If the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to stop the massive environmental destruction of historic mountain ranges and essential drinking water for a relatively tiny amount of coal, can we honestly believe they will be able to phase out coal emissions at the level necessary to stop climate change?...

I think at the Obama administration we all believe that everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts, whether it's...

This Friday, November 13th, marks the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Mine Disaster in Illinois, when an estimated 259 coal miners lost their lives to fire and the buildup of "black damp" or toxic gases. The St. Paul Coal Company Mine in Cherry was hailed by its consulting engineer as...

While one did sing, the other did shout,
And the angel unlocked the door.
He had the keys to the kingdom, Lord

Any CD album that begins with a haunting Uzbek-influenced trumpet and percussion backup on Ralph Stanley's gospel classic, "Keys to the Kingdom," and ends with Willie...

It's funny how these embarrassing announcements always come on late Friday afternoon.

While anti-mountaintop removal protests spread across the nation and at the EPA headquarters in Washington, DC last Friday, a legal representative for the Department of Interior checked the empty parking lot of the National Press Club and...

BREAKING NEWS: The Coalfield Uprising is spreading across the nation.

As millions of pounds of explosions rip across their mountain communities, including the clean energy landmark of Coal River Mountain, scores of residents from the Appalachian coalfields have joined with supporters from across the country in a series...

Call it October Madness. Or, Night Comes to the Kentucky Wildcats' Big Dance.

In a throwback to 19th century backroom deal making, University of Kentucky President Lee T. Todd Jr. and several members of the UKY Board of Trustees refused to consider any formal student statements this week during...

On the same streets in the Windy City where a young liberal Democratic activist named Francis Peabody peddled "smoke-free clean coal" in the 1890s, an estimated 400 Chicago residents marched to the infamous Fisk Generating Station coal-fired plant for the Chicago 350 Climate Action last week.

Eight activists were...

The Battle at Coal River Mountain has officially begun.

At the same time President Barack Obama invoked the "legacy of daring men and women" in our nation's quest for renewable energy initiatives, and as millions of concerned citizens rallied in support of 350.org climate change events around the...

James Hoggan and his DeSmogBlog.com posse might be our nation's most important sleuths--and they ain't even from the United States.

Not that climate destabilization knows any boundaries. Not that climate change deniers and public relation firms hired by dirty energy corporations pledge allegiance to any country's well-being.

Drawing on...

As a supportive crowd sang, "This land is your land, this land is my land," seven peaceful sit-in activists were arrested in Governor Joe Manchin's office at the West Virginia state capitol at 5pm this afternoon, as part of the growing national coalfield uprising to stop mountaintop removal mining. Today's...

Big News: In a historic move, Lisa Jackson's EPA threw down the gauntlet on mountaintop removal mining last Friday--after they had just compromised on another massively destructive mountaintop removal operation.

Is this the beginning of the end of the plunder of Appalachia--or is the EPA moving sideways to...

UPDATE: Every American--including the Army Corps of Engineers--must watch this powerful new 20-minute film by Chad Stevens on the real costs and consequences of mountaintop removal mining: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining

Now, the good news: On behalf of their children's future, coalfield residents and...

As Consol Energy crews clean up another mysterious coal slurry spill in West Virginia today, the nation's largest producer of high-Btu bituminous coal -- and an aggressive operator of devastating mountaintop removal and longwall mines -- will be closely watching the nomination hearing of their southwestern PA...

It wasn't enough for FACES -- the bogus Big Coal front created by a Washington, DC lobby firm -- to be pilloried on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Daily Show for using fake iStock photos in their ads.

Now comes Big Coal Gone Wild: The Sequel....

In his speech at the UN Summit on Climate Change today, President Barack Obama admonished world leaders that their nations "cannot allow the old divisions that have characterized the climate debate for so many years to block our progress."

Yet, during this week-long summit to lay the groundwork for...

This might be the shameless story of the week: Either that, or West Virginia University president James P. Clements has a lot of explaining to do--especially to the widows and children of the deceased miners in Crandall Canyon, Utah, and to the sick children and ailing communities in the Coal...

Many readers of the New York Times probably dropped their jaws in amazement at the lead story last Sunday: Seven-year-old Ryan Massey, of Prenter, West Virginia, smiled back with capped teeth, the enamel devoured by toxic tap water. His brother sported scabs and rashes, courtesy of the heavy metals--including...

Invoking an earlier promise to "use the best science and follow the letter of the law," Lisa Jackson's EPA, with a little help from her friends at the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Interior, announced today that 79 pending mountaintop removal mining permits in the Appalachian coalfields...

Big Coal giant and mountaintop removal king Massey Energy is getting strip-mined of its "Friends of America" rhetoric, and charged for sponsoring job-taking, water-polluting and land-destroying operations.

Hours after the West Virginia state Supreme Court considered new arguments in a $85 million damage suit brought against Massey Energy,...