It’s not every day you get a chance to confront some of the most downright bad people in the world. We talk about these evil-doers all the time, largely in euphemisms: we call them fossil fuel lobbyists and big polluters. We reference them passively by capitalizing the words “Dirty Coal”. While Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship (who has been described as nothing less than an Evil Bastard) has faced a quite a lot of public scrutiny recently, we generally don’t know or think much about the names and faces of those who make daily decisions to put their companies’ profits over people and the planet.
But every once in a while, an opportunity arises to confront the bad guys, face to face.
Yesterday, Congressman Ed Markey held a hearing in his Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming titled “The Role of Coal in a New Energy Age.” Three coal company executives and the president of a coal mining association testified. Grateful to Chairman Markey for dragging these crooks out into the open, our crew of activists decided we couldn’t let this one pass us by.
There’s something really tantalizing about an opportunity to confront so much evil and so much power. But how to stick it to these guys (yes, all guys in this case) in just a brief public moment of protest? How to capture all the complexity – the blowing up of mountains, polluting of streams, melting glaciers, droughts, conflicts over resources and refugees? How to honor the lives of 29 miners lost in a devastating West Virginia mine disaster just over a week ago? Continue reading ‘Face to Face with the Dirty Coal CEOs’
