Coal has become a crutch to support Americans’ energy needs, and companies are doing anything they can to get their hands on it.

Coal companies in Appalachia are going as far as blowing up mountains. Yes, you read that right. Mining operations are destroying thousands and thousands of years of nature’s progress in just a few seconds. This process is called mountaintop removal coal mining. It started back in the 70s as a new form of strip mining that required fewer workers.

First, the operations clear all vegetation and trees from the mountain.

The worst part is that the trees are usually burned or dumped illegally somewhere – we can’t even use them for lumber or paper products! After that, millions of pounds of explosives are placed around the mountain. The explosions remove (at minimum) 600 feet of the mountaintop. Once the mountain has been destroyed, huge machines called draglines come in to remove the fruit of the labor: coal.

They collect over 100 tons of coal and debris in a single sweep. Yep, all of that for the black gold we can’t get enough of. But, of course, we depend on the coal so much because it's an important energy source in America.

After the raw coal is collected, it has to be processed and burned, which adds another layer to the environmental destruction. Oh, by the way, all of this only provides 3 percent of America’s electricity. A study in 2009 estimated over 500 mountains have been blown up in mountaintop removal mining (equal to around 1,160,000 acres). In 2008, North Carolina and Georgia were the top two consumers of mountaintop removal coal.

Nearby communities, however, are not economically secure and depend on these operations for jobs. But, they're kind of screwing themselves over.

The waste from the operations leaks into water sources and causes all sorts of health problems for the community’s population. The mining operations go so far as to claim that the well or pipes just have to be cleaned out when the visible pollutants in the residents’ tap water are certainly not their own fault. According to the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, rates of cancer, birth defects and chronic cardiovascular mortality are much, much higher in areas affected by mountaintop removal.

According to the Sierra Club, over 240 species of wildlife are actively threatened by mountaintop removal.

None of these effects are exclusive to just mountaintop removal. In my opinion, this situation sounds a hell of a lot like natural gas mining via fracking (or hydraulic fracturing) in a lot of areas of the country. Of course, none of this is to blame the miners – they need the income. Many would argue that it isn’t even the coal companies’ fault. The root of the problem is American culture.

When was the last time you considered where your energy came from when casually flipping a light switch on? When was the last time you consciously turned the light off in an effort to conserve energy?

Americans live in a culture of excess and consumerism. We demand that our energy needs be met, but we don’t actively consider the costs involved. That is a fact of modern, western culture.

We’ve got to start cleaning up our act and finding new, alternative energy sources. Furthermore, we need to use our last reserves of fossil fuels to begin developing those new technologies. Otherwise, we are screwed, just like these Appalachian communities that are paying the price for Americans’ unconscious consumption of energy and resources.