Capitol Action to End Dependence on Coal

Power Shift, a youth led training and nonviolent protest/civil disobedience action in DC, brought thousands of protesters to the coal plant that fuels the White House and Congress. The issue is about America's dependence on coal at a time when the imperative to reduce green house gas emissions grows stronger every day. The action brought Robert Kennedy, Jr., Bill McKibbens, and Wendall Berry and movie stars to join with green energy advocates and youth concerned about a sustainable future.

Kennedy spoke eloquently about ending the most egregious process in coal mining: mountain top removal mining. As he explained, every week an explosion the size of Hiroshima bomb is obliterating the Appalachian Mountains.

As citizens in the American southwest face warming temperatures and the threat of water shortages, and people in Victoria, Australia face the horrors of more deadly fires from long term drought and spiking temps on their side of the globe, we must get a grip on our carbon based emissions economy and, as Van Jones has shown us, marry the Green Jobs Movement to the production of the new grids and energy sources that are nonpolluting for a viable future.

Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act Introduce into NC Legislature Today

Follow this link to learn about progress by Appalachian Voices NC Team working with Representative Pricey Harrison to end the use of mountain top removal energy by NC (30% of its energy comes from MTR coal production.)

For breaking news in VA follow this link. Oral argument took place today before the Virginia Supreme Court in Appalachian Voices, et al. v. State Corporation Commission, et al. (No. 081433), in which a coalition of environmental groups is attempting to block construction of Dominion Virginia Power’s 583-MW coal-fired power plant in Wise County, Virginia.

High Country Excursion

Over the last month I have seen my father through two surgeries and into rehab, closed down a personal business, put my things in storage, moved to Boone, N.C. in High Country of western North Carolina. Moving from the Gulf Coast of Florida to the Appalachian Mountains - especially in the winter months - is a jarring experience.

Staying at a friend's condo, complete with her wonderful library of mountain literture, I've reentered a world I once knew well when I lived in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Johnson City, Tennessee where I was born. The Appalachians are old and embued with a distinct energy that is both dark and disturbing as well as mysterious and inspiring. Here in these hills and hollers my relatives lived, worked, and struggled to make a good living. They were farmers and tinkers from Germany and Ireland; on my mother's side, Cherokee blood flows through our family tree. My great grandmother grew tobacco and corn on the Clinch River where her Cherokee relatives had lived for millenia.

Coal is richly laced through these mountains and therein lies the struggles of the mountain people, and the wealth of a few companies to which we are all dependent today for our energy. North Carolina obtains 80% of its energy from coal combustion. Much of it is now coming from mountain top removal, a relatively new method that while efficient for coal companies is literally blowing up mountains and covering or polluting streams, rivers, and wells - and thus thousands of Americans living on or near these ancient mountains.

Go to iLoveMountains to listen to the voices of the American citizens living in the wake of MTR.
Read one person's testimony to Barack Obama about living in terror: MTR in West VA.

This will be a theme of my blog for some time as this issue is directly related to sustainable energy production and the imperative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Coal burning contributes more per unit of energy to the CO2 emissions than anyother kind of energy.

Another Genocide is Happening - Call Congress Now

Dear Reader,

Gaza is without electricity and water, children and women are dying by the hundreds, and now we learn that Israel is using phosphorus laden weapons. I have no more patience for this nation of ours that will sit in its legislature and cooly vote to continue to support Israel. It is about our own national security and not the high principles that we purportedly stand for. What have we become? I am not interested in who is right or wrong, only that innocents are slaughtered.

I vote for a coliseum where teams from warring nations can duke it out to the death...but the stadium seats will be empty. Let the politicians and terrorists take the bullets. I wonder how long the war would last?

Please go to your congressional representatives: http://www.house.gov/house/orgs_pub_hse_ldr_www.shtml

Make a call, email and blog to stop this humanitarian crisis. Another one that we are sitting out, clenching our national jaw and supporting Israel REGARDLESS for some policy. How much longer are we going to take these spineless stances, too afraid to upset our so called foreign relations.

There is only one kind of relation with which we should be concerned: human relations.

http://www.democracynow.org/. Democracy Now is airing REAL information and news, not the crap with which our major news channels distract citizens from the real work of free citizens in a democracy.

Act please act.