Kentucky
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Coal Miners Join Historic Rallies to End Mountaintop Removal Today
When oh when will it be over? When will I lay these burdens down? — Dwight Yoakam, Miner’s Prayer As we huddle in our homes on this wintry day, appreciating the warmth generated by coal-fired electricity, we need to listen to Kentucky coal miners Carl Shoupe, Elmer Lloyd and Stanley Sturgill on the true cost […]
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Kentucky lawmakers demonstrate how to defend dirty coal subsidies
Cross-posted from Wonk Room. President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget would cut $2.28 billion in coal subsidies over the next decade. These $228 million-a-year cuts are dwarfed by the $545 million-a-year subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration technology, which Obama insists on calling “clean coal technology.” How are Kentucky lawmakers responding to this effective doubling of […]
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Post-Copenhagen pledge: Coal free future begins in Kentucky
This post was co-written by Stephanie Pistello, Ben Evans, and Ben Sollee, co-founders of the Coal Free Future Project. On the heels of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, we plan to make our own post-Copenhagen pledge here at home: It’s time to envision a coal-free future. It’s time for clean energy independence. For those of us […]
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University of Kentucky dorm renamed Wildcat Coal Lodge despite student protests
In a throwback to 19th century backroom deal making, University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr. and several members of the UKY Board of Trustees refused to consider any formal student statements this week during their meeting to barter away the name of a Wildcat basketball dorm for Big Coal donations, and then fled […]
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Should the Department of Justice investigate Big Coal bedlam?
UPDATE: Every American — including the Army Corps of Engineers — must watch this powerful new 20-minute film by Chad Stevens on the real costs and consequences of mountaintop removal mining: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining. Now, the good news: on behalf of their children’s future, coalfield residents and miners calmly came […]
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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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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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Coalfield residents respond to Obama’s announcement on mountaintop removal
In the wake of last month’s approval of 42 of 48 mountaintop removal and mining permits as “environmentally responsible,” the EPA, Department of Interior and Council on Environmental Quality today announced “unprecedented steps to reduce environmental impacts of mountaintop coal mining.” Not mountaintop removal, mind you. In the accompanying press release, EPA Administrator Lisa P. […]
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15 green-leaning mayors
Climate change is a global problem — but as of yet, there’s no global solution. That’s why mayors across the U.S. are taking action, from building green to organizing bike rides, from redeveloping downtowns to cutting emissions. Here are just a few of the municipal leaders who have worked to take our collective future into […]
