Photo: Maarten Inghels
Years ago, I found this cobblestone on the street in Brussels with the golden inscription “I USED TO BE A MOUNTAIN.” Like a speech bubble rising from a choked rock. After all these years, I still haven’t been able to find out who made it—there’s no record of it anywhere as a listed artwork. I see it now as a poetic intervention by an anonymous city dweller.
Yeah, mountain top strip mining is a thing but it’s done for coal, mainly. It is horrific.
The worst part is coal is such a terrible fuel there’s no good reason to keep doing it. We’ve already mined most of the accessible coal that can be easily mined, and we have better fuels now that burn cleaner and more easily than coal, and even for the odd one-off usecase where coal is the best option we have modern alternatives that contain no coal and burn similarly.
Killing coal is one of the easiest wins Humanity could achieve because it’s entirely outmoded but moneyed interests keep it on life support for no reason other than money