Blackjewel’s Bankruptcy Filing Is a Harbinger of Trouble Ahead for the Plummeting Coal Industry
The company wants to walk away from almost 200 mining permits in four states, potentially leaving thousands of acres of environmentally damaged land.
March 3, 2021
Unemployed Blackjewel coal miner David Pratt holds his daughter Willow as he walks across railroad tracks that lead to one of the company s mines near Cumberland, Kentucky in 2019. Blackjewel miners found themselves unemployed when the company declared bankruptcy and the workers final paychecks bounced, leading them to blockade the tracks to prevent the train carrying the mine s final shipment of coal from leaving until they were paid their wages. Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images
A Legacy of the New Deal, Electric Cooperatives Struggle to Democratize and Make a Green Transition
FDR program to electrify rural America is now beset by expensive coal plants and often-hidebound governing boards, as members clamor for transparency and renewables.
President Roosevelt delivers a speech at the dedication of the U.S. Rural Electrification Project. Credit: Getty Images
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What began three years ago as a campaign to stop the spraying of weedkiller under power lines near homes in the Appalachian mountains of northeast Tennessee, has become an example of a more democratic process at electric cooperatives across the country.
In Georgia Senate Race, Warnock Brings a History of Black Faith Leaders’ Environmental Activism
Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached and Warnock is senior pastor, has been a leader in embracing climate action.
December 31, 2020
The Rev. Raphael Warnock at the funeral in July of Rep. John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Credit: Alyssa Pointer-Pool/Getty Images
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Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor and his funeral was held, has been a leader in a growing movement among American Black churches to embrace environmental activism.
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For Darilyn Turner and her neighbors, living in the bottomlands along the banks of the Mississippi River south of New Orleans is particularly perilous from June through November.
Those months encompass the Atlantic hurricane season. Even in a normal year, people are on edge, she said, worried about storms that blow over the Gulf of Mexico, bringing walls of water, high winds and, often, widespread destruction when they find land.
But 2020 was no normal year.
A record Atlantic basin hurricane season was fueled by warmer than normal ocean and Gulf waters that scientists say were, at least in part, caused by climate change. In all, there were 30 named storms, the most on record and almost three times the typical number. The basin includes the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.