Let's answer God's call to serve as stewards
of creation and live justly with respect
to the needs of our global neighbors.
Visiting sites of devastationStanding on a road of a former surface mining site, Danae Miller looks over a grassy hill, sweeping her eyes toward exposed rock in the distance. "We just came from a big forest with all these huge trees you can't find anywhere else. These huge trees were here. You can't even tell," says Miller, who came with other students from Bethany Christian High School in Goshen, Ind., to be part of an MCC Environmental Learning Tour. Tour leaders Sharman Chapman-Crane and Duane Beachey, both MCC workers, took students to former mining sites visible from roadways. At a Letcher County, Ky., site, Larry Easterling told the group how the blast from the mining "shakes pictures off the wall. If you've got pretty dishes in your china cabinet, it rattles all them, and you can just feel it in your whole house," said Larry Easterling. Larry Easterling is active in Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a grassroots advocacy organization that works to mobilize Kentucky residents to speak out on environmental issues particularly as they're related to mining. Larry Easterling, who has driven a truck on a surface mining site, says he won't work coal jobs anymore. The benefits of mining don't outweigh the cost to the land and people. He quotes a saying warning that "when the last fish is gone, when the last tree is gone, you'll realize you can't eat money." Walking along a road that used to be timbered mountainside, he says, "Everything you see right here, it's all about the dollar, about greed." As students finished the tour, they talked about how they will share what they have seen and heard with friends and families. But they also take home another lesson — conserve electricity. Half of the power in the United States is still powered by coal, and students said they will go home more alert to how much electricity they use and how they can cut back. "People know to do it. It's just they don't always think about it. Coming here and seeing this, you just realize how important it really is," said student Caitlin Fecher.
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