Quote of the Day: Kentucky Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo on Mountaintop Removal

Is he in the pocket of the coal industry or what ...

More idiotic words have never been spoken...

It does sound like a pretty stupid comment to make. We need flat places...lol...is he related to Dan Quayle?

Unstable mines on the top of remote mountains are a great place to build hospitals!!!

Clearly he's a moron.

that may be the dumbest quote of the year.

So... Mountaintop removal = good for business? How can that be, when it is bad for public health and the environment? Or is business health =/= public health or environmental health?

How do they justify the alteration of microclimate and change of the course of rivers, the acidification of the atmosphere and water, etc? Oh, wait. They get LOTS OF MONEY!

"We can not have economic expansion without places to do things and part of mountain top removal is for places like hospitals, airports and different type of merchants."

Because we all need hospitals and airports right on top of coal mining facilities, right?. Isn't that where you want to start a new town?

I wish people like this would keep the stupid to themselves. There is plenty of other spaces for economical expansion else where, why do you have to ruin perfectly good mountains?

..."I want us to promote mountain top removal, because we need flat land. "

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?! This country has an abundance of this recource out in the west, midwest, and eastern coastal plain. Remove the appalachian mountains and you remove the main surface water creating recource for the entire eastern seaboard. How stupid is this guy?

Clearly Mongiardo had to wear a helmet for most of his childhood to protect his soft, squishy head...this obsession with personal safety continued well into his adult life, hence his fear of all things pointy.

I'm sure West & Middle Kentucky will be pleased to know that their flatness is such an economic boon to the state.

As someone who has lived in the coal fields I agree that sometime you need to cut and fill to build a hospital, airport, school or Wal Mart. In those instances if you are careful and take water quality and other environmental issues into account I really don't have a problem with it. However the number of mountain removals and their remote locations in most cases can't be justification for the mining that is currently taking place. The problem is first you need to have a reason to make the cut. Not cut and then find a reason.

"We don’t want to defend mountain top removal, but I want us to promote mountain top removal"

el oh el.

"Mountain in your backyard too unattractive and pointy? Blocking your view of the city skyline? Call MongiardoCorp for all your mountaintop removal needs! (*MongiardoCorp keeps your prices low by taking those pesky mineral rights too. You don't need those. Seriously.)"

Where's a grassy knoll when you need one.

No mountains should be killed or injured in the making of our destiny. Governor Mongiardo, if you really did make this comment, you are a moron of staggering proportion. How in Gods name did you get elected to office?

The reality is stated well in above comments: Those pesky mountains are part of the environmental ecosystem which keep us all alive. Coal, unfortunately, is a fossil fuel and is not a good choice as it once was.
Burning coal is a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxics. In an average year, a typical coal plant generates:

* 3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary human cause of global warming--as much carbon dioxide as cutting down 161 million trees.

* 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid rain that damages forests, lakes, and buildings, and forms small airborne particles that can penetrate deep into lungs.

* 500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility.

* 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), as much as would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs, burning through lung tissue making people more susceptible to respiratory illness.....and so much more.

Try geothermal, wind, solar, magma and nuclear: all better options.

Please, stop chewing up our precious, irreplaceable mountains before you cause irreparable environmental damage and your citizens suffer the consequences of that dreadful planetary destruction and clean up your state?

Thanks,
Dave
notes from the Union of Concerned Scientists UCSUSA.org

Being from eastern Kentucky myself with family in coal mining I can't say enough of how horrible strip mining is.

The devastation is incredible, the forever lost landscape is can't ever be put back and reclamation efforts are usually limited to stopping as much erosion and acid runoff as possible.

The extractive industry takes major profits and leave little behind and not even the complaint that at least mining creates jobs in an impoverished area falls flat as the strip mining system uses equipment that requires far fewer workers to get the coal.

The supposed benefit of creating flat land sounds very silly to me as the location of coal deposits rarely lead to strip mines being handy to populated places. I remember working on only one site out of dozens where homes were built or the strip mined land put to use.

The Lt. Governor is most likely in the thrall of the coal companies and nothing a Frankfort politician says about coal should be trusted.

well, once all the coal is burned, and in our lungs, we will need all the hospitals we can get!!

Does anyone know how the energy balance works for this offensively distructive method of mining?
It must take huge amounts of fuel to power the giant machinery used in such a process? I can't quite believe that it would balance or even favour the coal production!

I'd be interested in the results!

I appreciate that Americans are not all like Daniel Mongiardo, but he clearly displays the type of behaviour that makes most Europeans shake their heads and lump you all together. It is obviously tragic that such people get to wield power over our environment - use your voice, vote them out.