Country music legend Willie Nelson is joining the fight in Congress to protect Appalachian communities from the impacts of the devastating mining practice of mountaintop removal. In a new music video that depicts dynamiting operations in Appalachia and their ruinous consequences, the American icon sings “America the Beautiful” to highlight opposition to giving coal companies free rein […]
This entry is the first of a two-part follow up to the blog Long wrote last fall. This first entry focuses on the national story, the next entry will focus on coal in the west. Across the U.S., economics are increasingly favoring investment in renewable energy at the expense of dirty coal energy. As the price of solar […]
Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) announced yesterday the release of a new report which highlights the global scale of killing and trade in whales in the twenty-first century. WDC demonstrates that consumption or utilization of whale and dolphin meat and by-products is not confined to just a few nations, as many people believe. Rather, killing and trade is […]
Today the U.S. Supreme Court denied the coal mining industry’s request to hear a case against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for vetoing part of a permit for one of the largest and most harmful mountaintop removal coal mines in West Virginia’s history, the Spruce No. 1 mine. By declining to take the case the […]
Laura Mistretta is a senior Environmental Science and Policy major at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. As a student of environmental science I have made it a priority to understand the root causes of climate change in the hopes of contributing to a solution. My classes have highlighted numerous possible points of intervention: […]
Today, on the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, Greenpeace climbers scaled an ExxonMobil rig destined to drill in the Russian Arctic. The activists are calling for a ban on offshore oil drilling in the Arctic and for renewed efforts to fight climate change. “We are here today, on the 25th anniversary […]