Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Search

BioFuels and Energy

BioFuels and Energy | Growth and Development
Precious Rural Resources Poured Down the Tank
06/09/2008
gas price thumbThe cost of gasoline is shortening the school week and taking meat off the plate across rural America.
BioFuels and Energy | Growth and Development | Racing For '08/Archive
What Big Government Can Do in Big Sky Country
05/31/2008
Great Falls thumbAs candidate Barack Obama headed to town, the Great Falls Tribune rolled out the region's pressing federal issues, and a welcome mat, too.
BioFuels and Energy | Main Street Economics
Higher Gas Prices Lower Exurban Home Values
05/28/2008
Rising prices for gasoline have lowered the price of houses distant from the center of densely populated cities. Will the rural housing market suffer in a time of high gas prices?
BioFuels and Energy | Education | Main Street Economics
To Grow the Coalfield Economy, Plant a College
05/22/2008
grad thumbHow can coalfield societies prosper? How can the economies of boom-and-bust rural regions gain stability? Ask that person in the cap and gown.
BioFuels and Energy
Congress Asks for Utah Mine Inquiry
05/09/2008
Last August the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah collapsed, killing six coal miners. Ten days later, three men sent to rescue the trapped miners died in a second cave-in. A Congressman has asked the U.S. Attorney for Utah to conduct a criminal investigation into whether the mine's general manager "willfully misled" federal officials.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller of California asked prosecutors to determine if the general manager "covered up" conditions in the mine that could have warned federal inspectors of potential dangers. In particular, Miller said the mine manager did not report a significant damage from a mine collapse, or "bump," in March

Mine management at Crandall "may have purposefully misled MSHA about the severity of the March bump fearing MSHA would close the mine, and [they] continued to adhere to the mischaracterization after the August incidents in an effort to downplay the foreseeability of the August incident," Miller's report said.
BioFuels and Energy | Environment
iPods in Washington Destroy West Virginia Mountains
04/20/2008
The Washington Post reminds its urban readers that "Washington's air conditioners and iPods have helped drive" a particularly destructive form of coal strip mining in the eastern mountains. The Post's David Fahrenthod traces the coal used in DC-area power plants back to West Virginia mines, where mountains are now leveled to extract the coal. "It used to be West Virginia," Vivian Stockman, an environmental activist, said. "And now it's Mars."

A West Virginia mining official estimates that 70 percent of the coal taken from strip mines comes from operations where the tops of mountains are lopped off to get to the fuel. "There's one big reason you mountaintop mine. That's where the good Lord put the coal," said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association.

The story ends with a confrontation between an anti-strip mine activist and a coal truck driver — a staple of this issue in coal country for the past 40 years.
Ag and Trade | BioFuels and Energy | Food
Has Ethanol Led to Food Riots? No, Says A&M Report
04/15/2008
Yes, food prices worldwide are rising and basic foods are in short supply. But it's hard to put all the blame for riots in Haiti and shortages in India on corn ethanol in the U.S.
BioFuels and Energy | Environment
Coal Plants Meet Rural Protests
04/14/2008
The Los Angeles Times noted Monday morning that fighting the construction of new coal-fired power plants has become a popular activity across rural America. (The front page photo on the Times site was of a protest in Abingdon, Virginia, see above and story about the protests in the next paragraph.)

Peter Galuszka writes about the particular fight against a Dominion Energy coal plant planned for southwest Virginia in Bacon's Rebellion. The post went up in January, but it gives a flavor of how these fights are playing out in rural communities.  

Finally, in the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, author Erik Reece, who wrote a book about coal strip mining, reviews the cost of coal on the regions where it's mined.

Ag and Trade | BioFuels and Energy | Food | Health | Main Street Economics | Media
The $1 Burger
04/14/2008


Our fast-food nation is driven by corn. A couple of recent college graduates decide to learn more about the commodity by growing an acre in Greene, Iowa, and shooting a television program. "King Corn" airs this week on public television's Independent Lens.



The Des Moines Register's Philip Brasher says the film "is a warm, playful portrayal of Greene as well as its residents and farmers. At one point the woman behind the counter at a local bakery comments on the speed at which farmers can get their planting done with modern machinery: 'Then they're back twiddling their thumbs until it's time to spray something.'"

The film perhaps missed a good bit of the changing economics that the ethanol boom brought about, but then again much of the bloom is off that rose.

BioFuels and Energy
Natural Gas Frenzy Erups in Pennsylvania
04/09/2008
A "frenzy unlike any seen in decades is unfolding here in rural Pennsylvania," according to the New York Times. The source of the excitement is gas. Drillers have known for some time that the Marcellus Shale formation (see map above) has natural gas, but they didn't have the techniques to get it out of the ground.

Now they think they do and there are meetings across the region with land agents leasing up rights to the fuel. One academic figures that 20 oil and gas companies will invest $700 million this year developing the Marcellus Shale, half of that in Pennsylvania.

The shale is drilled horizontally, using techniques developed in Texas. There are horizontal wells now under the city of Fort Worth. The Marcellus, however, is much larger than similar fields in Texas.
Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural
Syndicate content
Syndication Feeds