No one is going to want to hear this. I make no apologies – you all need to hear it.

In 1995 before I got as involved as an environmental activist as I am now, I attended the annual Heartwood Forest Council near Hinton. There I made the acquaintance of a young woman from Kentucky who walked the walk she talked. She lived somewhere in the "woods" without being on the electric grid, and she did not own or drive a vehicle. (Not sure about telephone – it is very hard to be an activist without one of those!) She got to the Council by sharing a ride with others from the same area in KY. I did not get to know her well at all except that she was clearly active in trying to save as much of our ravaged and degraded forests and landscapes as she could without being pushy or "holier that thou" about it. I assume she also "lived a life" and was not a martyr to the Cause. Perhaps she saw her role as much or more in modeling good stewardship as she did in her activism.

How many of us "treehuggers " are there who really live by their principles. (Bill Ragette comes close) Our perceived need for energy in the form of electric power (primarily) is what is behind the lopping off of our mountains. Arch Coal is in business to feed the demand we put on them for cheap energy.

When I was in Florida in August it was my misfortune to have to ride to the airport for the return flight in the morning rush hours. The state provides a High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane to encourage persons to car pool (not, I might add, to conserve energy, but to make driving to work faster, easier and safer). Hardly anyone was in this HOV lane except for the cheaters, and we saw a fair number of them who like to play "cops and robbers" with an occasional enforcement officer on standby. So there you have one person with tons of metal going at 20 to 25 mph over the speed limit. Multiply this by millions of folks driving to work each day. Mother Nature is most generous that she has let us get away with as much as she has!

Anne Wilson Shaef wrote a book called When Society is an Addict. In her book she extends the idea of individual substance addiction, to society as a whole, and the fit to the American Way of Life is remarkable. Some symptoms of addiction: strong use of denial, egs. Governor Underwood and the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce [see Don Gasper’s letter in this issue] respective stances on the EPAs new ruling on particulate matter; disregarding or the blaming of harmful effects on someone or something else, eg. weird weather -- it is all El Nino’s fault or it is the fault of those person in third World countries that want too much too fast; and using the "everyone else is doing it" excuse, egs. driving sports utility vehicles that get about 15 miles per gallon, and having big lawns and the polluting supplies and equipment that go with it,

The republican party is ahead now simply because it is the party that feeds the denial. At least it does so more effectively than the democrats. Someone who is honest and "tells it like it is," eg. Ralph Nader, gets treated more or less contemptuously by the press, whereas politicians who behave in a truly contemptible manner tend to get off too lightly in the media.

The three-part series which commences in this issue on "Pogonomics" cuts through the denial and gives us a picture of the stark reality of our economy and our way of living. We are in the process of leaving the next generations of human beings with a deeply savaged legacy, and for this we should all be ashamed. And this is not to mention the accelerating wholesale destruction of brother and sister living species sharing the planet with us.

I said it and I’m glad!