Featuring both coal and mining advocates as well as opponents, this is the preeminent film on the coal controversy. Every eleven and one-half days, the explosive equivalent of the Hiroshima atomic bomb is unleashed upon the mountains of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky - for coal. Burning the Future: Coal in America challenges the concept of "clean coal", documenting the devastating ecological, social and health impact of coal mining and mountaintop removal. The film follows the explosive forces that have set in motion a groundswell of conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia, where over 1.4 million acres of mountains have been destroyed and groundwater polluted. Confronted by a US energy policy that favors coal without sufficient regard for the negative impact its extraction causes, local activists organize to arouse the nation and help protect their health, their communities and their way of life.
"The flawless beauty of Novack's coverage of dynamited mountains, slurry pools and rapidly churned-out coal underscores the inexorability of the practice and the devastation in its wake."
Variety
"Such a rich sense of place that it rips you up in ways that other, less-rooted documentaries don't. I cannot recommend it too highly."
