In mid-May, Obama’s EPA cleared 42 of 48 new mountaintop removal mining permits.

In the process, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “Mining companies are clear cutting thousands of acres of some of the world’s most biologically diverse forests. They’re filling local rivers and streams with blasted debris, polluting drinking water with toxic waste and sacrificing the safety and sanctity of countless communities.”

Here is a satellite collage of Boone and Logan Counties, West Virginia, in the Reagan years compared with the same area as the tanks rolled into Baghdad two decades later:

The intrepid Morgan Spurlock, by the way, spends 30 Days as a coal miner, and you can watch a clip addressing mountain top removal here.

And if you want to find your own electric connection to mountain top removal, here is a useful tool.

(I typed in my own downtown L.A. zip code and found that yes, indeed, I am complicit in the mountaintop removal process as a customer of the Los Angeles DWP, which is the the biggest customer of Intermountain Power Agency, which purchases coal from companies engaged in mountaintop removal mining.)