The Mountain, thoughts

THOUGHTS AFTER LISTENING TO STEVE EARLE’S “THE MOUNTAIN”

11.25.12

I wasn’t born on this mountain, but I almost died here once, and plan on completing the job.  I was reborn here, if that is any comfort, and I do intend on dying here, dying here while watching our morals descend past our need for fuel.  Men have long plumbed the mountains for energy.  Now, however, it has reached the extreme of cost / benefit :  remove the mountain, if needed, to get the energy.  Damn and blast the community for the dollars the mountain holds. 

I have flown the skies of the South Cumberland, surveying the pillage of hardwoods, or the ill placed white pine.  I have lived among the mountains and the mountain folk of West Virginia, East Tennessee, and the Cumberland, watched, studied, and admired their natural heritage, their basic civil and human rights, their spiritual connection to a place, developed over generations, washed away with the ringing of a cash register.

Most don’t know it, or recognize it at least, that not too long ago, many were killed for their connection to their community and their place to spite the company man’s blood lust.  That’s right, over the last one hundred years, many have died in the crosshairs of the Pinkertons, Wells Fargo agents, over energy. 

Basically, it boiled down to coal vs the company store at that point.  When the scales tipped toward something resembling modern day Palestine, with workers overtly enslaved to the script of the boss man, revolt was quick to follow.  Interestingly, the first to pull their piece was the Pinkerton, in the generic. 

The company men leveled water cooled .50 cal. machine guns, produce from or for WW I, against his own countrymen.  These are stories I dread telling my 9 year old, though I know one day, soon, I must.  Hundreds were killed.  Throw in the Mormons, the tally would crest multiple thousands.  This doesn’t even consider the malice we vented on the indigenous people of our great land.

We think our world so stable, so sophisticated that such could never happen again.  Let us, for example, take the mountain top removal situation.  One simple question:  if an outsider came into your community, displaced millions of cubic yards of your surrounding landscape, would you react?  What if these displacements ruined homesteads that had been in place since the frontier stood locally?  What if these displacements resulted in entire coves or watersheds being engulfed in toxic effluent?  And the outsider had nothing to say for himself other than it was profitable?  Methinks you might blow a gasket.

Mining has never been a pretty opportunity.  In the most stable of situations, entire towns lived by the script, indebted to the company store, and spent their lives underground only to expend their lives with the consequences of black lung and cave ins.

Today, things are more sophisticated.  Mining firms actually try to “do right” in cleanup.  I have seen some top notch efforts first hand.  The rub is every calorie of energy today is worth far more than it was a decade ago, hence the lengths a corporate body (not a human body, i.e. citizens united) will go to in the effort of extracting that calorie, consequences be damned.

The current “tar sands” debate is part and parcel of this new frontier.  Without the free flowing wells and derricks of yore, here is a substance which can render calories, despite how many calories go into the process.  The environmental effects are collateral damage, a cost of doing business. 

“Fracking” presents the same pitfalls.  Where have there been fracking operations where there haven’t been flaming faucets?  I know, that’s extreme, but it seems to me inevitable that fracturing layers of geological formations may allow effluent to flow from one to another, say from a drill site to your water table. 

This all boils down to an overarching question which no one seems to be asking:  AT WHAT COST?  Tomatoes in December, a perfectly groomed lawn, constant expansion of the GDP…does it ever end?  Humans can only go so far before they resolve to deal with the situation without the overburden of law and order.

I’m not calling for armed revolt, far from it, at least right now.  What I do want to see, in my lifetime, is a thorough assessment of what shit costs.  What does it cost for me to have constant access to “fresh” water thru my tap, without government subsidies, recognizing the natural elements which can positively affect that system?  What does a gallon of gas, a product containing some formulation of corn, or an hour of lights for my home cost?

Back to the premise – commodity capitalization leading to outright violence.  The coal miner of old, the in the mine at 8 or 10 years old until he couldn’t breathe, enslaved to the company store for food, shelter, everything, no longer exists in my estimation (I may be dead wrong).  

Again, things are more sophisticated – the workers are better trained, better paid, better cared for, and hence more oblivious to the circumstances at hand.  Granted, that is a rough generalization, but it is basic truth.  If you are operating a multi-million dollar earth moving machine, vs pick and shovel in a mine shaft, you are better off than your predecessors.  Now, it is just harder to see.

Dad isn’t out of work at 40 something due to black lung, the kids are going to college, hell, there’s 401ks and health care including dental.  But at what cost?  Acquiescing to a fog over one’s innate sense of right and wrong seems to be the first casualty.  To those who pick up the peaceful resistance lies a path of red tape, bureaucracy, community resistance and corporate bs.

What is this bs. of which I speak?  How about a positive cash flow, or a quarterly profit, on an investment statement.  Most would see, “OH!!  XYZ Corp. made a huge profit last quarter / year!!  Gotta keep that one.”  So who is XYZ Corp.?   Who is anyone in this acronym landscape?  XYZ is owned by three companies, X,Y, and Z who are in turn owned  by ABC LLC.  Who are in turn owned by…

Bottom line, the investor who glances thru their portfolio noting who makes the greatest profit, and nothing else, furthers the worst behaviors we as a nation face:  natural resource depletion, offshore banking, exporting jobs, you name it..

The traditional working man (or woman, or child) of the past stepped back, said enough, and did something about it.  I have known these people in East Tennessee in the 90s and Nashville in 2011.  We as a nation need to take up the cause.  Do SOMETHING before we are faced with Pinkertons and machine guns.

Please, wake up people.