will balance out.
@Kim Jong-un
Aww
It's not just Coal. Copper and other metal and mineral are mined in the same fashion. As long as you want to keep living the lives you have today, we're going to continue doing so. Most people enjoy having Electricity, Cars, Toaster and pretty much every thing else to be found in the modern home. The only way to end the mining would be to do away with those things. Live in a Cave and be cold.
5:05 - what does this guy do, comb his hair with a spoon ?
Dave Hansen Its the lisa simpson look. You use an egg. Then you don't wash it ...Ever!
+Dave Hansen He used the green toilet paper on his hair just once.
Great narration, like this one.
"Yeah, the money's great" he says, standing on the porch of his 1973 single wide....
glad you think it's all worth it.
What happend with the HD ?
Was this filmed with a potato?
yes, they stole it from my garden
That was an amazing and terribly sad story. I commend you on giving these people a voice. How people can believe industry "scientists" in an industry with such little oversight ... i will never understand. Keep up the fine work you all do at Vice.
There isn't a big problem with mountain top removal in WV. You can travel a long distance in WV and not see a coal mine. In economically depressed areas such as mingo and McDowell county coal mining is like this. Lots of places in WV have plenty of other job opportunities than coal mining and working at McDonalds, so people won't take this. So the mines in these area pay better, come with benifits, and cover up better. What you saw is mining at it's worst, and is a small problem in WV currently.
Chuck Finley Thanks for someone showing a reasonable reply, this whole video is a joke. Made entirely to keep the left wings and anti-coal goons happy.
Well as someone who cares about the environment this is good news
But you'd think it would be a more intelligent approach to extract it without taking down mountains even though more people will have to be hires
Yeah they do it when the coal is so close to the surface mines just see it as it's more practical to extract it from the top of the mountain. I don't know the whole reasoning and process. It's probably cheeper and more time efficient so they do it like this as opposed to making a mine to save trees. I don't exactly know. I just know what I see. I've lived here 16 years now and I don't see this as a problem here. It is unfortunate for sure bc the mountain is somewhat destroyed, but not a huge impending danger. And if the mine follows protocol it looks great after as well. You know mining in this video is just a product of the environment and the environment is an economically depressed armpit of WV honestly. So if you're someone whose very environmentally conscious I wouldn't worry too much about this. I'd worry more about the logging industry really.
Why is WV such a poor state?
The sheer fact that Derrick Beckles also made Mostly 4 Millennials with Eric Andre and he's here, talking about blowing up mountains for coal is honestly so surreal.
I came back to this to watch it again. I still find it interesting how many here are complaining about the coal companies and petroleum companies. They speak as if they are going to live here for thousands of years when they actually barely have 65 to about 75 years. The petroleum and coal will be here long after we are gone, so will the planet. We are not immortal and will not know the difference whether people switch to something else in the future or not. If everyone is so concerned, simply do not have children and they will not be forced to live in the toxic toilet you are imagining is going to happen so soon. The problem solved.
Nobody will suffer through living in this dump because of you. You will not know the difference if your children are having a bad time or not, once you die. I felt the planet was becoming a very undesirable place to live also, but not because of the environment. I felt it a bad place to live because of the majority of other humans that live in it. So, I simply chose not to have any children. Nobody will be forced to live, in this penal colony of a planet, because of me. I could force a child to live here just to have one for myself. I would just consider myself selfish and only thinking of myself, if I did so. Then when I die, I would leave my child in this mess, without me to help, while I blissfully no longer exist to watch my child's suffering nor could I care. It is impossible for me to care whether my name and genetics continue on after I die. So why should I even care about that bit of selfishness? My family tree could end, for all I will care after I die. I can not care. There will be no, "I,."
Indrid Cold We re not immortal but we are eternal so there are upcoming unforeseen consequences to participating in the destruction of the planet.
DJ Marco Andre Unfortunately, we live in a planet where might makes right. Should a normal earning person devastate a mountain range for resources, we would be immediately arrested for life. Since it is a wealthy corporation, they can get away with it. No matter what nation, what government, nor what language or people, there are dual standards for the normal earning person and the mega wealthy. It can be seen everywhere. This is why I gave up a long time ago. I am just waiting my big departure date. I should have only about 30 to 40 years left. Then I say, "Thanks for nothing, planet Earth," and my carcass is thrown in a furnace.
Indrid Cold all the wankers here are using coal and fossil fuel fired power to run the internet that was developed by the military industrial complex. Their wanking and lack of a being able to present an economically viable alternative means no one takes you seriously.
Sugarsail1 The computers are also made out of petroleum products as well. The number one source for plastics is petroleum. What about their clothing? If it has polyester, they also have petroleum. Let's say they are wearing pure cotton. The industrial machinery that spun their clothing is fueled with petroleum products, lubricated with petroleum products and manufactured using furnaces and machinery that also uses petroleum products. Petroleum is in almost everything. The Japanese car called, "Prius," has a lot of petroleum products in it. However, the worn out lithium cells will be far more toxic than any petroleum product could ever be.
The list goes on and on. Humanity would return to a hunter-gatherer existence if it were not for petroleum. Billions would die from exposure or starvation and disease. Currently, T here is no getting around petroleum, nor in the foreseeable future.
Indrid Cold We need to just focus on self sufficiency and teaching others. It will keep happening as long as people keep buying. I just got my first solar powered gadget the other day. Lets do this! lol My blog can assist. www.DragonflyKingdom.com/apps/blog
Wow....... another HUGE eye opener. Thanks Vice.
I can't take this dude serious
.
I'm sure those were his girlfriend's
10:30 never in the history of mankind has there been a truer statement than that..
We need coal and this is the best way to get it.
really liked this presenter!!! thanks for sharing this with the world.
If you went out and rounded up them Ceo's Then you'd be an American patriot, A hero, And not a lowly coal miner!
i remember when i was in west virginia, i was in a biplane and i saw many miles away, is that a fire?? the pilot said they are destroying the mountains for coal. it saddens me.
Here's an idea for ya just take all the wasted food in the USA that goes to waste everyday.bring it here and compost it and you could rebuild these mountains with great top soil to put back all those trees and grassland they removed in the first place and get your mountain back.And grow some great crops well your at it.
one of the best on vice
worst vice expose ive ever seen
@vice What cameras are you guys using?
My father was a small independent coal operator for 37 years & we much preferred to mine underground than to strip mine. Small Independents have to turn a profit & keep their employees happy as well as the folks living in the area they mine in, big coal corporations do not have too. If you look at the big coal corps you’ll see where they often show annual losses of millions of dollars, the mountaintop removal mining is only causing the industry to overproduce & weaken the demand which drops the price of coal. But big corporations can lose $ & keep getting bailed out then sell out or merge, they’ll file bankruptcy but only to deny health benefits & retirement benefits to the miners that earned them. Massey dug itself a hole, Alpha buys it, Alpha loses $ every year & goes bankrupt now there’s just a mess of failed big coal corporations in KY & WV. If locally owned Independent Coal Companies could have been given a chance to dominate the coal industry in Appalachia you wouldn’t have all of these corrupt practices, mountaintop removal on a massive scale, or any of this nonsense & chaos. But in the early 1980’s big corporations in the energy & chemical industries along with the finance & banking industry wanted to independents forced out so they teamed up. The big corporations would refuse to buy or ship the coal mined by independents forcing them to sell out to one of the big guys & the banking world refused to loan money & capital to independents. All the independent operators except for maybe a couple in each state had to sell out or face financial ruin within a year or two.
nothing beats vice docs
Does anyone know if they ever built anything on these leveled mountains like they said they would? I know companies like this have a habit of leaving the mess they've made behind after getting what they need.
Awesome doc! Thnx Vice.
Vice should revisit this place, to see the change that happened in a year.
NO, we DO NOT NEED the coal under the mountains in West Virginia.
The coal that is left in West Virginia is of the poorest quality AND it ALL GETS SHIPPED TO CHINA. Where it's burnt in power stations and the smoke and the carcinogenics in it comes back to the USA.
And WORST of all, all it does is make the people of West Virginia SICK, while making a few VERY rich people EVEN richer.
The mountains of West Virginia are a PERFECT site for wind farms which would provide more energy, and long term jobs, to the people of West Virginia and the USA.
As always, the GREED of a few outweighs the health and needs of the many.
And when the state government is OWNED and run by the coal industry nothing will EVER change; and WE ALL LOSE.
Bullshit. The best Metallurgical in the world comes from WV. That specific type of coal mostly stays in the US for steel manufacturing etc. That's a fact. There are very little jobs connected to wind farms. I have been to over thirty wind farms in the US. The end price of those farms is unheard of for the little amount of power generated. Just not going to happen.
Keith Richards liver And "Bullshit" to you as well. Tell me where is the coal mined in WV going? And tell me why the Chinese are doing their very best to switch to wind and solar as fast as possible?
Wow, this reminds me of the documentary “the devil we know”. Huge company’s poisoning everything around them, and not willing to admit. Can someone tell me where this exactly takes place in West Virginia?
In situations like that, yes, it takes decades to return, but due to laws , they are "Supposed" to replace top soil and plant trees and grass, not just throw seed on clay.
I've seen many local mountains that were mined out when I was young, and now it's blended in perfectly with the rest of the mountains.
Great video and insight
my mind seemed to focus onto hendrix's _"voodoo child"_ envisioning a king-kong sized jimi hendrix, tripping out on LSD using his hands to chop down mountains
God I love Vice. I wish more people watched and educated themselvse with this kind of stuff.
The really sad part is, this kind of mining destroys the soil plain, nothing grows again.
Well that's because everybody already knows about alternative resources, but it would take a whole separate documentary to cover all of them and what it would take to produce them on a large scale basis. This documentary was meant only to show the public how mining coal in west virginia is affecting the local population.
Sorry if I'm wrong but some scientists think that you cannot tap into the ZPE field. But if I am wrong then please enlighten me and tell me how this "device works".
One mountain = millions of years
Dynamite = 30 seconds
The facts are simple, unfortunately my parents live in what I call Shitville WV, AKA Hinton. The only resource that place has is the coal, which is pathetic. Try imaging if you will being a high school graduate and getting that education moreless worthless. Each year the state of WVa exports most of it's talent to other surrounding areas where the young people can actually have a future. My dad was a coal mine contractor, he had an outfit that pressure cleaned the strip mining equipment. He was making 50 to 60 thousand a year at that. As the mining continued to decrease the need for his services also decreased. Myself I relocated to the great state of North Carolina. I love the state of NC. WVa will never get any better, between the EPA and the coal company's the state is in a downward spiral. Now Welfare is supporting the families of the state. Over 26%of the residents of WVa get some sort of government aid. The entire state is pathetic, I wish mom and dad would pick up and move to NC so mom could have a better life. When and if I lost my dad mom will move to NC. The people that live there are good people they would work hard, there's not much work up there. It would make a great really big landfill.
what's you's going to do when the coil runs out and the oil.
this needs more exposure and this needs to stop
there are still several methods strip mining is just a way to get it quick, but there are still several sub surface mines.
"as we remove a few mountain tops, new ones will arise" - me
480p? ahhhh you're killing me, Vice.
WOW. Do a follow up or something on this!
"Sometimes, it's the ground level." Respect Mama, cause some lessons are hard.
i agree ,a better presentation would be necessary for this guy.
he could shave at least.
He is in a western modern country he could follow few of it's social codes.
The guy is followed by a cameraman it's quite enough in this country to be taken "seriously" i guess.
2nd most biodiverse region in the world? uhhh, might wanna fact check that one buddy
so? that's a biome not a region. and it is not even the second most diverse biome. tropical andes, tropical rainforest, coral reef - all more diverse than temperate forest. i think even the mediterranean biome is more biodiverse. point is, this is a widely inaccurate statement.
He is accurate pal...
Good for you! Have a good time rest of your life.
Thank you, VICE, again.
No problem
This is ignorant I'm a miner the mine once it is reclaimed turns back into forest in 20 years at the most and I promise you that you can see more bucks turkey bear and boar on reclaims than in the mountains and the grass is absolutely beautiful on a spring morning on strips some places are more grassy and they plant tree's back in alot of areas actually so this is just another report with no understanding of how we have to make a living in WV underground is fine but alot of people don't wanna go underground its dangerous but now our schools are suffering due to the colapssing coal industry
Chris Jones so when u blow up a bucket of coal .... Or it rains on that bucket where does the wind or rain take the wash? Would u wanna stand next to it in same air? Or drink water from the same ground.
Hydroseed is just rye grass in a solvent, and the thing about rye grass is it has a very short lifespan. Also rye grass in that form wont properly spread or continue to grow without some sort of general care for the soil around it.
I'm going to say this as someone who was born in West Virginia and still lives in the state. Puting hyro seed on a mountaintop removal sites is like make-up on a corpse.
How come destroying mountains was a tactic not used in Afghanistan?
Man, that old guy in the end of the video, I feel bad for him :'(
GREED IS BAD , IT ALWAYS WAS AND IT ALWAYS WILL BE !
2:52 you can tell he practiced those lines to justify his greed and indifference.
Everyone hates on the reporters of vice on youtube. This guys one of my faves! I love Hamilton, David Choe, and probably Suroosh the most. They will always have people talking shit about their voices or content choice but they always have a great message to bring to the people.
love the sarcasm of this guy 6:36
Only 480p? :(
At Wal-Mart, I saw a Newsweek or Time cover that was edifying Edison, and I wanted to shout "Fuck Edison! Tesla's the man we need!"
Amen to that. Free energy for all....and the ruling class shut him down and slandered his name. I pray for the day when humans rise up and take back control of our world from the evil clowns who run things now....
This is exactly why this country needs to adopt renewable energies now. Coal workers can transition to renewable energy jobs too.
I agree re: techniques. Sadly, Safety is commonly used as an excuse to open cut.
When they are done mining do they replant ? Does it all grow back. ? Do all the mammals come back or any animals that are displaced? . is there any long term studies showing plant life coming back ? .
I live in West Virginia and often work in the areas that this doc was filmed in. This vid is out date, why was it re-posted? A follow up to the doc would be better. Don Blankenship retired almost 2 years ago. The current EPA is waging a war on coal, 29 miners died in 2010. Masey was bought by Alpha....
scary, those young kids are way more uninformed and ignorant than any of the old people. The old guys are actually super educated on it and are wise and mature about the coal industry situation
480p doesn't do this video justice.
Here in Norway we use waterfalls for electricity... the only coal mine here is located at Svalbard as there are no other ways of producing power up there close to the North Pole. -You Americans on the other hand, needs coal. You need it for power. What's funny is that many of you don't even know how important that coal actually is to keep the current life standards.
Mining will never cease as an important industry if we want to live in luxuary as we do now. -We don't need it, but we want it. We have to make a choice; destroy the land and live in luxuary for a short time, or save the environment and live in a little less luxuary.
That said... I hate when people complain about mining. Why do they hate it so much when litterally almost everything you buy is made out of either carbon or metals? You complain about mining, then drive to the store in a car, runned on oil or electricity, (which again is produced with coal) made of metal to buy a laptop made of gold, copper, aluminum, quartz, calcite and iron. -It doesn't make sense.
"It it can't be harvested, it has to be mined"
Could you elaborate?
That last dude was boomhauer in 50 years.
the cost/efficient factor highly outweighs the environmental one