Clara, Jeff, Welcome to the Lake.

Hi Bev and the Lake. Thanks for having me.

Unfortunately, Bill Haney, our fearless director couldn’t join us tonight, so it’s just me.

Hello everyone, and hello to Clara. Bill Haney will not be able to join us, due to a family emergency.

Please read the intro to the great new film, Last Mountain, and let’s start chatting with producer, author and journalist Clara Bingham

Wonderful job, Clara, you must be exhausted, having toured the country these last days, including a hike to Blair Mountain!

Hi Jeff, It’s great to meet you live on line. I’m a huge fan of yours and love your book The United States of Appalachia.

We have had an exciting run. We’ve opened in DC, NY, LA, SF, Charleston, Boston, Chicago, and Philly….but the Blair Mountain march was by far the most exciting part of my tour.

Where are you now, Clara? Still on the road with the film or in NYC?

I’m at home in New York City, having hung up my spurs from my road trip.

Clara

Coal is isn’t clean. Solar is still cost prohibitive for most of the working class. Nuclear is a disaster waiting to happen. Oil makes us dependant on foreign nations. What are the suggestions for your group on what type of energy should be pursued?

Disclosure: I live in SW virginia and my husband works for the railroad(so our household derives some of it’s income from WVa mining.)

While folks are logging on and getting caught up on the film, perhaps you can tell us a little how you first learned about mountaintop removal and strip mining and what made you pursue this project as producer?

Hi Jeff and Clara, thanks for coming.

Yes Jeff Obama needs to watch this movie.

I just finished watching this film; thank you for sending me a screener.

It is one of the most remarkable documentaries I have ever seen. I had no idea — and I’ve been in those West Virginia mountains, albeit decades ago. It’s heartbreaking what’s happened to that beautiful environment. And it is a human rights violation.

I can’t believe that filthy liar Blankenship made $190 million dollars in his tenure at Massey. He should be in prison, not on his private island or wherever he holes up now.

Thanks for making this wonderful film.

A Combination of renewables like wind (it doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive at all), solar, geothermal, and hydro need to be employed on a big scale immediately.

I was amazed to learn how many people are employed in wind energy today in the US, and how much energy it currently generates. But if ridges like Coal River Mountain are destroyed, that wind potential is gone in West Virgina. That’s why this film is so important.

Jeff, I first witnessed mountain top removal in 2004 when I went down to West Virginia to write a magazine profile of Jack Spadaro–the Bush Administration whistle blower. When I saw with my bare eyes the destruction, I became completely radicalized and focused on making a documentary about it so that the rest of America can see what’s happening in Appalachia. I’m a native Kentuckian (aren’t you too?) which made me feel even more committed to this precious part of our country.

I am trying my best to get this movie to Obama. you are so right. he has to see it.

Last Mountain is the first film on mountaintop removal to get nationwide distribution in the theatres. But first I was curious at the reception of the film in coal country–such as your opening in Charleston, WV?

Thank you Teddy. I’m so glad that you liked the film. Don Blankenship is such an extreme example of the corporate take over of America.

more people are employed by the wind industry than the coal industry today–which is an amazing fact that we all need to consider…and it’s only going to get better (for wind that is)

Jeff, we rented a theater in Charleston, WV on the night of June 10th and showed the movie to about 400 very enthusiastic people. So far we don’t have plans to distribute the movie in commercial theaters in Charleston. Our distributor was told that commercial theaters down there don’t take anti-coal movies, and previous MTR docs haven’t been able to release in WV for the same reason. But we will be in a theater in Louisville and Lexington KY in July.

Did you have much of a turn out of coal industry people and miners–such as WV Coal Association head Bill Haney, who is featured in the film? And has there been much dialogue generated by the film in places like WV and KY?

we haven’t heard a word from the coal industry representatives. Bill Raney hasn’t seen the movie, as far as I know, but it was plastered on the front page of the Charleston Gazette.

As you noted in your recent piece in MS Mag, women have played a leading role in the anti-mountaintop removal movement, and in coal country in general. How did you select the main characters for the film?

How did Massey get away with only putting up 20% of the money for the new Marsh Fork school, anyway?

You mentioned earlier that commercial theatres in WV wouldn’t consider running a film on MTR, largely due to the politics (I assume). Prior to your showing at Sundance, did you find that distributors were shying away from the film, as well, due to its perceived controversial topics? Or, on the other hand, that most Americans would not be interested in a film on strip mining in WV?

Maria Gunnoe is the star of our film. I met her in 2007 when we first went down to WV to shoot and I was bowled over by her passion and fierce commitment. I interviewed her on her front porch July 2007 and she told me about the flooding of her home in a little hollow in Bob White, WV. She almost lost her house and her and her family’s life in the flood, which was caused by a MTR mine just above her house. When she sued the coal company, she received death threats. She is such a hero, and she won the Goldman Prize, which is the Nobel for grass roots environmental activists. I knew when I first met her that she would become a central character in the film because she is so convincing and authentic.

that’s all they offered….and the government didn’t force them to put up more. pretty lame, eh?

We didn’t have any trouble finding our distributor, Dada films, and there was plenty of interest from others, but we still haven’t found a home on TV. I think environmental and political documentaries don’t have a great reputation for increasing ratings.

as a journalist who has covered this issue for years, do you feel the environmental issues overshadowed the health and human rights issues…which seem to be making more headlines now?

Tell us a bit more about the reaction to the film at Sundance, and at urban centers like Seattle and Boston and NYC that seems to removed from coalfield politics…did the audiences seem astonished, shocked, angered…or indifferent to the daily realities of those who live in the coalfields?

I think environmental issues aren’t making enough headlines, especially when it comes to climate change. People have been so tuned out and removed from the subject. The storms and floods of the Spring/Summer may change the head-in-the-sand attitude though. Human rights issues–like gay marriage for example, which is making big headlines here in NY–are easier to understand and relate to for most people.

I think The Last Mountain is as much a human rights story as an environmental one. And in fact, the two usually go hand in hand.

Is it film to say your film ultimately asks: Do you know where your electricity comes from and who pays the price? And did you ever think about those questions prior to your first visit to WV? (I ask this, because even as someone from a coal mining family, I never asked that question until my own family’s historic homeplace was stripmined in 1999.)

Jeff, our audiences at Sundance and in Seattle, NY, LA and the other big cities where we’ve shown the film have been completely shocked and horrified. They, almost uniformly, say that they had no idea that 50% of our electricity comes from burning coal, and they had never heard of mountain top mining, and were horrified to learn that 500 mountains, the equivalent of the state of Delaware, had been destroyed in Appalachia. It felt as if we were breaking this huge, new story……which, as you well know, is hardly the case.

But it has been so satisfying to be able to expose the rest of America to what is going on in Appalachia.

I must confess Jeff, that I was pretty much oblivious of where my electricity came from before I went down to WV in 2004. It’s as if coal is America’s dirty little secret.

I’m so sorry about your family’s homeplace. where was it?

Eagle Creek, in the Shawnee Forests of southern Illinois, on the Kentucky border. 200 years of history lost. I’ll take you to its ruins one day.

In the meantime, how has the film changed your own life—as a consumer, as a writer, and now an advocate for central Appalachia?

Hasn’t West Virginia become a place of neighbor pitted against neighbor, though? With all the coal employees given a half-day off work to protest the protesters at the DEP, it seemed to me that it must be very difficult to live there now, especially in those tightly knit communities where so many people still depend on coal for their livelihoods, even while it’s killing their kids and their neighbors.

Jeff, Clara,
How much did Senator Byrd have to do with the mountaintop removal beginning in the state?

The film has changed me in several ways.

First of all, it has reconnected me to my roots in KY where my extended family still lives, and it has turned me into an advocate. Up until now, I have always considered myself a straight journalist and have never crossed the line over to advocacy, but this issue is so pressing. It’s so dire and so important that it’s just not the kind of story that I can approach with a on the one hand and the other hand journalistic approach.

Also, it has made me even more concerned about the state of the US media and investigative reporting. The Courier-Journal newspaper (which my family sold in 1986 to Gannett) and the Lexington Herald Leader have both closed their Eastern KY coal fields bureaus. This story is just not getting covered!

BevW,

While stripmining goes back to the 1850s, mountaintop removal official got its grove in 1970. Sen. Byrd was a diehard supporter, until his last year in his office, when he acknowledged the coal industry needed to embrace a different approach. WV Rep. Ken Hechler, on the other hand, held the first hearing against MTR in 1970, introduced the main bills against strip mining, and continues to fight against it today–at the age of 96!

You’re right Teddy. It’s basically a civil war down there. When we marched on Blair Mountain a few weeks ago, the street leading up to Blair was covered in waring signs–”Go Home” “We love coal” on some front porches vs. “save our mountains” on others. Small towns are divided and the tensions are very high.

Talk a little about the main difficulties in filming? Did Bill stick to the script for the most part, or did you find the story breaking with the news?

Senator Byrd supported mountaintop removal and all things coal related until a month before his death when he had a death bed conversion on mountaintop removal. He said that he was for coal, but for mining it legally and that he believed blowing up mountains was destroying his state. I wish Senator Rockefeller would follow in his footsteps, but right now not one member of the WV delegation has come out against MTR even though polls show that 2/3rds of the people in WV are against it.

Ken Hechler came to our screening in Charleston and received a standing ovation. I sat next to him and after the movie, the first thing he said was, “You’ve got to get this movie in front of President Obama.”

welcome clara and jeff — clara do you think that you will be able to get the film to obama?

We started filming in 2007, but didn’t finish for three years which was a good thing because the fight to save Coal River Mountain began in 2009/2010 and gave our story much more drama and action. Over 200 people have been arrested in civil disobedience protests against the blasting of Coal River Mountain, which Massey is still mining. This conflict made for some high drama that really enhanced the film’s narrative arch.

I’m trying…..I’ve sent the DVD to several people who work in the White House. Lisa Jackson, the head of the EPA has seen it and so has Senator Barbara Boxer. I’m hoping that if we get a critical mass of people who are close to Obama to see the film, and recommend it to him, we may have a chance.

It was amazing to see Robert Kennedy get some of the same reaction his father did in West Virgina, and yet that man was so touching when he said, “I never thought I’d have a Kennedy in my own house.” A lot of the antipathy to “outsiders” was overcome, at least it seemed to me, when Lorelei got up at the DEP rally and said she was a West Virginian born and raised, with all the men in her family coal miners.

We simply can’t shut down coal; it’s America’s single biggest energy source and the livelihood of entire states. But Kennedy was right when he said it’s a false, temporary prosperity that leaves our children with nothing but a moonscape, disease, and bills to pay.

With a Manhattan project to convert, for instance, Coal River Mountain, to wind — as well as many others there — America could transition away from coal. Unfortunately, we have no money (apparently).

In many respects, the anti-mountaintop removal movement has reached a certain impasse–the EPA put out its regulatory guidelines, which are good but limited; a bill in Congress is stuck. Do you think it really comes down to intervention by President Obama to abolish MTR once and for all—and if so, what do you really think it will take? A disaster? Or, rather, an even greater disaster?

We may not be able to shut down coal, but we must start transitioning, and fast.

One of the main arguments Bobby and the movie makes is that coal is only cheap because it’s subsidized. The true cost of coal is very high. A Harvard medical school study shows that the environmental and health costs associated with mining, transporting and burning coal are about $345 billion a year!

First of all, I think Obama has to get re-elected before he’ll do anything more than he and the EPA have already done to limit MTR. Most of the coal states are swing states that he needs, like Ohio, PA, and others. The political pressures on him are huge, and the economy is at a standstill too, which doesn’t help because the industry can use the “jobs” card. So re-election, and a revived economy will be the prerequisites for Obama to act decisively.

We talk a lot about a “just transition” in the coalfields, such as a special coalfield regeneration fund for retraining coal miners(on energy efficiency projects), clean energy manufacturing (building wind turbines and solar panels) and industrial wind and solar farms. But all of that takes money. A lot of money and investment. And all of the clean energy money is essentially directed to non-coalfield communities.

How do we begin to coax venture capitalists, with the help of RFK, JR and Al Gore, both of whom sit on major boards, to jumpstart investment for the coalfields?

Good question, and I wish I knew the answer.

First of all, venture capitalists like to make a profit, so the state of WV and KY would have to change their entire attitude towards renewable energy and offer permits, and tax breaks, which sadly, I don’t see either state doing because their politicians are owned lock stock and barrel by Big Coal.

Sadly, none of these technologies is a baseload source of generation capable of meeting even the lowest levels of power demand for this country. There are also significant transmission problems (and associated costs) with each of these suggestions.

In your reseacrh, what did you determine to be the amount of investment in these technologies that would be required to displace even just the amount of coal mined from mountaintopping?

Let’s talk a bit about Massey. Wonderful villain. Do you think Blankenship’s utter evilness helped to reach certain audiences?

30-percent of the coal we burn in American comes from Appalachia, and only about 30-percent of the coal we mine in Appalachia comes from MTR, and some of that we even export to China. It would not be impossible to replace MTR-mined coal with renewable energy.

One of the largest solar farms in the US is opening in the strip pits of southern Ohio. And now far from my own southern IL coalfields, a new factory to produce wind turbines is in the works–with 600 jobs.

In terms of central Appalachia, the JOBS Project in Mingo County, WV has made some great inroads in training unemployed coal miners.

Job retraining for energy efficiency measures—retrofitting homes, businesses, etc–is booming in CA. Why not central Appalachia?

What we need is ONE factory in Coal River Valley. A small $5 million factory to build wind turbines and provide them to the northern WV market. Once we had a model factory, the idea is that the dominos would fall.

And in truth, we could end MTR coal production tomorrow and replace it with coal from the other 23 coal mining states, or simply not export it. MTR coal is less than 8 percent of all national production, and a lot of it heads overseas as Clara says.

Don Blankenship is right out of central casting. He’s the perfect villain. I noticed many audiences booing and hissing when his picture comes up at the end of the film. No one can make excuses for him.

How do you follow up such an epic film…and smashing success? Are you at work on a new book, or are you looking to produce a new film?

They’re two totally different types of generation, Clara. You can’t replace a baseload source of generation (coal) with a peaking technology. You get rid of coal and you will see oil, nuke or nat gas increase. Period. With the exception of river hydro (as opposed to pumped hydro), there’s not a renenwable energy source out there, that can replace coal. And run of river hydro has its own environmental concerns.

It’s a false trade-off. It won’t work.

I’m about to sign up with Random House to write an oral history of Vietnam and the anti-war movement, which could also have the potential of becoming a film.

So much of this seems to come down to owned politicians, which means public financing of elections is the only answer.

ooooh, “mountaintopping” — what an innocuous euphemism!

Clara, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and discussing your new film and environmentalism.

Jeff, Thank you very much for Hosting a great Movie Night.

Everyone if you would like more information:

Clara’s website

Jeff’s website, book and Coal Free Future Project

Just quick reminder:
Membership drive! Are you an FDL member? If not, please join and help keep FDL delivering kick ass activism and independent journalism. You can join HERE.

Thanks all,
Have a great night.

hydro has worked well in California–which only has one coal-fired power plant.

The transition has to begin as soon as possible on all fronts.

Vietnam just exported its first shipments of coal! oh no, you’re hooked. And I hope you meet my friend Wayne Karlin, one of the best Vietnam veterans and novelists, who edited a series of books by Vietnamese vets.

Absolutely! The best thing that could happen to Appalachia, and the US environment would be campaign finance reform.

thanks for your time, folks. and thanks again to Clara for such an important and compelling film!

Thank you for having us. It was a pleasure!

I’d love to met Wayne Karlin, Jeff

California also has all those nukes. You simply cannot replace coal with any renewable technology. You cannot run any of these flat-out like you can the baseload sources of generation. If you are going to get rid of coal, you will have to increase gas, oil or nuclear. Which are you proposing?

que?

Thanks to one and all for a terrific Movie Night.

See this movie when it comes to town, folks, it will change how you think about that airconditioner and the lightswitch.

Coal Train I

Coal Train II