Emmylou Hosts Environmental Gathering

Emmylou Harris hosted a Natural Resources Defense Council gathering at her home in Nashville Tuesday night, according to The Tennessean.

 

Robert Kennedy Jr. was a guest speaker at the meeting to address “the growing environmental crises.”

 

Kennedy told The Tennessean, "We aren't protecting the environment for the fish and the birds," Kennedy said. "We're protecting it for our own sakes because we recognize that nature is the infrastructure of our community.”

 

"If a foreign country did to us what these companies are doing, we would consider it an act of war. It is chemical warfare and it is explosive warfare on the American people and on our American landscape."

 

Music industry people on hand included Sheryl Crow, Kathy Mattea, Big Kenny and Christiev Alphin, Matraca Berg and Jeff Hanna, and J.D. Souther.

 

NRDC's Allen Hershkowitz, who also spoke, said, "So we wanted to identify and inform these leaders in the music industry about the liability that they unknowingly may be imposing on future generations by buying power to record and market their records from utilities using mountaintop-mined coal.

 

"Mountaintop removal coal mining involves the destruction of all forest habitat on those mountains…. The debris from the explosions is then dumped into the valley, where there are rivers and streams, and that makes the water resource unusable both for drinking and aquatic life."

   

Visit www.ilovemountains.org to determine if your zip code is connected to mountaintop removal.