Erik Reece

Erik Reece’s Lost Mountain is a no-holds-barred vilification of current mountaintop removal coal mining practices. He follows the course of several businesses who purchase and re-sell the permit to strip mine Lost Mountain in Eastern Kentucky from September 2003 to September 2004. Along the way, he reports on past court cases involving mining companies, how the law is bent to accommodate mining practices, and whether there are real, useful, sustainable ways to extract coal from mountains. show more

His clandestine tracking of coal mining operations gives the reader a different perspective on the industry and while his rhetoric is decidedly anti-business, he is not totally against the idea of collecting coal for power. The problem is that the book is overwhelmingly sad. From a month-by-month discussion of how Lost Mountain is basically removed from the map to vignette after vignette of families and communities that do not have the money or the methods to fight back while groundwater is poisoned and homes are flooded by mining runoff, this will get your invective juices flowing.

The book itself reads fast (I blew through it in an afternoon at the bookstore) but it lingers with you for much longer. It has echoes of Carson’s Silent Spring and many of the eco-conservation books that followed. Even if they support current practices, anybody who cares about how businesses interact with their surrounding environment and communities should read this one. show less

"Coal is cheap because it is extracted with the least concern for the land that offers it up." (p. 178)

I live in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio. My great-grandfather mined coal on and off for much of his teens and twenties, often on his hands and knees in an underground shaft (he was usually too tall to stand at 6'6"). His family, including my grandmother, lived in company towns that conspired to keep their people poor and dependent. To this day, if you live in my home county, you must show more have mine insurance, because if your house is built over a mining shaft, sinkholes can develop unexpectedly (this happened to one of my professors in college). In 1995, a twelve foot section of Interstate 70, a major interstate, collapsed in the county next to mine because of mine subsidence (google "Interstate 70 collapse Ohio 1995"), which took months and millions of dollars to repair.

But that kind of mining is a whole different beast, something that many people don't seem to understand (or don't care to). As bad as it could be, underground mining did supply jobs - often poorly paid and dangerous - and wreaked less environmental damage than strip mining.

Strip mining, unfortunately, I've seen as well. I've seen the Big Muskie (now no longer in operation). I've helped "reclaim" old strip mining swaths by planting trees provided by AEP, who did most of the strip mining in my area. AEP, I must say, treated us better than those in Kentucky and West Virginia are often treated (by companies other than AEP). One large strip mined area was turned into an African wildlife preserve (no, seriously - The Wilds in Muskingum County, Ohio) that generates tourist dollars. But I can show you creeks that run orange and wells that went bad (including some on relatives' properties) because strip mining allowed chemicals to leach into the water. And we are the "lucky" ones because, as I said, AEP treated us fair in the clean up.

Strip mining is reckless, dangerous, and stupid. It takes entire mountains and levels them to the ground. It puts fill in hollows. It poisons rivers, streams, and wells. It kills wildlife. It destroys topsoil. It ruins houses and communities. It creates potential disasters just waiting to be unleashed on the people downstream. And all in the name of cheap energy.

Strip mining isn't cheap. Oh, sure, the operation itself is. The companies come in, take all the coal, usually claim bankruptcy in the end so they don't have to reclaim the land, and leave giant swathes of dirt in their paths where mountains once stood. Even if they do "reclaim" the land, it's usually just a "pasture" where not much will grow because the soil is so poor and rocky.

People say - but what about the jobs? Yeah, what about the jobs? Strip mining requires few employees, and almost none of them are local. If you think strip mining is employing hundreds of local people who wouldn't have jobs otherwise, you have no idea what is going on in the mountains.

"[T]he poverty rate in eastern Kentucky is exactly the same as when [Robert] Kennedy came [in 1968], jobs are almost as scarce, and the environmental destruction from strip mining is exponentially worse." (p. 181)

And if you think that EPA protects anything or anyone besides the coal companies, you also have no idea what is going on in the mountains. The EPA and the coal companies go hand in hand; the EPA is often run by people who were formerly in the coal business. Think about that one for a while.

"[I]n the end, the natural world does not need conserving. The planet has survived five extinctions; it can survive another one. No, it is we who need conserving." (p. 95)

It's true, and honestly, that thought gives me some comfort. Humanity will likely kill itself with pollution and environmental damage, but we did it to ourselves. Mammals may not survive; most of the species we see now may not survive, and for that I am sad. But the earth itself will survive our carnage; it's got billions of years left before the sun swallows us whole.

"Who is destroying the mountains of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia?...It isn't the coal companies. It's us...You did this. Okay, forget the guilt. How can we change that?" (p. 154)

Well, reading this book would be a good start. show less

The Sad Story of an Anti-Conversion

American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God (New York: Riverside Books, 2009) is a well-written, but very sad story of an “anti-conversion.” It is the personal account of Erik Reece’s quest to find an explanation for the existence of evil and, failing to do so, his escape from reality into a religion of his own creation, which he calls the “American Gospel.”

When Erik Reece turned thirty-three, his life began to unravel. His show more father, who suffered from bipolar disorder, committed suicide at thirty-three. Jesus Christ was crucified when he was thirty-three. Since Erik’s father was a Southern Baptist preacher, as was his father before him, Erik felt there was a relationship between his father’s tragic death and his father’s Christian faith. If Christianity was what it claimed to be, Reece reasoned, then why was it not sufficient to provide his father with a reason to live? Was it possible that it was the teachings of the Christian “religion” as found in the institutional churches that drove his father to take his own life? Was the Christian faith, as Erik Reece knew it, a false gospel? And if it was, then where might he find a religious faith or spiritual experience that could provide for him what Christianity could not provide for his father — that is, a reason to live?

Erik Reece found his answers in the American Gospel. It is a patchwork religious philosophy made up of elements Reece gleaned from Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, William James, John Dewey, more than just a little Zen Buddhism for flavor, and the so-called Gospel of Thomas. The last is a Gnostic document employed by Reece to judge the authenticity of the four Gospels in the New Testament.

The American Gospel as constructed by Reece bears no meaningful resemblance to historic Christianity. It has much in common with Enlightenment Deism. There is, so Reece seems to imply, a creator of some sort who created what matter exists, but that is all. He, she, or it is not currently involved in that creation. There was no Fall, hence no original sin and no need for a savior, or as Reece bluntly states it: “There never was a Fall, and therefore, we do not need to be saved by a sacrificial martyr” [emphasis in the original]. The Savior who is the centerpiece of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was only “a Mediterranean street preacher named Yeshua, or Jesus . . .” The American Gospel calls upon its followers to accept the world as it is, to seek to be at peace with it and with oneself, neither of which is fallen. Here we can detect a bit of Zen Buddhism.

By the time we have finished reading this admittedly well-written personal testimony of Erik Reece’s pilgrimage away from Christian faith, which this reviewer would argue he never possessed, to a “new” religion that is actually a synthesis of age-old heresies, I feel sad for Reece. His father’s death was tragic, but it was caused by a medical condition that is treatable today, not by a failure to find the answer to his bipolar illness (manic depression) in his Christian faith. Reece’s father died secure in a hope that was unseen, but certain. His son, Erik, has put his faith in a philosophical religion of his own creation. He is, therefore, without hope. And that, I submit, is truly sad.
- Paul R. Waibel show less

Uneven. He's at his best when visiting the sites of these "utopian" communities, describing and explaining their histories, philosophies, trajectories and - in most cases - failures. He's also very good when interviewing the people still actively involved in one way or another with these efforts - they are smart, dedicated, engaging people who are devoting their personal lives to a sometimes uncomfortable, difficult ideal. But then there are self-indulgent diversions into his passion for show more Cincinnati Reds baseball, and some very dry economic theory. I liked parts of it, and if you're interested in the Shakers (a particularly interesting chapter), Thomas Merton, Josiah Warren, or the not-very-harmonious New Harmony, IN, it may be best to develop a knack for skimming. show less