Companies that are in the business of wresting ex-plant and dinosaur-based energy-producing stuff out of the ground don’t give a crap about the earth and they don’t give a crap about the people who are doing the dirty, dangerous, health-destroying work that produces their profits.

A coal mine saddled with unsafe conditions. Wealthy mine owners willfully ignorant of safety violations and unventilated toxic gasses threatening miners. And government officials unable to hold the mines to the most basic safety standards. It all led to the deaths of dozens of miners caught in an underground explosion.

But this isn’t the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. It’s a World War Two era mine explosion in Montana.

“Goodbye Wives and Daughters,” by Susan Kushner Resnick, is the thorough account of the 1943 coal mine explosion in Bearcreek, Montana that killed 74 miners.

A new Gallup poll finds that, for the first time in ten years of polling, Americans prioritize energy production over the protection of the environment–but the poll presents a false dichotomy.

Overnight, the explosion at the Massey Energy mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia has gone from six dead to 25 dead, making it the worst mining disaster in over two decades. With only 200 employees, one out of every eight working at the site died in the explosion. And more are feared dead.

Perhaps you’ve missed it, but in the climate / politics world there’s been a bit of a scandal that blew on 31 July: paid by the coal industry, a lobbying firm had sent forged letters to members of Congress against climate legislation. Don’t worry … it was all a ‘temporary’ employee who has been fired. Never mind. Nothing there. Go back to watching TV.

Yesterday PEER reported that President Obama asked a Bushie lawyer who spent years battling for mountain top destruction coal mining to run the Federal agency that regulates mountain top destruction mining. Change you can believe in? Yes – if you believe in hiring one of Steven Griles’ helpers and forever burying ancient streams and hollows under toxic coal mining waste in a mad rush to roast the planet.

Saturday Night With Cotton-Eyed Joe Biden

Perhaps you’ve noticed a grizzled old Republican in TV ads offering a solution to American’s oil addiction or showing up at public events with Democratic leaders. Putting aside all the issues of T. Boone Pickens’ past, water issues in the West, etc., there is a core, fundamental flaw in The Pickens’ Plan. . . that 50%. . …

This week TVA deliberately dumped massive amounts of toxic corporate waste matter into a shared public resource: America’s broadcast media. Why did the PR flacks who ooze around TVA’s headquarters give America such generous portions of steaming corporate lies for Christmas?

It seems ordained, almost chiseled in the stone blown up to mine it, that coal will be core to America’s energy picture essentially forever. To be perfectly clear, anyone who states that “we can’t go to a no-coal future” is not telling the truth. That is, they are not telling the truth about the technical potential but might be accurate about the political potential in the face of $billions being spent by the coal industry and their front organizations. In fact, it is not hard to map out a path toward eliminating coal …