Want to take on Big Coal with a couple clicks on your keyboard?
A fantastic new project, SEEDS — Sustainable Energy and Economic Diversification program — is taking root in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia, at ground zero in the mountaintop removal mining and coalfield uprising, and it needs your Grist-reading help: If you think Big Coal has maintained a stranglehold on the Appalachian coalfield economy for too long, go to the Brighter Planet Fund website and vote for this great project by Oct. 15.
As a blend of high tech and land-based folk ways, the SEEDS program draws on the historical experiences and community wherewithal from the Coal River Valley to explore possibilities for economic diversification and sustainable energy in the coalfields. Over the course of the next year, the project will interview community members, identify community-led entrepreneurial projects, select five projects to support, document their work on this website, and adapt the results as lesson plans for distribution in regional high schools and colleges.
By generating a discussion about economic alternatives, and presenting them in an educational format to a wide audience of young people, this project seeks to “reduce local economic dependency on fossil fuel extraction and help educate a new generation of sustainability and justice-minded Americans.”
The project has been launched by Andrew Munn in West Virginia, with administrative support from the Coal River Mountain Watch — one of the most dynamic and important citizens organizations working on the frontlines of coal and climate change in the world today.
In order to receive a $5,000 start-up grant, the SEEDS project needs your vote at the Brighter Planet website.
And why stop there? After you vote, click over to the Coal River Mountain Watch website and see how you can donate and support their amazing work during this pivotal moment in the anti-mountaintop removal and coalfield justice movement.
