Follow the Coal Money.org « It’s Getting Hot In Here

For some depressing but fascinating fun today, hop on over to www.followthecoalmoney.org. This handy tool was built with folks from www.ILoveMountains.org and Oil Change International.

I was unsurprised to see my rep, Shelly “I love war and De-Capitating Mountains for Capitalism” Capito has some hefty contributions from the Coal Industry:

Representative Shelley Capito (R-WV02) Rep. Shelley Capito (R-WV02)
Accepted $263,290 from the coal industry since 2000. $157,940 of those dollars were from industry PACS.

But none compared to Rick “Somebody’s got to be America’s biggest Coal Whore” Boucher:

Representative Frederick Boucher (D-VA09) Rep. Frederick Boucher (D-VA09)
Accepted $532,894 from the coal industry since 2000. $418,380 of those dollars were from industry PACS.

I reckon we’re going to have a hard time passing Global Warming legislation that doesn’t pander to the coal industry with massive coal incentives unless we can clean up our politics a little bit. As the folks at I love Mountains say: The coal industry is doing more than polluting our air and destroying our mountain landscapes. It’s also dirtying our political process.

About

Dana works on the national council of the Student Environmental Action Coalition in Charleston, WV Visit www.seac.org. She likes to make papier mache stuff with five year olds. She likes mountains that haven't been blown all to hell. She likes communities that fight back when their mountains have been blown all to hell. She doesn't like coal, or blowing up mountains. She especially doesn't like (not so) Clean Coal (no such thing) and thinks Carbon Sequestration is a bad deal for communities and kids. And really, who else matters?