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Mountaintop Removal: A View From Up Above
Recently, thanks to a nonprofit flight operation called SouthWings, I had the opportunity to fly in a small airplane over a mountaintop removal coal mining site in West Virginia.
We flew over the Hobet mountaintop removal mining site, which measures to more than 20 square miles of demolition, and though I will try to put what I saw into words, it can only really be understood through the eyes. So I’m sharing a few photos that illustrate a scale of destruction that words cannot convey.
Senate Bill Kills Coal Ash Cleanup Efforts
ND Senators lead the effort despite evidence of “poor-rated” coal ash ponds in their state
Read MoreHouse Passes TRAIN Act/Wreck
We all deserve to breathe clean air, but the House of Representatives today acted as if our air doesn’t need to be quite so clean. Guided by Rep. Eric Cantor’s toxic dirty-air agenda and a host of political paybacks to dirty-industry campaign contributors, the House passed a bill to block the Environmental Protection Agency from…
Read MoreAn Ill Wind Blows in Moapa
It starts with a warning. Then it's just a matter of which way the wind blows.
Read MoreOne Baaaaad Mother…
I love my mother with all of my heart. But if for some strange reason I had to choose another, I’d probably go with Cherise Udell. Cherise is the founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air—a group of hundreds of mothers who "use the power of moms to clean up Utah’s dirty air." I had…
Read MoreBudget Hijack Is Avant-Garde Politics
A thousand political fires are burning in Washington, D.C., as members of the House of Representatives hijack the budgeting process. They aim to torch critical environmental safeguards—from endangered species protections to standards that keep our air and water clean. Their strategy? Since Congress has to pass a spending bill that funds government agencies—the EPA, Forest…
Read MoreMonday Reads: The Hawk Cam Edition
Polar bears may be the poster child for climate change, but our warming world is affecting flora and fauna up the food chain and down. Birds of prey are no exception. As temperatures change, some areas get drier, others get wetter—and the landscape that the birds have relied on and adapted to becomes increasingly foreign.…
Read More"Smell of Death" Described at Clean Air Public Hearings
Environmental Protection Agency hearings today in Philadelphia and Chicago drew crowds of clean air advocates—including a man who described the “smell of death” from a coal-fired power plant in his town. The hearings are focused on a proposal to clean up mercury and other toxic pollution from coal-fired power plants, our nation’s worst polluters. While these citizens are…
Read MoreWhy They Fight for Clean Air
We talk about the importance of clean air a lot on these digital pages, but I could never express that sentiment as eloquently as the Clean Air Ambassadors who went to Washington, D.C. last week. Take, for example, the words of Dr. Lynn Ringenberg, a pediatrician from Tampa Bay, Florida. Lynn Ringenberg: This photo really…
Read MoreOn World Asthma Day, a Visit to the White House
Alex Allred and her family are surrounded by cement. Not concrete, which is made from cement, but the big industrial facilities that crush and heat limestone to make cement. She lives in Midlothian, TX, an area known locally as “The Cement Capital of Texas,” a distinction that Alex and her family cannot appreciate. Her son…
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