Connected to the environment of West Virginia by birth, Sam Cook stands at the front of a movement to protect the mountains of his state from the disastrous practice of mountain top removal. The once beautiful and peaceful mountains of West Virginia have for more than 25 years been under assault from a form of surface mining known as mountain top removal. As the name suggests this form of mining requires the literal blasting off of the top of a mountain in order to get into the coal that lies beneath the surface. The reverberations of this practice can be felt not only in the two hundred thousand-pound blasts that rock the tiny communities of West Virginia, but also in the form of highly disastrous environmental consequences. Sam Cook has worked for the last several years from an anthropological perspective to influence local, state and federal attitudes toward mountain top removal.
Most people shrug their shoulders when there is talk of coal mining.
It seems that popular thinking has put coal mining into the past, and made it a thing of history. Unfortunately, that couldn't be further from the truth. In a recent phone interview with Sam Cook he explained just how much coal is being used in this country. Coal is one of the most important elements in the energy infrastructure of the entire United States. Each week 17 to 20 million tons of coal are produced for use in coal burning generators that supply electricity to most of the continent.