Mountaintop Removal Mining: Rally for controversial mining sponsored by Verizon Wireless

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) is waging a campaign, albeit a late one, to get Verizon Wireless to reconsider its sponsorship of a Labor Day rally in West Virginia to promote mountaintop-removal coal mining.

Mountaintop-removal coal mining is a controversial technique - a rather destructive technique that has faced the wrath of conservation and environmental organizations for years. It involves literally removing a mountaintop to expose coal deposits and in so doing, radically impacts the surrounding ecosystem - removing habitat and altering soil and water run-off patterns on the areas below.

Here's some info from CBD:

What are you doing for Labor Day? Sponsoring a rally to cheer for blowing off the tops of mountains and destroying one of the world’s most important biologically diverse areas? If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, you may not know it, but you are.

Verizon Wireless is cosponsoring a Labor Day rally dubbed “Friends of America,” backed by the fourth largest producer of coal in the United States: Massey Energy. The rally supports dangerous mountaintop-removal coal mining, hosts a speaker who denies global warming is happening, and is aggressively anti-union.

Mountaintop removal has already destroyed more than 1.5 million acres of hardwood forest and 1,200 miles of streams in Appalachia — the region that boasts the world's highest diversity of salamanders, crayfishes, and freshwater mussels.

Verizon Wireless should not support this destructive mining practice or continue to ignore the fact that greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants are the largest single contributor to our current climate crisis.

Send an email right now to Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, and demand Verizon withdraw sponsorship immediately of next week’s “Friends of America” climate change-denying, anti-union rally. Insist the company explain its support for the ludicrously destructive practice of mountaintop removal.

If you want to do even more, make a phone call now to Verizon headquarters in New Jersey and speak to Verizon Wireless president and CEO Lowell McAdams at (908) 559-2000‎. If you are a current Verizon customer, make sure to mention that.

Verizon’s 87 million customers — all of us sharing planet earth — deserve better. Urgent action is needed before the Labor Day rally on September 7. Email and call today.

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Click here to get more information as to how you can get your voice heard at Verizon Wireless.

ACRES: Singapore group brings animal protection issues to the people

Asian countries have often been the subject of conservation issues - ranging from illegal wildlife trade to overfishing to market demand for products from threatened or endangered species. And in many Asian nations, the rights of free speech and dissent are sometimes carefully monitored and controlled - and abused in the eyes of some.

Which is why I found this news item in the Australian online paper, Perth Now, interesting. (Read article.) The news was that a Singapore-based conservation organization, Animal Concerns Research & Education Society (ACRES), had recently held an anti-shark finning rally at Speaker's Corner, Singapore's only allowed venue for outdoor assemblies and demonstrations.

It was particularly important because of ACRES's attempt to bring the issue directly to the people where the demand for shark fin products emanates. And it's a challenge because of the strong cultural history behind the use of these products.

"One of ACRES's supporters at the rally, physiotherapist Chng Chye Tuan, said he and his wife-to-be had decided against offering shark fin soup to guests at their wedding next month, despite opposition from both sets of parents."

In reviewing the ACRES web site, I was impressed by the many animal issues the organization was taking on - not on an international level, but focused within Singapore. From animal treatment in zoos to protecting exotic or endangered animals like chimps, sharks, and tigers to even the humane treatment of pets, ACRES is trying to impress animal conservation and protection issues directly upon the Singapore people to change behavior and alter demand.

Bravo and best wishes for lasting success.