I am in a quandary. I am finally green. I recycle, I seldom dump food, I upgraded my mileage, I compost leaves, grass, and limbs, and I get greener appliances and light bulbs. I drive half as much as the average driver in my gasoline powered vehicle. I support many green organizations.

            Here is my quandary and that of millions of others when they understand the reality of green power. We hate to see the slag piles of underground coal mining with the acids leaching out of them and into ditches, streams, and rivers. We hate to see the piles of slag and huge holes from surface mines. Even topping off “mountains” in West Virginia riles us. Now we need millions of tons of “rare earths” that few of us have ever heard of before. These minerals are so rare that a real find is an ounce for each ton of rock. I have seen quarries big enough to drop whole towns into them. If we need thousands of tons of these elements every year imagine how much waste will be produced.

            With all these holes in the deserts and plains in the Western United States will it look like the surface of the moon? Will we do large scale recycling of the batteries and do it safely? Will we come up with new technologies that don’t require mining?             Of course we can continue burning fossil fuels and be the cause of the extinction of life on earth!