“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Ain’t No Ocean Deep enough to Keep You Away.”

Bird’s-Eye: Change is coming. As Alternet calls out for an end to mountaintop removal (satellite pictures show how appalling it is) Obama effectively stops it in the US. Meanwhile shortcuts over the Great Barrier Reef in Australia don’t work out so well either for a Chinese coal ship, or for the reef itself.

* Mountaintop Removal Alternet

Like “Climate Change” – the two words are very ordinary, but then also impossibly scary.  Without emotion or “color” – they are simple and simply unbelievable.  Mountaintop removal is so uncomfortable that it is sometimes shortened to MTR, like a company or the initials of a President.  That is a mistake.  We should always lumber through the entire phrase, mountaintop removal.

In fact, “Mountaintop Removal” – let’s put it in caps from now on.  It is our banner.  The phrase was first mouthed, listened to and insistently repeated by the ordinary people who witnessed the abomination.  They stared and they covered their children’s eyes and they said these words.

* Satellite Photos Reveal How Mountaintop Removal Is Scarring Appalachia TreeHugger

From high-profile protests to rowdy political debates, coal-mining by the way of mountaintop removal is a hotly-contended issue. It has a terrible environmental and human cost (see how the estimated health costs outweigh MTR’s economic ‘benefits’ ), while supporters say it’s a livelihood that boosts local economies. But make no mistake, regardless of where you stand, images can say more than a thousand debates and as these recent time-lapse satellite photos released by NASA show (more after the jump), mountain-top removal is a practice that visibly scars the landscape, voraciously eating up forests, streams and valleys.

* New Regulations Will Put An End To Mountaintop Mining The Guardian

The Obama administration effectively called time today on one of the most destructive industries in America, proposing new environmental guidelines for mountaintop mining removal.

The move was seen as a bold action from the White House, which has in the past disappointed environmental organisations for failing to move more aggressively on pollution and climate change.

But in a conference call with journalists, just an hour after the administration for the first time finalised regulations setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, officials spelled out guidelines that they acknowledged would make it virtually impossible for mining companies in Appalachia to carry on with business as usual.

* Chinese ship ‘gouged two mile scar’ in Great Barrier Reef Raw Story

A Chinese ship that spent nine days stranded on the Great Barrier Reef gouged a three-kilometre (two-mile) scar in the coral that could take decades to recover, a top expert said on Tuesday. David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the body overseeing the heritage-listed marine park, said the Shen Neng 1 coal carrier had been grinding against and crushing the reef after it veered off course and smashed into it on April 3. Officials have expressed anger over the incident and accused the crew of the ship, which was refloated late on Monday and towed away, of taking an illegal route.

* Australia Arrests Chinese Crew Of Grounded Coal Ship Reuters

Australian police arrested on Wednesday two senior crew members of a Chinese coal ship which ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, charging them with damaging the reef by failing to sail a correct course. Chinese bulk carrier Shen Neng 1 was fully loaded and traveling at full speed on April 3 when it struck the Douglas Shoal, toward the southern end of the protected reef, which covers 346,000 sq km (133,600 sq miles) off the northeast coast.