Where do you think coal and oil comes from? It's ok as long as other people's environment is destroyed for non-renewable energy but not your environment for renewable energy?
Lol, they used to mine coal under that very mountain (until it was outsourced). It's not like we have some insular life. The region is economically depressed. People would rather have jobs while destroying the environment than not have jobs while destroying the environment and recreational value simultaneously.
Also people who need jobs. And that's just the case you personally know of. Maybe people should retrain instead of pining for jobs of the past. And we should support them in the transition as much as possible .
> only generates reasonable numbers of jobs during initial construction
We're gonna need a lot of initial construction though.
Have they ever used that technique in the UK? I don't think the UK has mountains suitable for mountaintop removal - they are famous for their underground operations.
I've always filed mountaintop removal mining as one of those "weird things Americans do" approaches. Probably associated with unusual geology or something.
I think the UK had the none-mountainous version of strip mining - open pit mines. I think there aren't any in operation currently, and I'm unsure if they were for coal or just other commodities.
