Goldman Prize winner, Maria Gunnoe, who has been fighting the coal industry in West Virginia, is interviewed about the deadly consequences of mountaintop coal mining in Boone County. First a mountain is deforested and then it is detonated -- spewing lead, mercury, and arsenic into the air. Over five hundred mountains in Appalachia have been destroyed this way, with a million acres leveled. Pockets of bronchus and lung cancers, as well as brain tumors have been evidenced. In addition to local streams becoming polluted, Appalachia is the source for headwaters serving the eastern United States.
In America, coal kills tens of thousands of people. In Asia, it kills millions of people. Coal serves as the primary source of China's energy. They consume the same amount as the rest of the world, combined. Like those who live in Appalachia, rural workers are poor. They have little resources or protections against those with political power, often corrupt officials who ensure that mining deaths go unreported. Those who work in underground Chinese mines have life spans of 49 years old, ten years less than surface coal miners and twenty-six years less than the average Chinese citizen.
Yet, China is a top innovator in the renewable energy production of solar panels. Electric vehicles are also being rolled out in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. It's predicted that by 2025, electric cars will be both competitive and cheaper to operate.
Nobel Prize winner in Physics and previous U.S. Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, emphasizes that the cost of renewable energy is dropping and is poised to become the low-cost option. Lyndon Rive, co-founder of SolarCity, sees solar as the route to "disrupt" climate change.
While solar and wind are growing rapidly in Europe, there are over a billion people around the world who have never accessed electricity. Kumi Naidoo, of Greenpeace International, is on hand to connect the dots between the lack of electricity -- and global poverty, education deficits, and climate change. Pointing to Kenya, he references the use of solar power in that country as "revolutionary."
A look at how Nigeria became a "centralized petrostate" is particularly unsettling. Chevron and Shell, among others, have exploited the Niger Delta; the country became rife with corruption and inequality as "85 percent of the government revenues were dominated by crude oil." Environment lawyer and activist, Oronto Douglas, speaks about a "deeply unequal society," built on violence and environmental destruction, alongside widespread poverty. Since 1960, Nigerian oil revenues have hit the $600 billion mark. Douglas notes, "90 percent of of these dollars went to 1 percent of the population."
Architect and Urban Designer, Peter Calthorpe, has been working on sustainable urban development since 1976. "The energy the planet needs is defined by how we live," he states. He asks rhetorically if we will design sustainable cities, or continue with "high density sprawl?"
Reevaluating how we eat and use land and natural resources cannot
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