Feature Articles
In early November 1996, workers arriving for the morning shift at the Louisiana Pacific plant in Dungannon, Virginia, were told to go home. After 10 years of operation, the plant, which used the region’s forests to manufacture oriented strand board, a type of engineered wood commonly used in construction, had closed without warning. The facility was profitable, according to a company official...
The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all.
—Wendell Berry, Unsettling of America
Coal Mining in Appalachia
Coal mining has been practiced in Appalachia since the Revolutionary War. An upsurge in extraction began with the twentieth century.1 By its end, increased mechanization produced enough coal to provide over 50...
Noteworthy
In April 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a landmark decision to create new strict water quality guidelines that would minimize valley fills at mountaintop removal sites. These...
The financial crisis has put stress on many government programs, from education to health care to efforts to fight poverty and climate change. One of the leading responses has been to call for further...
The military’s war on junk food has commenced. A recent report released by Mission Readiness, a nonprofit group of more than 130 high-ranking, retired military leaders, argues that childhood obesity is...
James Cameron, complete with orange war paint and a spear, was in the Brazilian Amazon recently, screening his movie Avatar for the region’s indigenous leaders and pledging to help them stop...
An estimated 350 million acres of forest covered the southern United States in the year 1600. Today, about 40 percent of this total acreage has been converted for agriculture or lost to suburban sprawl...
In 2007, the U.S. military establishment placed itself at odds with the Bush administration by recognizing the link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and the threats posed to national security by...
The development of megacities has been championed by the World Bank and some environmentalists as the most efficient way to shepherd the Earth's resources as world population increases. However, a...
Last October, the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $151 million in funding for 37 bold energy projects. The agency was created to seed high-risk, high-...
Thanks to a much-anticipated new solid oxide fuel cell, Bloom Energy, a California-based tech firm, claims it could soon power America's green-energy future. Late last February, Bloom Energy unveiled...
Many studies have shown that permanently closed marine protected areas conserve fish populations and fisheries, and there have been several ambitious calls to establish these areas and reserve networks...
Is algaculture—the growing of algae to produce biofuel—set to make a breakthrough in 2010?
Last year saw the first algae-powered flight, when a Continental Boeing 737-800 flew over the Gulf of...
The countries of northern Europe have agreed to build a huge network of renewables that will connect offshore wind farms in northern Scotland to solar panels in Germany to wave power and...
Costa Rica recently topped the New Economic Foundation’s Happy Planet Index, confirming what the country’s enlightened leadership has been propounding to its neighbors for years: countries with the...
China has announced its first carbon intensity target, which aims to slow the increase of emissions relative to economic growth by 40-45% from 2005 levels by 2020. Carbon intensity is a phrase much...
More than half of the world’s coral reefs are under direct threat from human activities. Growth rates on some reefs have fallen by fourteen percent since the 1990s. Many scientists are concerned that...
Perspectives
Most communities around the world aren’t yet aware of how climate change will drastically impact their land, economy, and way of life. But the downsides of a fossil fuel–based economy are already well known in the coalfields of central Appalachia...
In the history of Appalachian coal mining, Harlan County, Kentucky, is a landmark in the grassroots fight for better living and working conditions. Labor unrest in the 1930s earned the county the nickname “Bloody Harlan.” Intense organizing...
In 1998, tobacco was Kentucky's top cash crop. Kentucky was one of the three states with the largest number of family farms still in operation—and domestic tobacco was their main crop.
Major changes swept over the tobacco industry that...
I don't use the term "clean coal." There will always be environmental issues surrounding the production and use of coal. But for the foreseeable future, global energy demands are going to require us to keep on burning it. That has brought...
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Adaptation Learning’s website showcases the latest reports on global readiness for climate change. Launched in 2007, the organization explores some of the key challenges we face: adapting to...
Groups
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Exploring solutions presented in our special July/August issue on Appalachia
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Bowdoin College's Phil Camill offers a fresh perspective to the issues surrounding environmental change.
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This is the University of Vermont Solutions Group. We are based in and around Burlington, VT.
Author Response
Carbon Farming
Revisionist History !?!
Great insite to a sometimes forgotten area!
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