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''The Last Mountain'' is a feature-length documentary film directed by Bill Haney and produced by Haney, Clara Bingham and Eric Grunebaum. The film premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and went into general release on June 3, 2011. The film explores the consequences of mining and burning coal, with a particular focus on the use of a method for coal strip-mining in Appalachia commonly known as mountaintop removal mining. Based in part on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s 2005 book, ''Crimes Against Nature'' and featuring Kennedy and a cast of activists and experts, the film considers the health consequences of mining and burning coal and looks at the context and history of environmental laws in the United States. Exploring a proposal to build a wind farm on a mountain in the heart of "coal country," rather than deforesting and demolishing the mountain for the coal seams within, the film suggests that wind resources are plentiful in the U.S., would provide many domestic jobs and that wind is a more benign source of power than coal and has the potential to eliminate the destructive aspects of coal. ==Story== ''The Last Mountain'' tells the story of the fight for Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, where community members and environmental activists are pitted against a coal company in the struggle to save one of the last large mountain ranges in the area from mountaintop removal. Massey Energy (purchased by Alpha Natural Resources in 2011) has many of the necessary permits and plans to blow up the mountain and fill the nearby valleys and streams with the resulting rubble, but the activists would like to build a wind farm on the mountain’s ridges instead. They have even commissioned a study demonstrating that Coal River Mountain has a high wind potential – high enough to produce 328 megawatts of electricity, which can power 70,000 homes. Both approaches – a wind farm or a coal strip mine – would produce needed electricity, however the results are very different. Massey and the coal industry maintain that they are creating jobs and would reclaim the mountain, while the activists present a very different picture and claim that with mountaintop removal mining the land cannot be properly reclaimed, that the practice destroys their air and water, produces fewer jobs than traditional underground mining. While the locals work these jobs and worry constantly if they will have a job the following day. The film is told from the point of view of environmental litigator and activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and several activists including Maria Gunnoe (Goldman Prize winner), Bo Webb (Purpose Prize winner), Ed Wiley and West Virginia based environmental attorney Joe Lovett of the Appalachian Mountain Advocates (formerly the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment.) The coal industry’s perspective is explained by the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, Bill Raney, while the infamous ex-CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship, presents his views in several public forums. The film also follows the efforts of young members of Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice who participate in acts of civil disobedience to stop coal mining all together, surface and underground: chaining themselves to mining equipment, climbing giant cranes, and camping out at the tops of trees in mid-winter to stop Massey Energy from demolishing the mountain. The film highlights statistics on mining including the fact that five hundred of Appalachia’s mountains have been flattened by mountaintop removal coal mining while being rebuilt by land reclamation projects and of streams that only have water in them during hard rains moved to the sides of the valley fills. Experts including Alan Hershkowitz, Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry & the Environment Gus Speth, and ''Vanity Fair'' writer and ''(Coal River )'' author Michael Shnayerson, put the story in political and environmental context. Scientists including Ben Stout III and Devra Davis provide additional explanation on the dangers of the toxins which are produced by coal mining, coal processing and coal burning. ''The Last Mountain'' makes the point that the fight for Coal River Mountain, although a local story, has national and international significance. Nearly 50% of America’s electricity comes from burning coal, 30% of that coal comes from Appalachia and burning coal is the number one contributor to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The film maintains that huge amounts of money are poured into the political system from coal mining, coal transportation and coal burning industries and that in the face of this, the resulting political system is not fully engaged in the regulation of these activities, and that the democratic system itself is compromised. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Last Mountain」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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