Burning the Future: Coal in America

Challenges the concept of "clean coal", documenting the devastating ecological, social and health impact of mountain-top removal coal mining. 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.

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