When most people think of West Virginia, the mind generally tends to stray towards unflattering portrayals of hillbillies, mountain people, and maybe some sort of stereotypical inbreeding situation with moonshine stills in the background. What a lot of people don’t understand is that West Virginia tends to contain some of the most gorgeous natural environment our country has and that it’s full of mountain, rivers, and forests. It also happens to be one of the largest producers and users of coal in the country and so the environmental and coal lobbies tend to congregate on the state to duke it out over climate change and governmental regulation on coal and other fossil fuels.
Due to the environmental battleground the state has become, there are constant reports being done about coal mining, fossil fuel emissions, and how they affect nature. Today a nonprofit is taking a report on climate change to the West Virginia Board of Education for their January meeting. Written by Friends of Blackwater and called “On the Chopping Block” , the report focuses on climate change impact on the mountainous regions of the state. The Friends of Blackwater is a nonprofit organization that focuses on protecting the Blackwater Canyon as well as moving over 3,000 acres of land that has been marked for logging into protected private ownership so that the forests remain untouched.
The report is going to be the first report to take a fully comprehensive look at the impact of climate change on mountainous area, specifically the Allegheny Highlands. There is already evidence to those living in the area that climate change is have a very negative effect and those in the organization, as well as those living near by, hope that this report will help show the country just how serious climate change is and how it is already affecting those living in areas susceptible to it. The hope is that this report will finally help convince all the climate change deniers that they’re wrong and action needs to have been taken years in the past and that it’s hopefully not too late.
If you’d like to read more, the link is here.
