While combating dirty fossil-fuel energy sources like coal and shale gas, activists can sometimes find themselves so intensely focused on one issue that they lose track of important developments in other related fossil fuel campaigns.

Mountain Justice Spring Break (MJSB), March 21-28 in northern West Virginia, seeks...

The Sandhill Crane is one of America's most majestic and charismatic birds.

Known worldwide as a symbol of peace, Sandhill Cranes are wading birds that can weigh over 7 lbs, with a wingspan up to 7 feet. They eat grain, berries, roots...

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is most famous for three things: Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Kentucky Derby, and University of Kentucky Wildcats basketball. Kentucky is a poor state, and images of Appalachian mountain people, coal miners and rural poverty also come to mind.

Sadly, education isn't one of the things that...

As Earth Day 2011 approaches, it's nice to take a moment to reflect back on how far we've come in the environmental movement. Although enormous progress has been made, as an environmental activist, I often feel overwhelmed by the daily onslaught of bad news: the nuclear disaster in Japan, the...

A Harvard University study published on Feb 17, 2011, has determined that the true costs of using coal to generate electricity in America are between $330 and $500 billion dollars annually. The study, "Mining Coal, Mounting Costs -- The Life Cycle Consequences of Coal" by the Harvard Medical...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is perhaps best known as the home of the Pirates and the Steelers, and the birthplace of the mighty Ohio River. This week the city is trying to put on its best face for the International Coal Conference and the G20 Summit of world leaders, chaired...

Every day, coal companies in Appalachia use over 4 million pounds of explosives to blast the tops off densely-forested Appalachian Mountains.

That's more explosive power than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

What happens when coal companies flatten the mountains directly above Appalachian communities?

When it comes to entertainers, there is probably no American singer more wholesome, cheerful and relentlessly upbeat as country music star Dolly Parton. Raised in the Smoky Mountains of east Tennessee, Ms. Parton is the public face of Smoky Mountain tourism, exemplified by the popular Dollywood theme park in Pigeon...

On his Myspace page, "Friend of Coal" professional Bass fisherman Jeremy Starks says this about "clean coal":

When I talk to groups in West Virginia I tell them something that not everyone in my state gets. I tell them that the water around active and abandoned coal mines is...

West Virginia coal baron Don Blankenship is no stranger to controversy. His company, Massey Energy of Richmond Va., blasts the tops off of densely-forested ancient mountains in Appalachia, and he doesn't like the media asking questions about it. In the video below, he informs an ABC News cameraman investigating mountaintop...

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin is a Friend of Coal.

So when angry coal miners - allegedly from Massey Energy, which is chaired by notorious CEO Don Blankenship -- disrupted a peaceful Fourth of July picnic atop West Virginia's Kayford Mountain, home of...

Two weeks after actress Daryl Hannah and NASA climatologist James Hansen were arrested at a peaceful protest against mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia, irate coal miners disrupted the annual 4th of July community picnic atop Larry Gibson's Kayford Mountain (video below).

Kayford Mountain, just east of the...

Forty years ago, the polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, launching a wave of national concern about the environment. During the Nixon administration, the Clean Water Act of 1972 was passed, which spurred a decades-long cleanup of the river. Today, according to the New York Times, the Cuyahoga...

Kayford Mountain Action, May 23, 2009 - Images by antrim caskey

On top of West Virginia's Kayford Mountain, eight environmental activists with the groups Mountain Justice and Climate Ground...

The following is a letter from Bo Webb, of Peachtree, West Virginia, to Sen. Robert Byrd. Mr. Webb is a Vietnam veteran who now lives below a mountaintop removal coal mine, which uses huge explosives to blast away the tops of mountains.

Dear Sen. Byrd,

I write you today as...

Knoxville, Tennessee State Representative Frank Nicely (R-Strawberry Plains) is the kind of guy who says what he thinks - no matter what the facts say.

For example, while introducing legislation in the 104th Session of the Tennesee General Assembly to combat the deadly scourge of eco-terrorism in south Knoxville, Rep....

The following is a letter from Bo Webb of West Virginia to President Obama:

Dear President Obama,

As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust,...

When it comes to coal company eco-villains, no one fits the bill better than Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.

Richmond, Virginia-based Massey is best known for its October, 2000 spill of 300 million gallons of coal waste into two pristine mountain streams in Martin County, Kentucky: Wolf Creek and Coldwater...

In West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, the people of the Appalachian coalfields are fighting for a basic human right: clean water to drink, cook, and bathe.

What would you do if your water looked like this?

If you have been closely following the two spills of coal waste by the Tennessee Valley Authority in Tennessee and Alabama, you may have noticed an inordinate amount of Orwellian language and doublespeak coming from the mouths of certain politicians and TVA officials.

TVA seems determined to bury the public...