Mountain Top Removal (MTR) is a relatively recent mining technique that has brought enormous devastation to West Virginia, one of the poorest regions in the United States. This form of mining produces about 60 tons of coal in a few minutes. The price: “more that half a million acres, or eight hundred square miles, of the Appalachians have been destroyed. More than five hundred mountain peaks are gone, along with an estimated one thousand miles of streams, which provide most of the headstreams for the eastern United States.”¹.

The ecological impact of these practices is a crime of the first orden. When the explosions to remove the mountain tops take place, hundreds of pulverized rocks hit the valleys or are washed down by the rain bringing abnormal concentrations of heavy metals into the air and water of the region. The air is contaminated with hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. The ponds produced by this type of mining, known informally as “slurries,” are rich in toxic elements such as arsenic, lead, selenium, cadmium and mercury that are accumulated in large quantities in open air and in high places, which usually threaten some of the populations in the area and have had an appalling impact on the health of these communities. The largest spill of these “slurries” took place in 2008 when 1.1 billion gallons of coal waste spread along the Tennessee valley; it was 100 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989. In these places the meaning of sacred implicit in the voice sacer regains its originary character. If, according to Agamben, “the sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially homines sacri [sacred men], and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men act as sovereigns,” in late-stage capitalism the natural world becomes a kind of natura sacer over which all corporations may act as they please.

As is to be expected, the social conditions in the mining towns and nearby cities are disastrous and perfectly embody corporate abuse leveraged by state neglect. In towns like Jenkinjones the only building still active is the post office. Kidney stones, cancer and pneumoconiosis—a form of interstitial fibrosis of the lungs—are epidemic. Breathing problems are so common that most schools maintain an inhaler supply for their students. Some people are forced to spend up to $250 a month on bottled water and in cities like Welch 40% of families with children live below the poverty line, which increases to a staggering 75% in families with children under the age of five. In these conditions drug addiction is rampant and, in fact, overdoses are the first cause of accidental death in West Virginia, the highest in the US. 

There is no obstacle to keep these sacrifice zones from emerging wherever there are profit opportunities for corporations. West Virginia is but one example, in the United States alone there are at least a dozen sites that could be classified as sacrifice zones. Chris Hedges argues “that these devastated communities represent the future of us all."² And he is not off the mark in the least, a collapse seems near and inevitable:

As societies become more complex they inevitably become more precarious and vulnerable. As they begin to break down, the terrified and confused population withdraws from reality, unable to acknowledge their fragility and impending collapse. The elites retreat into isolated compounds, whether at Versailles, the Forbidden City, or modern palatial estates. They indulge in unchecked hedonism, the accumulation of wealth, and extravagant consumption. The suffering masses are repressed with greater and greater ferocity. Resources are depleted until they are exhausted. And then the hollowed-out edifice collapses. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. The Mayan elite became, at the end […] “extremists, or ultraconservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity.” This is how all civilizations, including our own, ossify and collapse.³

In the end, the topology of the paradeisos will reveal itself once again: the elites sheltered behind the walls of their palaces while all around them, in the hunting park, the world burns.

---

1. Hedges and Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, 129.   ↩︎
2. Muriel Kane, “Chris Hedges: America’s devastated ‘sacrifice zones’ are the future for all of us,” Raw Story,  July 20, 2012, https://www.rawstory.com/2012/07/chris-hedges-americas-sacrifice-zones-being-destroyed-for-profit/  ↩︎
3. Hedges and Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, 149-50. ↩︎