Right now, one of our best hopes for ending mountaintop removal mining lies in the EPA’s power to regulate water pollution. As it stands, Lisa Jackson (or another EPA executive) could, with a few strokes of her pen, take dramatic steps toward ending the cultural and environmental attack on Appalachia.
But a bill moving through the [...]

I spent the last week of October in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, hiking, photographing the rivers and foliage, and taking in the stunning landscapes. While the trip made my RYSE post a bit late, it also deepened my understanding of the value of pristine mountains, specifically the Appalachians.
Because of their National Park status, [...]

Cross-posted from Gosztola Blog (http://open.salon.com/blog/kevin_gosztola)
By Kevin Gosztola
Over a thousand Appalachian residents and activists participated in a rally and march in Washington, D.C. on Monday, September 27th. The action was the culmination of a multi-day convergence that had been put together by a coalition known as Appalachia Rising, which organized the activity to advance the movement [...]

Let’s start from the basics: Do you know what mountaintop removal coal mining is? Here are resources in case you don’t: previous RYSE blog posts (here & here). Also, it has received some pretty good coverage in the New York Times lately, including this video.
Now, have you heard of Appalachia Rising? It is a weekend [...]

I went to college on the coast of North Carolina – a medium sized school called UNC Wilmington. During my first semester there, I realized that my environmental-minded thinking was definitely in the minority. There was negligible activism, no environmental club, and the dorms barely even recycled. Not really knowing how to change things, I [...]