The Role of Drones in Anti-Mountaintop Removal Activism

This research project examines the usefulness of drones in environmental activism, especially within the fight against mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. The paper examines the tactics of Coal River Mountain Watch and the Appalachian Mountain Patrol, anti-MTR activists that use drone surveillance to enhance their fight against this destructive practice. The use of drones increases the complexity of strategies employed by Appalachian activists and challenges many of the traditionally held, but continually critiqued, stereotypes present in Appalachian research. Beyond a deeper understanding of Appalachian activism, this paper investigates the ways in which knowledge production and epistemological assumptions are challenged by less costly and more accessible technologies such as drones.

Increased Dementia Mortality in West Virginia Counties with Mountaintop Removal Mining?

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is elevated in areas of mountaintop removal mining (MTM), a practice that has been ongoing in some counties of West Virginia (WV) USA since the 1970s. PM inhalation has been linked to central nervous system pathophysiology, including cognitive decline and dementia. Here we compared county dementia mortality statistics in MTM vs. non-MTM WV counties over a period spanning 2001–2015. We found significantly elevated age-adjusted vascular or unspecified dementia mortality/100,000 population in WV MTM counties where, after adjusting for socioeconomic variables, dementia mortality was 15.60 (±3.14 Standard Error of the Mean (S.E.M.)) times higher than that of non-MTM counties. Further analyses with satellite imaging data revealed a highly significant positive correlation between the number of distinct mining sites vs. both mean and cumulative vascular and unspecified dementia mortality over the 15 year period. This was in contrast to finding only a weak relationship between dementia mortality rates and the overall square kilometers mined. No effect of living in an MTM county was found for the rate of Alzheimer’s type dementia and possible reasons for this are considered. Based on these results, and the current literature, we hypothesize that inhalation of PM associated with MTM contributes to dementia mortality of the vascular or unspecified types. However, limitations inherent in ecological-type studies such as this, preclude definitive extrapolation to individuals in MTM-counties at this time. We hope these findings will inspire follow-up cohort and case-controlled type studies to determine if specific causative factors associated with living near MTM can be identified. Given the need for caregiving and medical support, increased dementia mortality of the magnitude seen here could, unfortunately, place great demands upon MTM county public health resources in the future.

Why We Care about (Non) fictional Places

Cognitive ecocriticism draws on research in neuroscience and cognitive narratology to explore how literary reading can lead us to care about natural environments. Ann Pancake’s novel Strange as This Weather Has Been (2007) serves as an example of a novel that cues both direct and empathetic emotions for an actual environment—the Appalachian Mountains—that is wounded and scarred. I argue that the novel’s protagonists allow readers to imaginatively experience what it is like to love an environment and then witness its destruction by mountaintop removal mining. Pancake’s decision to relate large parts of the story through the consciousness of teenagers allows for highly emotional perspectives that have the potential to engage readers in the social and moral issues around resource extraction.

“Culture Springs from the Actions of People in a Landscape”: Poor Whites and Environmentalism

This chapter examines the varying strains of environmentalism and/or activism that run throughout the work of southern writers including Janisse Ray, Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Mary Hood, Ann Pancake, Silas House, and Denise Giardina. It explores the relationship between environmentalism and poverty as it discusses waste, throw-away culture, recycling and sustainability. It argues for a move from regionalism/nationalism to localism/globalism and questions the false dichotomy between the Global North and Global South. The chapter turns to Appalachia to consider the impact of Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), and it interrogates both the economics that often drive the poor to undertake environmentally destructive jobs and the activism that exists within poor communities.

Earth–world–planet: Rural ecologies of horror and dark green criminology

This article responds to green criminology. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the coal-producing region of Appalachia and the processes of mountaintop removal mining, the article engages contemporary philosophy, ecocriticism, and “dark ecology” to suggest that green criminology rethink its linguistic categories and epistemological assumptions. The article employs an analysis of some examples of horror cinema to suggest criminological engagement with “ecologies of horror” and the “horrors of ecology” that condition life in the shadow of harmful modes of resource extraction. It concludes with some thoughts on the potential of a “dark” green and green-cultural criminology.