The United States has built no new coal plants in more than a decade and is on track to close half its coal capacity by 2026.
The United States joined six other countries over the weekend in a commitment to stop building new coal-fired power plants and phase out existing ones.
The United States joins the Powering Past Coal Alliance along with the Czech Republic, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Iceland, Kosovo and Norway.
The agreement, reached at an international climate conference in Dubai, formalizes what has already been taking place domestically and worldwide as natural gas and renewables have eroded coal’s place as the dominant fuel for electricity.
While it is true that China and India have been building new coal plants at a rapid pace, they are also building more wind and solar, and the pace of new coal construction is expected to slow.
The nations meeting in Dubai have attempted to achieve consensus on how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to keep the global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Treasurer Riley Moore, who’s running for a seat in Congress next year, criticized John Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, and the administration policy.
“John Kerry has made the Biden Administration’s position crystal clear: they want to eliminate the coal industry worldwide regardless of the economic destruction or inflation it will cause,” Moore said in a statement Tuesday.
Moore asked Congress to reverse the U.S. commitment made at the COP28 summit in Dubai.
“I urge Congress to exert its authority and reject any attempts to commit the United States into an international climate cabal that would destroy our nation’s energy sector and overall economy,” he said.
West Virginia is the nation’s No. 2 coal producing state behind Wyoming and gets close to 90 percent of its electricity from coal, more than any other state.
West Virginia’s coal-producing neighbors, principally Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, have largely shifted to natural gas from coal for their electricity.
Notably, Kosovo currently gets about the same percentage of its electricity from coal as West Virginia. The Dominican Republic gets about 10 percent, while Cyprus has never used coal.
Science and research can lead to important breakthroughs, but in a divided America, not everyone trusts the results. In this Us & Them, host Trey Kay speaks with three expert guests before an audience full of curious people at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia and asks: How shaken is our confidence in scientists and the scientific process?
Polls and surveys report our confidence is eroding and that we’ve lost trust in one another and in some of our most essential institutions.
As a followup to an Us & Them event in September at West Virginia University (WVU) on trust in the media, host Trey Kay has a new conversation focused on our trust in science. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to present examples of our differing confidence in science and medicine, but there are other flash points.
We continue the abortion debate with the central question of when life begins. A few decades ago, evolution was in the spotlight with divisions over the origins of the universe, and of our own species. Now, climate change clearly illustrates our varying understanding about how the world is changing. All of those topics place a spotlight on our confidence in science.
There was a time when scientific advances were heralded – they saved lives, they told us more about our world. But now, some see scientists as villains who are not always worthy of our trust.
Have we simply lost interest in scientists or in the scientific process?
Join us for a new Us & Them from a recent live event on the campus of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council, the Daywood Foundation and the CRC Foundation.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond.
Us & Them host Trey Kay leads a discussion about the erosion of public trust in science at Marshall University. His guests were Jonathan Zimmerman, University of Pennsylvania’s education historian and author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools”; Habiba Chichir, Marshall University’s biological anthropologist; and Dr. Adam Franks, MD, associate residency director for Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. The event was co-sponsored by Marshall University’s John Deaver Drinko Academy, the West Virginia Humanities Council and West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the broadcasting home of Us & Them.
Earlier this fall, Kay and his team hosted a “Diminished Trust” event at West Virginia University that focused on waning public trust in journalism and the news media. Kay says, “Trust is in short supply in America these days. Across the board and across the political spectrum people seem to lack trust in our government… in many of our agencies and organizations – even in each other. That’s why our Us & Them team is staging these conversations to encourage citizens to consider how long our society can sustain this erosion of trust.”
Credit: Julie BlackwoodA diverse group of students, faculty and community members came to Marshall University’s Drinko Library Atrium to join a live recording of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Us & Them.
Credit: Julie BlackwoodHabiba Chirchir is a biological anthropologist and anatomist at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Her research focuses on understanding the relationship between changes in skeletal anatomy and behavior by investigating trabecular and cortical bones. She conducts comparative analyses of anatomical features in fossil human ancestors, modern humans, other primates and non-primate animals including dogs and big cats using CT imaging. Chirchir earned a BA from the University of Nairobi, an MA from New York University, and a PhD from George Washington University. Chirchir is a research associate at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.
Credit: Julie BlackwoodDr. Adam M. Franks is a family medicine physician at Marshall Health, and a professor and vice chair of the department of family and community health at Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. Franks’ practice provides full-spectrum care for children and adults, including obstetric and gynecologic care. His research areas include COVID-19 protocols, opioid monitoring protocols and blood borne pathogen exposure monitoring protocol adherence.
Credit: Julie BlackwoodJonathan Zimmerman is professor of History of Education and the Berkowitz professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. A former Peace Corps volunteer and high school teacher, Zimmerman is the author of “Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools” (University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed.) and eight other books. Zimmerman is also a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer and a frequent contributor to the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books and other popular publications. Zimmerman taught for 20 years at New York University, where he received its Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008.
Credit: Julie Blackwood
Photo gallery: Members of the audience took advantage of a Q&A session to ask the guests a number of thoughtful questions. Credit: Julie Blackwood
Local and state elected officials from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio have come together to form the Appalachian Leaders Network. Its mission is to collectively advocate for our natural resources, public health and enhancing local economies.
Local and state elected officials from West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio have come together to form the Appalachian Leaders Network.
Its mission is to collectively advocate for the region’s natural resources, public health and local economies.
Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, is West Virginia’s network representative. He said this coaltionis needed for a region that’s too often ignored.
“It’s helpful for us in Appalachia to speak with one voice,” Hansen said. “It’s a part of the country that’s often overlooked by policymakers at the federal level. It makes us stronger to join together as bills get passed in D.C., but also as federal agencies implement new regulations that will have an impact here.”
Hansen said the group will build a regional coalition to support certain state and federal level policies regarding energy transitions, job creation, addressing climate change and protecting public lands and waters.
“We’re not doing enough to attract clean energy jobs and green manufacturing jobs,” Hansen said. “We’ve taken some positive steps, which I’m very appreciative of and support. But there’s a lot more jobs that are being created, especially with programs through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. We need to be as proactive as possible to attract more manufacturers to West Virginia that are going to succeed in a low carbon future.”
Hansen said West Virginia has taken positive steps recruiting greener businesses like Form Energy and Nucor Steel, but must do more to attract clean energy and manufacturing jobs.
“There’s certain climate change policies and regulations coming out at the federal level, like a new methane rule that’s going to address major methane emissions from the oil and gas industry,” Hansen said. “That’s an example of how we in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia can advocate together to get a rule that’s going to significantly help us reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while at the same time keeping our oil and gas industry healthy.”
Hansen said scientists have been refining their models, and the data show there’s not a lot of time to act to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
“We’re already seeing what the models have predicted in West Virginia with really strong rainfall events and more frequent flooding that has killed people and destroyed communities,” he said.
Hansen said the network’s plan is to get the word out to other legislators in the region, along with county commissioners, mayors and city councilors to develop a variety of skill sets. He said it’s vital for West Virginia to be proactive.
“The challenge for Appalachia and West Virginia is that a lot of those environmental actions impact industries that have provided great jobs for people in the coal industry,” Hansen said. “Unless we’re actively participating in this transition, we’re going to be left behind as less and less coal is mined and burned to generate electricity.”
This week on Inside Appalachia, Rae Garringer felt isolated growing up and thought they were the only queer person in a small town. But they learned otherwise. Now they’re collecting and sharing the stories of rural LGBTQ people from across the country. Also, surface mining changes the landscape in a way that makes flooding worse. And there’s no easy fix. And we meet an Appalachian village witch, who wonders: How come we don’t hear about more female cryptids? Why isn’t there a Mothwoman?
This week, Rae Garringer felt isolated growing up and thought they were the only queer person in a small town. But they learned otherwise. Now they are collecting and sharing the stories of rural LGBTQ people from across the country.
Also, surface mining changes the landscape in a way that makes flooding worse. And there’s no easy fix.
And we meet an Appalachian village witch, who wonders: How come we don’t hear about more female cryptids? Why isn’t there a Mothwoman?
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
For 10 years, West Virginia native Rae Garringer has traveled around the country, recording oral history interviews with LGBTQ people in rural areas. Beginning in 2020, they started producing those interviews for a podcast called Country Queers.
Host Mason Adams caught up with Garringer, and they discussed the project and what it meant to tell those stories.
Climate Change, Mining And Flash Flooding
Flash flooding in Kanawha County.
Credit: Anna Goodnight
In August, historic flooding swept through central and southern West Virginia. Sudden heavy rain swept down the mountains, turning streams into rivers. The floods struck so swiftly that dozens of people had to be rescued.
But just as quickly as the floodwaters rose, they subsided, leaving wreck and ruin. Flash floods like this have become a regular occurrence in much of Appalachia.
WVPB’s Briana Heaney investigated the recent flooding near Charleston.
Interview With An Appalachian Witch
H. Byron Ballard at home.
Credit: Llewellyn Worldwide
It’s the October spooky season, but here in Appalachia, a lot of people take witchcraft more seriously than broomsticks and black cats. It’s part of folklore. H. Byron Ballard, a practicing witch in North Carolina, is the author of “Small Magics: Practical Secrets from an Appalachian Village Witch.”
Producer Bill Lynch spoke with her.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Todd Burge, John Blissard, The Dirty River Boys and Tyler Childers.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
On this West Virginia Morning, the owner and head chef at the Northern Panhandle’s Vagabond Kitchen Matt Welsch spoke with Randy Yohe about his plans to enhance the dining experience at state park lodge restaurants.
On this West Virginia Morning, have you ever had “churched-up soup beans?” West Virginia State Parks has hired Wheeling’s Matt Welsch as its new executive chef, who has this Appalachian dish on his menu.
The owner and head chef at the Northern Panhandle’s Vagabond Kitchen spoke with Randy Yohe about his plans to enhance the dining experience at state park lodge restaurants.
Also, in this show, we listen to the latest story from The Allegheny Front. Here’s their latest story – an interview with University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann about his new book.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Caroline MacGregor produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Moments after she ended the call the river had breached its five-foot banks. She looked up stream and saw waves of turbulent water coming towards her.
“It literally looked like the dam opened,” Anna Goodnight said.
Escaping The Flood
Anna Goodnight’s yellow panel house sits along the Little Creek hollow. Her home, and the other homes on this street, are accessible by a small bridge that crosses a trickling creek. The morning of August 28th she stood along the side road holding her son’s hand, waiting to put him on the bus. It was raining and had been raining on and off for a couple days.
At 6:45 a.m. Anna looked up the road and noticed the small creek was the slightest bit higher than normal.
“I looked up the road and I called their dad. I said, are you sure everything’s still good? Yeah, (he said) sure. I said, Are you sure? Are you sure everything’s gonna be okay? He said yeah, everything’s fine,” Goodnight said.
Moments after she ended the call the river had breached its five-foot banks. She looked up stream and saw waves of turbulent water coming towards her.
“It literally looked like the dam opened and all this just came gushing down,” she said.
The bridge that connects the road to their house was washed away creating a cascade of thunderous sounds as bridge after bridge gave way to the pressure of the raging creek.
Anna ran over the bridge, back to her house to grab her other child and her dogs. Then back over the bridge through a veil of water that was coming up over it, to her car.
“As soon as we got across it wiped the whole thing out. When I got in the car to leave, you can see, it followed us all the way down. Just rushing out,” Goodnight said.
Another one of her neighbors was not able to cross the creek in time. Goodnight says she saw her on the other side of the flooding creek climbing with her four young children up over the mountain to get to high ground away from the waters.
Seven homes were washed away in the floods in late August. Credit/Anna Goodnight
Mountains Of Water
The residents in this area are used to floods because these hollows, or areas low in a valley lined up with creeks, are vulnerable to flash floods. However, residents that live along Little Creek all said this flood was different.
“Never have I witnessed anything like that,” Goodnight said.
A flood warning was not issued until 7 a.m. — 15 minutes after Goodnight said the flood started.
“A statement was made from somebody, ‘When you get an alert, that you need to leave your home.’ Well, there was no alert. There was no warning. There was not a flood warning. There was nothing,” Goodnight said.
Most residents say as quickly as the water went up, it went down. That’s characteristic of a watershed area that has been impacted by surface mines, said Nicolas Zegre, a professor of forest hydrology at WVU’s mountain hydrology laboratory.
“When we get into surface mine systems, because of all the impervious surfaces and the lack of vegetation and lack of soils, we see a very flashy flow response where the stream rises very quickly. It peaks very quickly, and then it falls very quickly. And that shape of the hydrograph does say a lot about what’s going on in that watershed,” Zegre said.
In an undisturbed watershed, different things happen to the precipitation, Zegre said. Some of it is absorbed by the ground and stored for later use, some of it absorbed by trees and used in a process called transpiration, some of it is held in the ground or puddles and eventually evaporates. He said even if that water does eventually find its way into the creek, it typically releases the water over a longer period of time, having less intense peaks.
“The biological system that normally would attenuate that rainfall is no longer there. So, we would expect increases in runoff on landscapes,” he said.
Moving Mountains
Reclaimed mines don’t do much better.
“The big question as to whether reclamation ever restores the function of the watershed: The answer is no,” Zegre said.
That’s because those mines, even when complying with state and federal law, usually just plant exotic grasses on top of the minded areas.
“So this requires, you know, built infrastructure to kind of manage the runoff that’s coming off of these impervious surfaces that are associated with the mine. So even when it’s recreated, it’s still a disturbed landscape that is largely dominated by minerals and rocks, as opposed to soils and trees,” Zegre said.
The areas that were flooded are wrapped with older spiraling contour mines and dotted with newer mountaintop removal mines. Mountaintop removal mines are the most common form of modern coal mining.
“It’s really efficient. And so what this does is it starts at the top of the mountain, it removes the trees, it removes the soils, and then it uses explosives to remove the geologic overburden on top of those coal seams,” Zegre said.
Geological overburden is an industry word for a million pieces of blown-up rock that once formed the top of a mountain. That rock is then placed in the valleys to create another industry word, “Valley Fills.”
Some experts, like Zegre, say valley fills store water.
“Research that we’ve done on this has shown, at least for the Coal River watershed in the southern coalfields in West Virginia, maximum flows have been decreasing in that watershed,” he said. “And it was our belief that that was associated with the valley fills.”
However, Zegre says that it is hard to say if those valley fills help absorb torrential rainfall — like the 11 inches of rain that eastern Kanawha County saw in late August.
Other experts like whistleblower, expert witness, activist, and mine and health safety expert Jack Spadaro say valley fills make floods worse.
“All the studies that have been done by hydrology engineers with knowledge about how runoff happens on a slope or a mountain top have proven beyond a question that valley fills do not reduce the flow of water what-so-ever,” Spadaro said. “That’s a myth that was created by the industry to justify what they are doing.”
It’s important to emphasize that with the amount of rainfall that eastern Kanawha County had there would have been a flood regardless, Zegre said.
“Whether it’s an old growth forest, a surface mine, or a parking lot, when you drop 8 to10 inches over a couple of hours, there’s going to be a flood that comes off that landscape,” Zegre said.
Spadaro said while that is true, surface mines make floods worse, whatever the scenario.
“There have been many studies that show there’s an increase of peak discharge during a storm period. It can range between a 150 percent increase to as high as a 1,000 percent increase in the flow of water that’s coming off those watersheds. And that’s what’s been causing these floods,” Spadaro said.
Rising Water, Climbing Temps
As temperatures rise due to climate change, the air holds more water making heavy rainfalls happen more often.
“For every one-degree temperature change in the atmosphere, the atmosphere can actually hold 4 percent more water,” Zegre said. “A study by Climate Central actually showed in Huntington, West Virginia, hourly rainfall has increased by about 28 percent Since the 1970s. And so in an hour, when it’s raining, there’s 28 percent more moisture in the air that’s falling.”
That could account for some of the relentless rain that fell on the watersheds of Fields, Little, and Slaughter Creek Sunday night through Monday morning.
The Hollow Way
Just a few miles beyond those communities devastated by flash floods, upstream of the creeks that washed out the land, near their headwaters, sits a sprawling active coal mine.
“I think it would be hard to exclude that surface mine from playing a role in the stream flow that was experienced downstream. I would expect that the surface mine played a role in stream flows downstream,” said Zegre. “Now, whether that was enough to create the floods that were experienced, hard to say, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Downstream from that mine, sandwiched between two steep green slopes is the Little Creek Hollow where Anna Goodnight and her family live. The effort to clean up the destruction those raging waters left behind has begun. The street is lined with piles of soggy personal belongings waiting to be picked up by debris clean-up crews.
“We lost pretty much everything in the garage. I don’t even know how many feet of mud are probably under the house – around 18 inches,” Goodnight said. “We hooked up our own water yesterday to finally get water because we have had no resources up here whatsoever. No resources. There have been NO resources here.”
Goodnight said she called the Department of Environmental Protection, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, FEMA, and the Governor’s office to no avail.
“The state and local government have completely let us down on this,” she said.
Frustration in this hollow is balanced with helping each other pick up the pieces. Many who lost their homes are at other neighbors’ houses helping them. Every house had a neighbor or church group there helping gut the water saturated walls, carrying groceries down through the steep creek, baby sitting, lending equipment, or just lending an ear.
That was the case for John Chambers and his sister. They had just put their childhood home on the market when the flood came through.
The kitchen with tile floors is now an empty room with bare sheetrock, water marked plywood, and exposed pipes. Chambers said he had just started working on his own house because he had been helping others
“I got mud and water there. They got 14-15 inches of mud. Got their doors pinned and blown open and can’t walk in the house,” said Chambers. “What are you gonna do? You’re just gonna stand there and watch them with a shovel? No, you’re gonna get out and you’re gonna help! You’re gonna do what’s right!”
The creek bed, the streets, everyone’s yard’s and most people’s homes are filled with this deep yellow, sandy, silty mud — and lots of coal scattered around the area.
Goodnight walked around her house picking up little pieces of coal.
“There’s coal in my garage, coal in the backyard, I mean it’s everywhere,” Goodnight said.
Little pieces giving way to more questions. his reason, or that reason.
“Not to say blame needs to be placed, but I need a little peace of mind,” Goodnight said.
Community members and leaders are urging for an investigation into surface mines in and around eastern Kanawha County. And this community is searching for answers – how did this happen? Why was it so bad this time? Was it surfacing mining? Climate change? Timbering? A sediment pond? And an act of God?
“I wouldn’t say it’s an act of God. God wouldn’t do this to people,” Chambers said.
