Appalachia
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VIDEO: Weeklong Mountaintop-removal Tree-sit Ends
For a joyously peaceful week, residents beneath Massey Energy’s Edwight mountaintop-removal site in the Pettry Bottom community in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia have received a reprieve from reckless blasting, fly rock, silica-dust showers, and potential flooding–thanks to tree-sitter Nick Stocks, who voluntarily came down at 10:00 a.m. on Monday. The seventh day […]
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Verizon sponsors climate-change-denying mountaintop-removal rally?
UPDATE, Sept. 2: The folks over at Credo Action are encouraging Verizon customers to communicate their displeasure with the company’s sponsorship — via Twitter, Facebook and Email. — Verizon Wireless needs to reconsider its “Friends and Family” feature–or, more pointedly, withdraw its support for Massey Energy’s outrageously bogus “Friends of America” rally on Labor Day […]
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Who are the faces behind FACES of Coal?
Yet another pro-coal group has popped up to rally folks against climate action. The Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security — or FACES of Coal — joins a growing list of “grassroots” groups formed to support fossil fuels. The “faces” shown on the group’s website include a smiling flower vender, a child playing golf, […]
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We are all from Wise County
Want to get really angry about health care and global warming? Not the ginned-up rage of the Obama-was-really-born-in-Kenya crowd, but an anger that fires you up to take action in the name of justice? Anger like the rage felt by so many white Northerners and Southerners in 1963 when they saw Birmingham’s fire hoses turned […]
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News: Big coal juice down, plummets to 42.6%
This interesting news arrived from Appalachian Voices, the North Carolina-based organization that is one of most creative and effective national leaders in the campaign to get beyond Big Coal: THE DECLINING POWER OF COAL: DOWN TO 42.6 % ELECTRICAL GENERATION The coal industry and their associated front groups like to claim that coal provides more than […]
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Rep. Hechler to Greens: We need more hellraisers
While Big Coal continues to bankroll the largest public relations campaign of “clean coal” denial in recent history, former US Representative and historian Ken Hechler has issued an urgent wake up call to Greens and liberal Democrats: Tragic lessons in history remind us that the coal crisis and its deniers call for more hellraisers, not […]
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Foreign disbelief of topless America
Spoleto, Umbria — When President Barack Obama trundled into the bel paese of Italy for the G8 gathering last month, some of my neighbors in the verdant hills of Umbria were surprised to learn about their country’s small (12 percent roughly) but lingering dependence on coal-fired plants. Draping banners down four coal-fired towers of carbon […]
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West Virginia, Kentucky miners boycott Tennessee over proposed mountaintop removal restrictions
There will be no more excursions to Dollywood for Roger Horton, a coal miner who lives in West Virginia — at least not until U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) drops legislation he’s sponsoring that would limit mountaintop removal mining. Horton is the mastermind behind a tourism boycott involving miners in neighboring West Virginia and Kentucky, […]
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West Virginia redefines dirty energy as “alternative”
When you hear the phrase “alternative energy,” what comes to mind? Solar power? Wind? Hydroelectric? Not for West Virginia’s political leaders. They think a little differently. In the recent legislative session, Gov. Joe Manchin (D) championed and state lawmakers approved an energy portfolio standard bill requiring 25% of generation to come from “alternative and renewable” […]
