They're all worth watching but I liked that this video pointed out that mining has been going on in the region for many years. It's the new mining methods that threaten to destroy the landscape and the future of the region like never before. This isn't your grandfather's coal mine.
The coal industry is doing their best to convince us that proposed gasification and carbon capture plants will be clean. But their new mining methods do more damage and employ fewer workers than ever.
Kentucky is facing the same issues as Illinois. The promoters of area coal gasification plants brag that they'll use Illinois coal. But they don't mention the expansion of destructive longwall mining. What will rural central Illinois do when the coal companies leave town and they've destroyed the farmland that sustained the regional economy for over 100 years?
Springfield doesn't get many chances to hear straight talk about the coal industry, but that's what you'll get from author Jeff Biggers this Thursday, 2/18, 7:00pm, City Nights Theater at Capital City Bar & Grill, 3149 S. Dirksen Pkwy, Springfield. It's part of a tour to promote his new book, "Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland."
The Daily Iowan published a review today.
Investigative journalist Jeff Biggers is not a big fan of coal. Having his family’s ancestral home of Eagle Creek, Ill., razed to make way for coal production, Biggers found no other way to illustrate his frustration than to do what he does best — tell the story.
Biggers has written three critically acclaimed books, and his latest memoir, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Midwest, reveals not only the dirty past of coal mining but also the story of his family...
A mix of part-memoir, part-investigative history, Reckoning at Eagle Creek takes a look back at 200 years of exploitation, slavery, and economic devastation. Biggers concludes that the myth of clean coal as a renewable energy is just that, a myth.
“Essentially from the cradle to the grave, coal is dirty,” he said.
I haven't seen anything in the online State Journal-Register. Could someone let me know if they put something in the print edition? The local press is interested in the coal industry, aren't they?