Appalachian mountains get blown up to extract coal in the documentary “The Last Mountain,” a film in which activists are at least as hot as the TNT.
Citizens who live near coal-containing mountains complain that these areas are being disfigured, and dust and poisons rained down on them and their wells and springs in the mining process. As is the rule in angry documentaries, meaningless anecdotal evidence is given close attention. Some people near mining sites became ill, just as people everywhere else do, but no cause-and-effect relationship is proven. Indeed, within the film, no attempt to prove this implied charge is made.
New York activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who pops up in several instances to try to change the situation in West Virginia, goes so far as to imply that in an ideal world, anyone who is subjected to any pollution whatsoever ought to enjoy the right to shut down the emitter. How many share that Stone Age vision? Citizens are shown launching protests against coal companies and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, but there is no serious comparison of costs and benefits. Only a minute or two is allowed for opposing points of view. When the film suggests that wind farms atop the mountains are the answer while backing higher taxes on such energy, which is more expensive than coal in the first place, it demonstrates its lack of interest in market reality.