Perspectives
An offbeat, refreshing look at solutions brought to you by the business leaders and academics, policy makers and designers who are in the field.
Latest 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, a region including southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee. Central Appalachia’s coal economy has severely altered the landscape and created communities made up of "haves and have-nots."1 But by creating jobs in ways that improve the land, air, and water, a green jobs strategy can set a new course for a needed economic transition.
Coal mining currently employs around 38,000 people in central Appalachia, and miners make good salaries. But due largely to mechanization, those jobs now...
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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 continues today, as Harlan County resident leaders help their communities transition from a coal economy into one based on renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Poor communities in Appalachia face a complex range of historical challenges. There are few employment alternatives to coal-related jobs, even though Kentucky’s coal industry employs a third of the workers that it did 30 years ago, largely due to the increased mechanization of the industry and the use of more “efficient”—and devastating—forms of mining such as mountaintop removal....
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Meet the Perspective Authors
Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics; Gordon and Lulie Gund Professor of Ecological Economics; and co-founder of the International Society for Ecological Economics.
Other Perspectives
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...
There is nothing so fixed about the future that it can’t be un-fixed.
—Myles Horton, the Highlander Center
My family has been on the roller coaster of central Appalachia’s economy for the past 150 years. We have gone from subsistence...
"The land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me." —Leviticus 25:23
Kathy Lindquist knew she was going to die. She must have. After spending most of her adult life battling lymphoma,...
For hundreds of years, it wasn't uncommon for farmers in Europe to till their land and plant their crops only to see the soil wash away by year's end. Before they started all over again, many had to carry the lost soil back up to the...
A week after the November 2008 elections, my civic software company, Front Seat (www.frontseat.org), launched ObamaCTO.org to collect ideas on priorities for one of Obama’s campaign promises—appointing the country’s first Chief Technology...
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.
