Uprising in Montana: Activists Take a Stand Against Coal Exports

This post originally appeared on Alternet. It wasn’t as big as we’d hoped. These things never are, until, well, they are. It didn’t really matter though: Hundreds converged from across the country for the Coal Export Action and 23 participated in five days of civil disobedience in protest of the coal industry’s latest scheme to [...]

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Arch Coal Applies For Permit To Mine Otter Creek As Coal Export Action Continues

via coalexportaction.org Last night the story broke that Arch Coal has officially applied for its permits to strip mine Otter Creek in southeast Montana. The Otter Creek Mine would turn the area into a massive coal mining operation with new roads, rail lines and polluted waterways, should Arch be granted the permits. Some details about [...]

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Report from the Coal Export Action: Day 1

At around 9:30 this morning, one hundred strong gathered in Helena, Montana for the first day of the Coal Export Action. Today’s rally spread across the steps of the capitol building, kicking off a week of action against coal exports organized by the Blue Skies Campaign, a Montana-based, volunteer grassroots organization. Lowell Chandler, who is [...]

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The Money Behind Otter Creek Mine

This weekend I’m heading north to the Big Sky Country to join friends and allies at the Coal Export Action. Yesterday, my colleague Scott wrote about the focus of this protest: the Otter Creek Mine in Montana’s Powder River Basin. As with so many issues that RAN works on, money is the motivating factor that [...]

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Coal Exports Action Moves To Stop Preventable Environmental Catastrophe

It is obvious Big Coal is on the ropes. This week, both Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources posted losses. St. Louis based Patriot Coal, mainly operating in Appalachia, filed for bankruptcy. In Appalachia and the interior West, front groups like the Friends of Coal stirred up miners and their families with so much hate [...]

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