Driving to Pueblo for politics this week, I passed a half-dozen mile-long coal trains in each direction, heading down the Front Range to deliver Colorado and Wyoming fuel to hungry power stations.
Coal seems largely invisible to city-dwellers in Colorado, but it shouldn’t be. Passage of the Clean Air-Clean Jobs bill settled one issue — Colorado’s power plants will be pushed toward burning natural gas instead of coal. But it ignited another controversy, about the government choosing sides and hurting coal-mining jobs in central Colorado.
Meanwhile, our coal and more from the huge strip mines in Wyoming rumbles through our back yards on the way to other controversies over pollution and costs, in states from Arizona to Georgia.
“Burning the Future: Coal in America” is a documentary that will make you stop and think about those coal trains as they lumber by. It’s from a decidedly environmentalist point of view, but one worth contemplating in a political world guaranteed to bring more debates about global warming, clean jobs and the price of green energy.
You’ll learn more about West Virginia’s troubles than you thought you ever wanted to know. “Burning the Future” focuses on the back yards and “hollers” of West Virginia coal country, where entire mountains are being scraped off and dumped into nearby creek drainages in search of cheaper coal seams. Imagine Mount Evans getting lopped off and leveled to the height of the surrounding hills, and you’ll get an idea of the anger and the ecological impact on West Virginia.
The scenes are disturbing and poignant. Yet the filmmakers do offer some gestures to the local economy, showing a highly personal debate at a school that pits good jobs against good stewardship of the land.
You and your teenagers, whether they be dedicated green activists or budding chief executives, will never look at a mountain the same way again.
Burning the Future: Coal in America
Not rated: Some language and mature subject matter.
Best suited for: Teenagers interested in global warming, environmental activism and reconciling extraction jobs with ecology.
