West Virginia
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Labor Day of Infamy
How easy to be cynical on this Labor Day, and declare it a day that will live in infamy for coal miners and coalfield residents and green job advocates across the nation. But thanks to United Mine workers like Terry Steele, and West Virginia military veterans like Chris Carey, and green job advocates like Van […]
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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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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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Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Jay Rockefeller Sen. Jay Rockefeller has expressed concerns about the impact a climate bill would have on West Virginia’s coal industry. He’s probably more likely to vote for a bill than his home-state colleague Robert Byrd, but he would need to be assured that whatever bill passes isn’t too hard on the coal industry. “Senator […]
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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” […]
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Mountaintop removal defenders disrupt July 4th music festival in West Virginia
The Mountain Keepers Music Festival took place this place this July 4th weekend at a park on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, an event organized by the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation in solidarity against mountaintop removal mining. But Saturday’s fun was disrupted when some 20 supporters of Massey Energy, a coal company with mountaintop […]
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Big Coal does not want you to see this film
As a groundbreaking clean energy counterpart to this summer’s extraordinary Food, Inc. documentary on the agribusiness, the long-awaited “Coal Country” film on the cradle-to-grave process of generating our coal-fired electricity will be hitting the theaters next week with the big bang of an ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive. And Big Coal ain’t happy. Here’s the trailer: […]
