Kentucky

Product service systems, Microsoft, blackouts, Kentucky’s Clean Energy Corps, and cool maps

Grist has comments turned off as we transition to a new website. If you have feedback on this post or anything else, let me know: droberts at grist dot org. • One of my favorite bright green ideas: objects as a service, sometimes called “product service systems,” a fascinating and potentially revolutionary idea desperately in […]

Ashley Judd, Silas House rally against mountaintop removal

While ABC-TV maven Diane Sawyer missed the bigger picture this week in her myopic portrait of Appalachian poverty in "Children of the Mountains," hundreds of Kentuckians converged on Frankfort to celebrate their mountains and call for an end to mountaintop removal. Led by actress Ashley Judd and author Silas House, the Kentuckians rallied behind a "stream-saver" bill slowly passing through the state legislature.

Eastern Kentucky native Judd pulled no punches in her speech on the state capitol steps:

"Make no mistake about it: The coal companies are thriving. Even in this bleak economy, they are thriving. What is dying is our mountains. And they are dying so fast, my friends, so shockingly fast."

Watch a video of Judd speaking, from the Kentucky Herald-Leader:

Bestselling novelist House, a native of the eastern Kentucky coalfields, called on Gov. Steve Beshear (D-Ky.) to have the courage to confront the dirty realities of coal:

Kentucky Republican McConnell calls himself the ‘Godfather of Green’ in reelection bid

Mitch McConnell. In January, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) released an ad for his reelection campaign in which he proclaimed himself the “Godfather of Green” and an “environmental champion.” Anyone who’s followed McConnell’s 24-year career in the Senate probably mistook the ad as satire. McConnell has earned an underwhelming lifetime voting score of 7 […]

Brooks Brothers rioter turns attention to energy this election season

This post was originally published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity and is reposted on Grist with CPI’s kind permission. —– An advocacy group run by a political operative with oil industry ties (and a famous photo-op history) is spearheading a late advertising blitz to sway Senate races, spending more than $650,000 […]

Kentucky to build new coal-to-liquids plant

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

Kentucky has selected a site to build a $4 billion coal-to-liquids plant in Pike County that would produce 50,000 barrels of liquid coal a day. According to Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader:

... The county would use federal and state grant money to put the basic infrastructure in place, including water and sewer, and the company chosen to operate the facility would pay for the rest.

County officials have not yet secured funding, but Ruther­ford said he has received support from Gov. Steve Beshear, as well as several others, including state Rep. Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook.

Joe has written often about the climate dangers of coal-to-liquids, and recently about the health dangers of living near coal plants. There are also other consequences.

An Op-Ed in the Lexington Herald-Leader serves as a stark reminder that coal will never be clean. Robert Richardson, a former coal miner, writes passionately about the death of Kentucky's streams under the onslaught from mountain-top removal. On revisiting a favorite spot, he writes:

Oregon and Kentucky vote; nation yawns and rolls over

In case anyone’s still paying attention, there were two more primaries today. Hillary Clinton scored a big win in Kentucky, with 65 percent of the vote to Obama’s 30 percent. But Obama looks poised to win Oregon, and says he’s reached the delegate threshold. Various media folks are reporting that he now has an “insurmountable […]

Kentucky taxpayers pony up $400,000 a year for coal industry ‘educational materials’

Some crackerjack reporting by John Cheves in the Lexington Herald-Leader finds that the state of Kentucky sinks about $400,000 of taxpayer money a year into public campaigns that promote coal and even mountaintop-removal mining: The money is funneled through non-profit groups controlled by the coal industry … The money is used largely for statewide classroom […]

Reece on MTR mining

Erik Reese has an op-ed in the NYT about mountaintop-removal mining and a new program that shows promise in helping landscapes recover from it. Here’s the nut: Appalachia’s land is dying. Its fractured communities show the typical symptoms of hopelessness, including OxyContin abuse rates higher than anywhere in the country. Meanwhile, 22 states power houses […]

Allen Johnson rallies Christians to fight against mountaintop-removal mining

Allen Johnson. As its not-at-all euphemistic name would indicate, mountaintop-removal mining makes no effort to disguise its impact. Coal-mining companies brazenly invade Appalachian communities, blow the tops off mountains, send massive coal trucks careening up and down narrow roads, spew coal dust into the air and mining waste into the water, and terrorize residents who […]