What Are We Teaching Our Children?

By Jason Hayes, American Coal Council

There is a disturbing lack of accurate and balanced energy information provided for kids in our schools today, and if the actions of one of the nation’s venerable education-focused publishing houses were any indication, school children across the country would be ill served in this area.

In May 2011, educational publisher Scholastic removed “the United States of Energy” from its list of publications. As a non-profit coal industry association had sponsored the printing of this publication, Scholastic representatives claimed to have pulled it to remove any taint of organizational or funding [...]

Hollywood is coming to town

By Robin Millican, Institute for Energy Research

In his documentary The Last Mountain, featuring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., director Bill Haney weaves quite a tale of intrigue in the quest to rebrand surface mining as “mountain-top removal,” an emotionally-charged term that carries infinitely more public relations punch. Allegations of complicity between former West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, the Bush Administration, and coal executives to force surface mining upon the unwilling residents of Appalachia feature heavily, with Mr. Kennedy characterizing mining activities as loosely regulated at best … and criminal at worst.

However, Haney takes aim at more than just political [...]

The COAL Hard Facts: ‘Old King Coal’ is Still King Can America get its fiscal house in order or could it fall into bankruptcy?

By Wayne T. Rutherford, Pike County (Kentucky) Judge/Executive

Editor’s note: In previous editions of American Coal magazine, we have sought your input as a means of promoting ACC publications as a community of readers. We value your input and comment and would love to hear from you as well. So with this issue, we’re introducing a Comment section that will feature articles submitted by our readers on issues that impact their daily lives. We felt it was important to print this [...]