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Jessica Kennedy
Jessica is the editorial communications intern for Appalachian Voices.
Just a week from today, Appalachian Voices will present a night of music, speakers and inspiration featuring leading environmental activist Jeff Goodell and Grammy-award winner Kathy Mattea.
Artists for Appalachia celebrates Appalachian Voices’ 15th anniversary working to save the mountains of Appalachia. The event will be held in the Jefferson Theater in Charlottesville, Va., Thursday, June 21. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the program starts at 8 p.m.
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Donna Branham recently joined other Appalachian women in West Virginia in shaving her head in an act of mourning and protest against the destruction of the mountains. (Photo by Jamie Goodman)
I’ve never seen mountaintop removal. I’ve seen it in pictures, books, movies. I’ve seen it in dreams and reconstructed it in my head. I’ve pictured its destruction settling in my mountains – the giant hills that make Boone the town it is. I am thankful mountaintop removal has not made its home in North Carolina.
One day, I hope I will see it up close so that I can begin to feel the magnitude of it. But after last week, I have seen so much more than stripped mountains. At The Alliance for Appalachia’s 7th annual End Mountaintop Removal Week In Washington, I met people whose lives have been altered, whose health has been damaged, whose homes have been destroyed – all because of mountaintop removal. Seeing the damage to these innocent people was perhaps more powerful than seeing the stripped remains of the mountains themselves.
One Appalachian resident said witnessing mountaintop removal is like seeing someone you love die.
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"Why we come to Washington"
We’re in the nation’s capital for our 7th Annual Week in Washington! Most of us arrived last night, and we’re spending all day training to hit the ground running tomorrow. We’ll be lobbying Monday and Tuesday and having our Day of Action and group lobby on Wednesday. Even if you’re not here, we’d love to have your support…
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Faith leaders from across the country testified for the environment in Washington, D.C., Thursday in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever proposed limits on carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants.
The proposed limits would cut 123 billion pounds of carbon emissions annually. Power plants in the United States currently emit 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. New plants would be limited to no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon per megawatt hour of power produced.
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Just because it’s listed in the “Facts” section of FacesOfCoal.org doesn’t mean it’s true.
Coal industry front group FACES of Coal reports that coal supplies half the electricity consumed by Americans. But data released May 8 show that coal didn’t even come close to providing half of the country’s electricity in this year’s first quarter.
According to the Short-Term Energy Outlook report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up only 36 percent of the country’s electricity in the first quarter of 2012. This is a nearly 20 percent drop from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
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