Dirty Coal

After serving her country as a major in the U.S. Army for 22 years, Marilyn Mullens is now leading a group of her fellow Appalachian women to the West Virginia state capitol on Memorial Day to protest the growing humanitarian crisis of mountaintop removal mining.

What energy companies should be doing is focusing on how to transition away from dangerous fossil fuels and invest in clean energy and a just transition for workers. One key measure that will help that transition is, unfortunately, in jeopardy.

Activists in North Carolina tagged Apple's logo on the coal trains today, calling out the tech company's increasingly coal-fired needs at it expanding Maiden, NC, datacenter.

Annenberg Weingarten's gift, like the very heritage he explores, is a wonderful legacy, and one that the rest of the nation needs to know as they flip on their lights and electricity each day.

Americans are already paying the price for record heat waves, dirty air, and an unstable climate. We need to fight these threats with every weapon we have, and the electricity industry has to do its fair share. The new carbon standard will help make that happen.

Every family has the right to breathe clean air, free from the toxic pollution. By establishing carbon pollution protections, the EPA is moving forward to clean up and modernize the way we power our country.

Far from a trickle, according to the EPA, "110 individual and general mining permits have been issued by the Corps of Engineers since the Obama administration began under section 404 of the Clean Water Act."

One of the most important film documentaries in years, turning the light on the dark side of all mining, Coal Rush faithfully documents the long-running legal proceedings until the final settlement in the summer of 2011.

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport. The 'GNR' is also now available on your cell phone via Stitcher Radio's mobile app!. IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: March roa...

Besieged residents living amid the fallout of the mountaintop removal crisis in the central Appalachian coalfields are descending on Washington, D.C. ...

"The Hand of Man" takes the listener to White Star Holler in Kentucky, where seven generations of mountain families have struggled to defend their lives and livelihoods from the toxic fallout from coal company destruction.

Fossil fuels seem cheap and convenient now, but when we get hit with the true costs -- of a spoiled environment, of missing out on vital future industries like clean energy, of a mounting public health burden, of possible war -- we'll see we were had.

This is where the urgency and solidarity and audacious determination of national organizations -- and residents across the country -- are desperately needed, on a par with the tar sands movement. If we can stop the proposed Keystone pipeline, we can stop mountaintop removal.

No matter how we try to minimize fossil fuel impacts, we can't avoid the fact that these substances are inherently dirty. Oil, gas and coal are at their core, toxic substances. And as a result they are dangerous to humans and wildlife.

Today is Day 12,580 of the mountaintop removal mining disaster, the most egregious human rights and environmental violation in our country and perhaps one of the most discussed but shamefully ignored humanitarian crises in our nation.

Today, President Obama announced new standards to reduce mercury, lead, and other dangerous pollution from power plants. Now dirty coal-fired plants that fought standards for decades will finally have to clean up their act.

It's an important moment for Americans who eat fish or use electricity. After more than two decades of delays, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to issue a new regulation restricting some power plant emissions that have polluted the nation's air and water.

On Dec. 16, Obama is expected to release new standards for protecting us from mercury due to power plant emissions. All of us have reason to be glad, but parents should especially welcome this long overdue protection.