The Bluegrass and Beyond

In their new book, “The Embattled Wilderness,” Erik Reece and James Krupa write this: “To look out over the forest’s steep ridges — slopes that novelist James Still called ‘a river of earth’ — is to understand that Robinson Forest is simultaneously one of the most biologically diverse landscapes in North America and one of the most threatened.” Photos by Tom Eblen  

JACKSON — As we hike uphill through beech and yellow poplar trees, a wild turkey flies out of the woods and across the trail in front of us. A few hundred yards higher, Erik Reece stops suddenly and points at a scarlet tanager foraging among the oaks.

At the crest of the ridge, we climb an old fire tower and are rewarded with a spectacular view of Robinson Forest. On this clear, spring morning, the forest looks like a rolling “river of earth,” as James Still described the natural landscape of Eastern Kentucky in his classic 1940 novel, River of Earth.

The green waves roll out in every direction until they suddenly stop at Robinson Forest’s boundary. Beyond the boundary are huge, gray scars from surface mining and the flattened, denuded remnants of “reclaimed” coal-mine land, now struggling to support foreign grasses and scrubby trees.

“We hope more people will go to Robinson Forest, but a lot of Kentuckians won’t, so we wanted them to experience it vicariously,” said Reece, co-author with James J. Krupa of the new book,The Embattled Wilderness: The Natural and Human History of Robinson Forest and the Fight for Its Future (University of Georgia Press, $24.95).

Reece will sign copies of the book from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Friday at The Morris Book Shop, 882 E. High St.

Erik Reece on Lewis Fork creek in Robinson Forest.

Reece is a UK English professor best known for his award-winning 2006 book, Lost Mountain: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia. Like Lost Mountain, this book has a forward by renowned Kentucky author Wendell Berry.

Krupa is a UK biology professor who over decades of study has explored every ridge and valley of the main 10,000-acre block of the 14,786-acre forest, which contains some of the state’s cleanest streams.

“It is one of the last and largest examples of the oldest, most biologically diverse ecosystem in North America — the mixed mesophytic,” the authors write in their introduction.

“Unfortunately, industrial development has churned under the mountains surrounding these 14,000 acres, turning Robinson Forest into an island of biological diversity surrounded by an ever-expanding desert,” they write, adding that there is every reason to believe that coal and timber interests want to plunder this land, too.

Reece and Krupa are both fine writers. In this small, engaging book, they alternate chapters, explaining the natural and human history of this unique corner of Breathitt, Perry and Knott counties and making a case to preserve it.

Krupa describes the geological history of Robinson Forest and the surrounding Cumberland Plateau, which was formed before there were dinosaurs, mammals or even flowering plants. These mountains were once covered by a shallow inland sea and then swamps. Dead ferns and trees sank to the bottom for thousands of years, forming peat and eventually bituminous coal.

Krupa also discusses his research into the ecological diversity of the current forest. Who knew lichens and wood rats could be so fascinating?

Reece’s chapters describe the forest’s human history, from settlement to the early 20th century, when Cincinnati business partners F.W. Mobray and E.O. Robinson bought the forest and cut virtually all of its timber.

In 1923, Robinson gave the wasted land to the University of Kentucky for research to “tend to the betterment of the people of the mountain region of Kentucky.” Under UK’s stewardship, most of the land has regenerated over the past 90 years into a second-growth version of the biologically diverse, native forest.

But coal operators, who wield considerable clout, have periodically pressured UK to allow mining in the forest. Reece said he and Krupa decided to write this book after the UK Board of Trustees’ controversial 2007 decision to clear-cut 800 acres of the main forest.

Although the forest recovered from clear-cutting a century ago, critics doubt that can happen again because of the extensive surface mining on surrounding land and the planting of invasive species as part of mine “reclamation.”

Reece said he and Krupa hope their book will prompt UK officials to rethink their management strategy for Robinson Forest and embrace a broader ecological research mission. A part of such a mission could be helping Kentucky adapt to climate change.

Specifically, the authors urge broader input into decision-making about the forest. Currently, Robinson Forest is managed by UK’s Forestry Department. Also, they want UK to separate research and revenue goals, so that there is not periodic temptation to log or mine Robinson Forest to make money for the university.

Reece is up for tenure this year, and he acknowledges this book won’t be popular in some corners of the university. But he thinks Robinson Forest is worth fighting to preserve.

He said the book was inspired by The Unforeseen Wilderness, which UK commissioned Berry to write in 1971. It advocated for preservation of the Red River Gorge at a time when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wanted to destroy it with a flood-control dam.

“We want to give readers a sense of why Robinson Forest is worth saving,” Reece said. “If you can convince people to love something, they won’t destroy it.”

Click on each thumbnail to see larger photo and read caption:

Excerpts from the final chapter of The Embattled Wilderness

“Robinson Forest is many things: it is one of the most important eco-systems in Appalachia, it is a laboratory for crucial research and teaching, and it is a gift held in trust for future generations of Kentuckians. But it is also a model for how we must proceed in our habitation of the natural world. In fact, Robinson Forest represents a model for an entirely new definition of “economy,” whereby our American systems of exchange, both of wealth and energy, are brought in line with the most important and inescapable economy of nature.”

“What we as 21st century Americans must finally come to understand is that the economy of consumption operates in direct opposition to, and at the peril of, the economy of nature. … Kentucky should look to Robinson Forest as a model for a sustainable, post-coal economy. We must replace the industrial logic of the strip mine with the much more ancient wisdom of the forest.”

“To abandon wilderness places like Robinson Forest would be to abandon ourselves. To ignore the natural laws of its watersheds for the logic of our own industrial imagination would be to abandon our better selves — to abandon a sustainable future for the sake of short-term avarice and indulgence. But to preserve the world will mean learning the lessons of Robinson Forest, and in doing so learning to preserve that embattled wilderness.”

Wendell Berry, right, joined conference attendees on a tour Saturday of the farm at St. Catharine College in Washington County. Photo by Tom Eblen

SPRINGFIELD — Wendell Berry is a true conservative. He believes in conservation, the idea that God gave us the Earth to sustain our lives and the responsibility to care for it so it can sustain the lives of future generations.

Four decades ago, the writer and farmer was alarmed by the methods and economics of modern farming and mining, which were (and still are) destroying land, water and rural communities. So he wrote his 1977 book, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, which has become an international classic.

That book and Berry’s subsequent work did much to spark the sustainable agriculture and local food movements, just as Rachel Carson’sSilent Spring in 1962 helped spark the environmental movement.

So it was no surprise that 300 people from 35 states and several foreign countries came to Louisville and Springfield last weekend for a sold-out conference revisiting the book. Well-known speakers discussed both progress and challenges, and they pondered this question: What will it take to resettle America?

The conference was organized by the Berry Center in Henry County, which is run by Mary Berry Smith to promote the philosophy of her father, as well as her uncle and late grandfather, both farmers, lawyers and conservationists named John Berry.

On Saturday, the conference was at St. Catharine College in Springfield, where the Berry Center has just begun a partnership to create undergraduate degree programs in ecological agriculture. The Catholic college campus includes an 800-acre farm the Dominican Sisters of Peace have operated since 1822.

The conference included an on-stage interview of Berry by veteran journalist Bill Moyers, who will use it on one of his Public Broadcasting System programs. Other speakers included Bill McKibben, the best-selling author and climate change activist; Wes Jackson, a MacArthur “genius” award winner and founder of The Land Institute, a leading sustainable agriculture organization; and Vandana Shiva, a renowned author, scientist and environmentalist in India.

In his interview with Moyers, Berry blamed many of today’s ecological problems on industrialization, unbridled capitalism and political systems that favor wealthy corporations, which make big political contributions to reap far bigger returns in taxpayer subsidies and lax regulation.

“There’s no justification for the permanent destruction of the world,” Berry said. “It’s not economically defensible. It’s not defensible in any terms.”

Berry, 78, lamented that the three and a half decades since his book’s publication have been marked by further environmental degradation, from strip mining and soil erosion to water pollution and accelerating climate change.

“It’s mighty hard right now to think of anything that’s precious that is not in danger,” he said.

Berry noted that black willows no longer grow beside his Henry County farm on the banks of the Kentucky River, 13 miles from where it empties into the Ohio River, but still flourish just upriver on the Ohio. There seems to be something in the Kentucky River’s water they can no longer tolerate.

“If the willows can’t continue to live there, how can I be sure that I can continue to live there?” he asked.

Berry, a lifelong Baptist, said the unholy alliance between corporate capitalism and many conservative Christians is “a feat which should astonish us all.”

“A great mistake of Christianity is speaking of the Holy Land as only one place,” he said. “There are no sacred and unsacred places; only sacred and desecrated places.”

But Berry noted that many faith communities are beginning to heed the Bible’s call to environmental stewardship and justice. That gives him hope, as does the growing popularity of organic food, local farmers markets and the sustainable agriculture movement.

“I don’t like to talk about the future, because it doesn’t exist and nobody knows anything about it,” Berry said. “The problems are big, but there are no big solutions.”

Berry said he thinks “resettling America” will require enough people living on and being able to earn a living from the land to take care of it. That will take individual initiative, better government policies and the political will to deal with urgent global threats such as climate change. Can it succeed?

“We don’t have a right to ask whether we’re going to succeed or not,” Berry said. “We only have a right to ask what’s the right thing to do and do it.”

Journalist Bill Moyers, left, and writer Wendell Berry autograph books after Moyers filmed an interview with Berry. It was part of a two-day conference revisiting Berry’s landmark 1977 book, “The Unsettling of America.”  Photo by Tom Eblen

A group of Louisville high school students in Frankfort to attend the I Love Mountains Day events toured the Capitol Education Center roof, which has solar panels, a wind turbine and a roof garden. Below, an interactive exhibit inside shows how much less power LED and compact florescent lights use than traditional incandescent bulbs. Photos by Tom Eblen

FRANKFORT — Each year, I notice more young people attending I Love Mountains Day. The rally against mountaintop-removal coal mining is organized by the citizens group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and it has been a Valentine’s tradition since 2006.

The young people join hundreds of their elders from across Kentucky in marching to the Capitol steps to hear speakers that have included writer Wendell Berry and actress Ashley Judd. This year’s main speaker was writer Silas House.

Before the speeches, many marchers visit legislators and urge them to curb the coal industry’s worst environmental abuses, to no avail.

But this year, there was something new for the young people to see: the Capitol Education Center, which had its grand opening Feb. 8. The center was the brainchild of First Lady Jane Beshear, and it is located in a formerly vacant building beside the Capitol that once housed heating and cooling equipment.

Beshear thought the 60,000 students and teachers who visit the Capitol each year needed a place to rest and eat their lunch. Then, the former teacher realized that this recycled building could play a role in teaching students about one of the most important issues facing Kentucky’s future: environmental sustainability.

The building got a “green” renovation that included recycled materials and energy-efficient technology. Solar panels and a wind turbine that feed into the utility grid were installed on the roof. Rain water is recycled to water a roof garden that will provide food for the Governor’s mansion kitchen.

The Kentucky Environmental Education Council coordinated a dozen universities and state agencies in developing interactive multimedia exhibits for the building. They teach students about Kentucky history, civics and geography — but mainly about energy efficiency and alternative energy sources.

The project was funded with $1.1 million from the Finance Cabinet and a $250,000 donation from Duke Energy. General Electric donated appliances for a commercial kitchen that Beshear hopes to use for demonstrations of healthy cooking and eating. (For more information, go to: Cec.ky.gov.)

In an interview, Beshear said these issues are “so important for the future. The more we as a state get into energy efficiency and alternative sources, the better off we’ll be.”

This education center is outstanding, and the First Lady’s vision for it is inspired. But it was hard to ignore the irony when I took a tour on I Love Mountains Day.

That event was created eight years ago to push for the so-called “stream saver” bill, which would ban coal companies from burying streams with mining debris. KFTC says the practice has obliterated more than 2,000 miles of Appalachian waterways.

But thanks to the coal industry’s enormous clout in Frankfort, the proposed legislation has gone nowhere. Most elected state officials proudly call themselves “friends of coal”. That friendship, which comes with lots of campaign cash, has always meant that public health, mine safety and environmental stewardship take a back seat to coal company profits.

Kentucky’s coal industry is in decline because of depleted reserves, cheap natural gas and the Environmental Protection Agency’s newfound willingness to do its job. But, like the National Rifle Association, the coal industry has always fought every attempt at common-sense regulation. Anyone who threatens the industry’s freedom to mine with impunity is branded as an enemy of coal.

There was an added emphasis for this year’s I Love Mountains Day: House Bill 170, which would require utilities to use increasing amounts of renewable energy and put more emphasis on energy-efficiency programs.

In short, this bill, sponsored by Democrats Kelly Flood of Lexington and Mary Lou Marzian of Louisville, would put into law some of the good ideas showcased at the new Capitol Education Center.

Change is hard, and progress can be slow. But I can’t help but be encouraged when I attend I Love Mountains Day or see something like the Capitol Education Center. Politicians will always be captive to power and money, I suppose, but it is good to see other Kentuckians working for a better future.

Few legislators have the courage to attend I Love Mountains Day, and the coal industry would go after any governor who dared show his face there.

But it is perhaps worth pointing out what Gov. Steve Beshear was doing shortly before the crowd arrived for I Love Mountains Day. He was in the Capitol rotunda with former Wildcat basketball star Derek Anderson, calling for legislation to create a statewide public smoking ban.

If you had told me 20 years ago that a Kentucky governor would do such a thing, I would have said you were crazy.

I went to the annual “I Love Mountains” march and rally at the State Capitol today to gather material for my Sunday column — and to take photos. Here are a few of them:

Kentucky author Silas House, center, led the annual “I Love Mountains Day” march down Capitol Avenue to the State Capitol. The event was sponsored by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth in opposition to mountaintop-removal and other destructive forms of coal mining. Several hundred people attended. Many marchers this year were advocating for two pieces of proposed legislation: one would limit coal mine waste dumped into streams; the other would require more use of renewable energy by utilities in Kentucky.

Many children brought homemade signs. 

Eric Sutherland of Lexington, center, was among those cheering the rally’s speakers.

Writer Silas House, on the steps of the State Capitol, urged citizens to “clean this house” of politicians who do the bidding of the coal industry at the expense of Appalachia’s people and communities. 

Kentucky author Wendell Berry, right, shares a laugh with disabled coal miner Carl Shoupe of Harlan County, who spoke at the rally.

Ella Corder, a student at Meece Middle School in Somerset, waited for applause to die down so she could read the essay that won her a contest sponsored by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

Kentucky writers Bobbie Ann Mason, left, and Ed McClanahan were among hundreds who participated.

Daniel Mullins, 10, of Berea, makes his feelings known.

A Valentine’s Day reminder 

It didn’t take long for a couple of fringe preachers to proclaim that Hurricane Sandy was God’s retribution for homosexuality and other aspects of society they don’t like.

Such freakish, attention-seeking claims have become as common as the freakish weather that inspires them. But that doesn’t mean God or the forces of nature aren’t trying to tell us something.

There are a couple of obvious lessons in this pre-election hurricane, which killed at least 40 people and caused perhaps $50 billion worth of damage in the Northeast.

The first lesson is that Americans and their leaders should stop ignoring climate change and its increasingly disastrous effects. As the new cover of Bloomberg Businessweek magazine says in bold letters above a news photo of a flooded cityscape, “It’s global warming, stupid.”

Scientists say climate change can’t be directly blamed for any particular storm, or even hurricanes in general. But there is strong scientific evidence that man’s carbon emissions have increased the frequency and severity of destructive weather.

Global warming has caused sea levels to rise, and that magnified the storm surge responsible for so much of Sandy’s destruction.

Yet, climate change has barely been mentioned during the presidential campaign of 2012, which may end up being the warmest year on record. You can attribute that to willful ignorance and complacency on the part of a large segment of the population — and the encouragement of that ignorance and complacency by powerful business interests and the politicians who do their bidding.

You can find some of the most blatant examples of this in Kentucky, where the coal industry and its favored politicians have waged a “war on coal” propaganda campaign, which in reality is a campaign against clean air, clean water and public health.

Appalachian coal reserves are dwindling and cheap natural gas has eroded coal’s markets, but the industry seems determined to extract every last bit of profit from Kentucky, no matter how much damage it does.

The lack of action to address climate change underscores a failure of leadership in both government and business.

President Barack Obama rarely spoke about climate change during this campaign, because he knew it would hurt him politically. Instead, he trumpeted domestic oil drilling and “clean coal” technology, which is still more oxymoron than reality.

Challenger Mitt Romney was even worse. At the Republican National Convention, he mentioned climate change only mockingly. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” he said. “My promise is to help you and your family.”

There is strong scientific consensus on climate change, but acknowledging and addressing it remains politically controversial. That is because fighting climate change would threaten economic interests invested in the status quo — and because it would require citizens and businesses to make some sacrifices. Heaven forbid that any American should be asked to sacrifice, even if the future of mankind may depend on it.

And that brings us to a second obvious lesson from Hurricane Sandy.

For at least three decades, many political leaders — especially Republicans — have won elections by offering simplistic and unrealistic solutions to increasingly difficult problems. Tell voters what they want to hear, then blame the consequences on the other guys.

Storms such as hurricanes Sandy and Katrina underscore the inadequacy of our aging national infrastructure — and the likelihood that climate change will force us to repair and rebuild it more frequently in the future.

Rather than cutting taxes, piling up debt and wasting money on unnecessary weapons systems and wars of choice, we should be investing in the physical and human infrastructure that will keep America safe, secure and economically prosperous in the future.

Natural disasters remind us that sufficient and efficient government is essential. During the GOP primary, Romney suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s work could be turned back to the states, or even privatized.

Since Hurricane Sandy, though, he has ignored reporters’ questions on the subject.

If religious leaders are seeking sermon topics from this pre-election hurricane, here are a few possibilities: greed, selfishness, complacency and why leadership matters.

We curse the cop when we see lights flashing in our rear-view mirror.

Kentuckians are an independent people. We have good reasons to speed! Besides, speed limits restrict our “freedom” and take away our “liberty.” They are downright un-American, forced upon us by politicians and government bureaucrats.

Of course, we know in our heart that the cop is just doing his duty for our own good. Without speed limits, crashes would claim a greater toll than the already obscene 32,000 deaths nationally each year, one-third of which are caused by speeding.

It is harder to visualize the tens of thousands of people who die prematurely or are sickened by air and water pollution caused by irresponsible coal mining and burning. This is a largely hidden toll, with no graphic video for television newscasts. But health researchers can prove and document it.

The National Resources Defense Council reported last week that Kentucky is the worst state in the nation for toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants. It blamed that fact on state officials doing too little to force utilities to clean up.

The coal industry acts as if it is above the law. Kentucky government too often behaves as if it is owned and operated by coal interests.

Politicians love to rant about the Obama administration’s “war on coal.”

What they mean is that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Surface Mining and other federal agencies are, for the first time in years, being better cops. They are enforcing environmental-protection laws, and they are trying to make state regulators enforce them, too.

Consider this recent example, at a joint meeting of the General Assembly’s Natural Resources and the Environment committee on Aug. 2.

The issue at hand was OSM’s demand that Kentucky follow the 1977 federal surface-mining law and require mining companies to post adequate reclamation bonds. If a company cleans up mined land as required by law, its bond is refunded. If it goes broke before the work is done, the bond is supposed to pay for cleanup.

The federal government has for years urged Kentucky to require higher bonds because in many of the 15 to 25 bond forfeiture cases each year there is too little money to do the work.

The Herald-Leader’s John Cheves reported that in an average year, the state Division of Abandoned Mine Lands faces more than $4 million in unfunded reclamation costs because bonds are too small. Land is left scarred, and neighbors’ property values are diminished.

The Beshear administration says that requiring adequate bonds would be “impractical and unaffordable” for many coal companies. The state Energy and Environment Cabinet has proposed raising bond requirements and creating a pool financed by fees on coal operations to help pay costs when an individual company’s reclamation bond falls short.

That seems like a reasonable solution, but you can bet it won’t happen unless federal regulators keep up the pressure. Most of us would find it reasonable to require an industry to clean up after itself. But to coal-industry apologists, it’s war.

“There is an assault on Kentucky, and really our way of life,” Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, complained at the Aug. 2 meeting.

“I don’t want to roll over dead and play stoolie in front of the federal government, either,” said Rep. Keith Hall, D-Phelps, “because I believe in states’ rights.”

Despite earning their livings from coal-related businesses, Gooch and Hall are the chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Natural Resources and the Environment committee. No conflicts of interest there.

Federal regulators are not waging a “war” on coal. They are enforcing laws designed to limit pollution, sickness and premature death, which study after study have attributed to irresponsible coal mining and burning.

In the short term, the coal industry will find plenty of allies in this phony “war on coal.” Kentucky miners are desperate for jobs, and other businesses like having electricity that has always been artificially cheap because the full cost of producing it hasn’t been taken into account.

Western coal, cheap natural gas, renewable energy technology and the reality of climate change cannot be ignored. If Kentucky’s coal industry wants a future, it must clean up its act and find ways to reduce the health and environmental damage of its product.

The coal industry faces inevitable change, the kind of seismic economic shift that Kentucky slaveholders and tobacco growers once faced. Continuing to blame the environmental cops whose lights are now in the rear-view mirror is a strategy for losers.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WVa. Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press.

Americans heard something on the U.S. Senate floor last Wednesday that they haven’t heard for nearly three years: a coal-state senator and longtime supporter of the coal industry speak eloquent truth to power.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s 16-minute speech was remarkable for its wisdom and candor. It echoed a similar address in 2009 by another West Virginia Democrat and longtime coal-industry champion, the late Sen. Robert Byrd.

They both sounded like old friends trying to warn an alcoholic that his behavior had become unacceptably destructive, both to himself and to others.

The occasion for Rockefeller’s speech was a resolution before the Senate to disapprove of new Environmental Protection Agency rules reducing coal-fired power plants’ emissions of mercury and other toxic pollution.

The resolution was sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and climate-change denier, and endorsed by coal industry lapdogs including Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader from Kentucky.

“Coal has played an important part in our past and can play an important role in our future, but it will only happen if we face reality,” Rockefeller began. (To watch the video, go to Youtu.be/ErN9v3e7zro)

“The reality is that many who run the coal industry today would rather attack false enemies and deny real problems than find solutions,” he said. “Scare tactics are a cynical waste of time, money and, worst of all, coal miners’ hopes.”

Rockefeller then outlined some inconvenient truths that coal industry leaders gloss over when they attack environmental-protection laws and government regulation.

“First, our coal reserves are finite and many coal-fired power plants are aging,” he said. “The cheap, easy coal seams are diminishing, and production is falling — especially in the Central Appalachian Basin in Southern West Virginia. Production is shifting to lower-cost areas like the Illinois and Powder River Basins.

“Second, natural gas use is on the rise. Power companies are switching to natural gas because of lower prices, cheaper construction costs, lower emissions and vast, steady supplies,” he said.

“Third, the shift to a lower-carbon economy is not going away, and it’s a disservice to coal miners and their families to pretend that it is,” Rockefeller said. “Coal company operators deny that we need to do anything to address climate change despite the established scientific consensus and mounting national desire for a cleaner, healthier environment.”

Rockefeller, who was West Virginia’s governor from 1977 to 1985 and has been a senator ever since, said that in 2010, he proposed a two-year suspension of EPA carbon rules to try to help the coal industry adapt. Instead, the industry has fought all attempts at compromise. “This foolish action wastes time and money that could have been invested in the future of coal,” he said.

Rockefeller said the EPA’s actions are in the best interest of his state’s citizens.

“The annual health benefits of the rule are enormous,” he said. “EPA has relied on thousands of studies that established the serious and long-term impact of these pollutants on premature deaths, heart attacks, hospitalizations, pregnant women, babies and children.”

If coal is to have a future, it must solve its environmental challenges rather than keep trying to avoid them, Rockefeller said.

“It’s not too late for the coal industry to step up and lead by embracing the realities of today and creating a sustainable future,” he said. “Discard the scare tactics. Stop denying science. Listen to what markets are saying about greenhouse gases and other environmental concerns, to what West Virginians are saying about their water and air, their health, and the cost of caring for seniors and children who are most susceptible to pollution.

“And unless this industry aggressively leans into the future, coal miners will lose the most,” he said. “We have the chance here to not just grudgingly accept the future, but to boldly embrace it.”

I’m sure Rockefeller’s speech angered the coal barons, just as Byrd’s speech did in December 2009. Coal industry leaders don’t seem interested in listening to reason, even from politicians who have supported them for decades. They’re probably already raising money to try to defeat Rockefeller in his next election. After all, there’s no shortage of politicians willing to take the coal industry’s money and do its bidding, in Kentucky and in West Virginia.

If Rockefeller’s words have any impact, it is likely to be with the coal industry’s declining work force, and with coal-state citizens who are getting fed up with poisonous air, polluted water and higher incidences of sickness and disease. Coal will never have a bright future as long as its leaders cling to a dirty past.

Watch Rockefeller’s speech here:

Wendell Berry at his home near Port Royal, Ky., December 2011. Photo by Tom Eblen

I spent a beautiful Sunday afternoon in December talking with Wendell Berry at the kitchen table of his Henry County farmhouse. He told me he was hard at work on an essay. “I’m in need of a lecture,” he said.

America was in need of a lecture, too. On Monday, Berry gave it.

The National Endowment for the Humanities chose the Kentucky farmer, poet, essayist, novelist, activist and philosopher to give the 2012 Jefferson Lecture at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. It is the federal government’s highest honor for scholarly contributions to the humanities.

Berry’s selection had not been announced when we met, so he was vague about what he was up to. But I had the sense he was up to something big. As I listened last week to the recording of our interview, Berry’s answers to my questions were filled with themes and phrases that found their way into his lecture essay.

Berry, 77, delivered a searing indictment of corporate domination and the industrial economy, saying it has abused the land and people and threatens our survival. You can — and should — watch the video of Berry’s lecture and read the full text of his essay, titled “It All Turns on Affection.” Both are online (click here).

Among Berry’s touchstones in the essay are E.M. Forster’s 1910 novel Howard’s End, an early exploration of the effects of industrialization on society, and the story of his own tobacco-farming grandfather’s struggle against the monopolistic power of James B. Duke’s American Tobacco Co.

Ironically, Berry said, Duke is remembered now as a philanthropist, the benefactor of Duke University in North Carolina. “If you can appropriate for little or nothing the work and hope of enough small farmers, then you may dispense the grand charity of ‘philanthropy,’” he said.

Quoting his former teacher, the late writer Wallace Stegner, Berry said Americans have always tended to fall into two camps: boomers and stickers. “The boomer is motivated by greed, the desire for money, property and therefore power,” Berry said. “Stickers on the contrary are motivated by affection, by such love for a place and its life that they want to preserve it and remain in it.”

Boomer ideals dominate America’s economy and culture now, he said. Almost everything has been reduced to statistics. Like corporate ownership, as compared to individual ownership, big numbers distance us from the consequences of our actions.

“Now the two great aims of industrialism — replacement of people by technology and concentration of wealth in the hands of a small plutocracy — seem close to fulfillment,” Berry said. “At the same time the failures of industrialism have become too great and too dangerous to deny.”

Even the term economy has lost its original meaning, which had to do with household management and husbandry, he said. Most economists now “never ask, in their professional oblivion, why we are willing to do permanent ecological and cultural damage ‘to strengthen the economy.’”

Corporate industrialism, he said, “has failed to sustain the health and stability of human society. Among its characteristic signs are destroyed communities, neighborhoods, families, small businesses and small farms. It has failed just as conspicuously and more dangerously to conserve the wealth and health of nature.”

Industrialism’s effects are often defended as the “price of progress” or “creative destruction,” Berry noted.

“But land abuse cannot brighten the human prospect,” he said. “There is in fact no distinction between the fate of the land and the fate of the people. When one is abused, the other suffers. The penalties may come quickly to a farmer who destroys perennial cover on a sloping field. They will come sooner or later to a land-destroying civilization such as ours.”

Who is to blame? “We are all implicated,” Berry said. “By economic proxies thoughtlessly given, by thoughtless consumption of goods ignorantly purchased, now we are all boomers.”

How can it be changed? By having more respect for our fellow humans and the land, Berry said. By focusing on long-term sustainability — things like local food, soil conservation and renewable energy. And by rediscovering the importance of affection.

“Knowledge without affection leads us astray every time,” he said. “Affection leads, by way of good work, to authentic hope. … And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind and conserving economy. … We should, as our culture has warned us over and over again, give our affection to things that are true, just and beautiful. When we give affection to things that are destructive, we are wrong.”

Since Berry began making these arguments in his 1977 book The Unsettling of America, critics have dismissed him as unrealistic, nostalgic, even anachronistic. But more people are listening. Indeed, this seems to be Wendell Berry’s time.

As “local food” and “buy local” movements have sprung up everywhere in recent years, Berry’s books have attracted an international following. His lectures are packed, often by young people.

Can America change before it is too late? It can, Berry told me, if sustainability becomes a bigger part of the public conversation. “The only way to do that,” he said, “is to make as much sense as you possibly can.”

One of the challenges of newspaper writing is deciding what to cut. With any good topic, there is always more interesting information than newsprint space. My Sunday column about Kentucky’s fine writers mentioned many of them, past and present. But within minutes of it being posted online, readers were pointing out other good writers I left out.

What I really hated to leave out of the piece — but did, both for space and because it was a slight diversion from topic — was everything poet Nikky Finney had to say about the influence of the mountains on Kentucky and Kentucky writers.  Here are Finney’s full comments, which were sent as an email following up on our conversation the evening before:

 When speaking of the greatness of Kentucky writing I often hear people say, “must be something in the water!” I don’t think so. I think it’s in great part due to the mountains that rise and stretch out all around our homes and farms. Our greatness as writers has to do with the land. Our connection to it. A wonderful old man in South Carolina once told me this wonderful thing, “God ain’t making no more land.” He was right. He was trying to tell me to remember what was important in this life. We don’t really own the land. The land owns us. Mountains that have been with us here in Kentucky for a million years. We never credit the mountains enough for helping shape who we are, for giving us a specific lens through which to see the world, a lens to nurture what we have to say about our human presence in it. We never credit the mountains enough. We think that they are tough and resilient and can take care of themselves but more and more we know that is not true. We have to be better caretakers of this landscape that is so particular to our sensibilities. We act as if the mountains will always be there — surrounding, protecting, helping to situate our contemplative nature, and yet we know it just takes a little dynamite and greed to change all that. The history of Kentucky writing has been what it has been because the mountains that inhabit so much our our particular skyline have long been our favorite horizon; that wondrous place where our eyes land and lift.

If you agree with Finney about the importance of protecting Kentucky’s mountains from destructive surface-mining, you might want to be in Frankfort on Tuesday for the annual I Love Mountains Day march and rally. Click here for more information.

Does this sound familiar?

An energy industry is controversial because of its environmental impact. So a company tries to buy public goodwill by donating money to the state university’s most popular athletic program.

I’m not talking about the Wildcat Coal Lodge, the new on-campus luxury dormitory for the University of Kentucky’s basketball team. The lodge’s name — plus a shrine to the coal industry that will be in its front lobby — were requirements of an $8 million donation from coal industry executives.

The university’s 2009 decision to accept the donation with those strings attached created controversy. That is because surface coal mining has caused extensive damage to Appalachian Kentucky’s land, air and water.

I’m also not talking about the $85,000 the industry group Friends of Coal is spending to sponsor three athletic events, including the UK-University of Louisville football game and Big Blue Madness.

No, the scenario I am referring to played out recently in Nebraska. That is where TransCanada is trying to build a pipeline across that state and several others to carry oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

The pipeline is controversial in Nebraska because the company insists on building it through the porous soil of the state’s Sandhills region and the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides water to large areas of Nebraska and parts of seven other Western states. A pipeline leak in those areas could create an environmental disaster.

TransCanada has refused to change the pipeline route. On Monday, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman called a special legislative session for Nov. 1 to address the issue.

University of Nebraska football is a religious experience in that state, similar to UK basketball in Kentucky. But the Lincoln Journal-Star reported that cheering turned to boos when a highlights video of the Cornhuskers’ 1978 conference championship team began showing on Memorial Stadium’s huge HuskerVision screen during the Sept. 10 game against Fresno State.

The video was titled “Husker Pipeline” and seemed to be as much an advertisement for TransCanada as a tribute to the team. Four days later, after fans complained, the university ended TransCanada’s football sponsorship.

“I want to make it clear that the athletic department has no position, either pro or con, regarding the proposed TransCanada Pipeline,” Athletic Director Tom Osborne, a former Republican congressman and Nebraska head football coach, said in a statement.

The university explained that IMG College — the same marketing firm that works with UK Athletics — had signed the deal before the pipeline controversy erupted.

“Our athletic events are intended to entertain and unify our fan base by providing an experience that is not divisive,” Osborne said in his statement.

It is unclear what the TransCanada football sponsorship was worth to the university. Pipeline opponents estimate the company has spent several hundred thousand dollars on pro-pipeline advertising in Nebraska.

The Nebraska and Kentucky situations make for interesting comparisons.

In both states, the essential debate is about whether creating short-term jobs is worth the potential for long-term environmental damage. But the situations get more complicated from there.

TransCanada has had a presence in Nebraska for only about three decades. King Coal has ruled Kentucky politics for more than a century. Few Kentucky elected officials are brave enough to buck the cash-rich coal industry.

In Nebraska, the pipeline would be an environmental threat only if it leaks. (Building it would have some environmental impact, but, in the long run, that impact would be less than trucking millions of barrels of oil cross-country.)

In Kentucky, though, coal’s environmental damage has been real and apparent for decades, especially as surface mines have gotten bigger and more destructive. The beautifully reclaimed meadows and real estate developments the coal industry likes to brag about represent only a tiny fraction of mined land. Mine-related air pollution and water pollution have been significant.

You could argue that it was easy for the University of Nebraska to take a principled stand. The thousands of dollars it stood to gain from the TransCanada sponsorship paled in comparison to the millions the coal industry gave UK for its tribute lodge.

But that brings us to a question: Is the issue one of principle, or merely price?

I am increasingly impressed with the leadership of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Rather than just taking care of business, it seems to realize that improving life in Kentucky will help create economic prosperity.

That was apparent at last week’s annual meeting in Louisville. The agenda focused on substantive discussions of two of Kentucky’s biggest issues, coal and education.

For example, the keynote speaker on coal was journalist James Fallows, whose Atlantic magazine cover story last December was one of the best things I have read on the subject. “Coal is inevitably going to be a major part of the world’s energy solution for the foreseeable future,” he said. “But that role will be and has to be different.”

While Fallows characterized his remarks as a “good news speech,” it was nothing like the hot air we usually hear from the coal industry and its cheerleaders.

No matter how successful the world is at developing alternative energy, coal will remain a vital fuel for decades, Fallows said. But he stressed that global economic, scientific and political trends will require that coal be mined and burned in more environmentally friendly ways. It is smarter to lead change than be trampled by it.

Solutions built around market incentives — such as the ill-fated “cap and trade” proposal — would be better than regulation because they would encourage business creativity and flexibility, Fallows said. But if business wants market-driven change rather than regulatory change, he said, “high-level industrial leadership is important.”

Fallows was followed by Michael G. Morris, chairman of American Electric Power, whose remarks were titled “Coal Under Attack.” While saying that coal must get “cleaner,” his rambling presentation was filled with the usual clichés about new environmental rules being unfair and unreasonable.

Morris bragged about how much less pollution coal-fired power plants emit now than they used to — as if that were the result of industry leadership rather than government regulations that most utilities fought every step of the way.

Morris repeated an earlier claim that new regulations will have a “devastating effect” on AEP, shutting down 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity. But as another speaker pointed out later, two-thirds of that capacity was going to be retired anyway because of a 2007 pollution settlement with the Bush administration.

I was impressed that so many chamber members seemed wise to Morris, even ignoring most of his attempts at applause and laugh lines.

Morris was followed by Rodney Andrews, director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Applied Energy Research. He gave an excellent but rushed presentation that echoed many of Fallows’ points and made a persuasive economic and environmental argument for making coal-fired power plants more efficient. I would like to have heard more from him.

The chamber announced some initiatives that could have a big impact. The New Agenda for Kentucky Campaign focuses on action plans in five areas: improving schools, modernizing government, remaining competitive in energy resources, doubling international exports within five years and improving Kentuckians’ health and wellness.

Perhaps the most impressive effort is the Kentucky Leadership Institute for School Principals. AT&T and other companies are giving money to send many Kentucky school principals to the respected (and expensive) Center for Creative Leadership in North Carolina to get the kind of high-level leadership training that business executives receive.

The chamber also unveiled a follow-up to its 2009 “Leaky Bucket” study, which underscored how huge increases in state spending for public employee health care, Medicaid and prisons were contributing to a short-change of education.

That report provided encouragement — and political cover — for landmark legislation earlier this year to rewrite Kentucky’s criminal code. It will reduce the number of non-violent offenders in jails and prisons, send more drug offenders to treatment and save a lot of taxpayer money in the process.

The chamber’s new report, called “Building a Stronger Bucket,” offers more suggested policy changes, including moving new state employees to a 401(k)-style pension plan.

Too often in the past, Kentucky has fallen behind the rest of the nation when narrow economic or political interests wielded too much power. Building a better future will require that many perspectives be considered and many voices be heard.

Still, no single group can do more to make this state a better place to live than a progressive organization that represents a broad spectrum of the business community. The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce seems to be stepping up to the challenge.

Kentuckians love to embrace a lost cause, especially one that deserves to be lost.

The state stayed in the Union during the Civil War, yet many Kentuckians switched sides and mythologized the Confederacy after the war was over. Long after everyone else recognized smoking’s deadly toll, Kentucky leaders remained apologists for tobacco.

Now, federal regulators are finally acting to curb the damage mining and burning coal does to human health and the environment. So where are Kentucky’s leaders? Many have stormed the ramparts, vowing to fight what they call the “war on coal.”

The hollering grew louder Thursday when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced new standards that will require utilities in 27 Eastern states to reduce power-plant emissions. The EPA says the stricter limits will prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths, heart attacks and cases of bronchitis and asthma, creating up to $280 billion in annual benefits by 2014 — well beyond the cost of compliance.

These science-based standards have been in the works for years, and big business has been fighting them every step of the way. But pollution is becoming harder to ignore as health-care costs rise and the damage is more obvious and measurable.

Kentucky is the third-largest coal- producing state, and federal regulators have gotten more aggressive about reining in destructive mining practices.

Federal regulators eventually will limit carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, a major contributor to disastrous climate change. Yet, many Kentuckians continue to deny climate science.

Burning coal generates more than 90 percent of electricity in Kentucky and 46 percent nationally. Many business and political leaders complain that the economy can’t bear the cost of cleaning up after coal, which will include higher power rates. As if sickness, death and pollution don’t have huge costs, too.

But here’s the thing: We will be burning coal for decades, because we must. No other energy source can replace coal any time soon. Environmentalists who demonize coal are ignoring reality just as much as the business people and politicians who demonize regulators and fight to protect pollution.

“I wish we could get away from this ‘war on coal’; it doesn’t help anybody,” said John Morgan, a mining engineer and president of Morgan Worldwide Consultants Inc. “We should be having debates about facts and not hyperbole, and quit demonizing everybody.”

Morgan’s Lexington-based firm has found a niche helping the mining industry and regulators figure out more environmentally friendly ways to mine. “If you’re going to mine coal, you need to do it both economically and with less impact, and realize that mining is a temporary land use,” he said. “It’s not just the industry that needs to think more creatively, but the regulators.”

That means designing mines that produce more coal while disturbing less land and fewer streams. And it means more planning for uses of reclaimed mine land.

Morgan points out that tighter regulation hasn’t hurt coal production. And after nearly three decades of decline, the number of Kentucky jobs in underground and surface mining has been rising since 2004. “People say the war on coal is hurting employment, but the numbers tell a different story,” he said.

One reason more jobs are being created is that mine productivity has been falling since a peak in 2000. Easy-to-mine Kentucky coal is becoming more scarce, so the trend of bigger machines and fewer miners is reversing. “As productivity goes down, it’s going to mean more people,” Morgan said.

“Long-term, there’s going to be more underground mining because easily minable surface reserves are almost gone,” he said.

Kentucky mines will get smaller. Permits will need to be more sophisticated. And all of that means there will be more demand for well-trained mining professionals, even as some work is automated. “The biggest long-term challenge is the human resource side,” Morgan said.

The lost cause that so many Kentuckians have embraced is not coal but the idea we can continue mining and burning it in the same old ways. Rather than fighting a doomed “war” to preserve the past, our leaders should focus on the future and the role Kentucky coal must play.

Did you hear we are at war? I don’t mean the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the covert wars in Libya and Yemen or even the nebulous wars against terrorism and drugs.

I mean the “War on Coal.” All of Kentucky’s politicians are talking about it — at least all of those who want campaign contributions and support from the coal industry.

“They have declared war, war on Kentucky’s coal industry,” U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in a speech to the Kentucky Coal Association earlier this month. The U.S. Senate’s Republican leader claimed the EPA wants to see the “coal industry driven out of business altogether.”

The next day, state Rep. Jim Gooch, a Providence Democrat who heads the state House Natural Resources Committee, went even further as he complained about the EPA’s efforts to make coal-fired power plants reduce their air and water pollution.

“This is a war on Kentucky,” Gooch exclaimed during a hearing, “because what we’re talking about is totally destroying our economy.”

And don’t forget Gov. Steve Beshear’s tantrum against the EPA during his State of the Commonwealth address in February. “Get off our backs!” Beshear bellowed. “Get off our backs!”

So what is this War on Coal? A lot of baloney, that’s what. It is a public relations campaign by an industry with a long history of maximizing profits by disregarding environmental stewardship and mine safety.

The coal industry is apoplectic because federal regulators are doing their jobs more aggressively now than they did during the Bush administration. The EPA is enforcing the Clean Air Act by requiring industries to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change. The agency also is trying to curb destructive surface-mining practices and reduce water pollution.

Some politicians and business executives have responded by claiming that climate change is a myth, despite overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary. Others just fear costs. But the costs of pollution have always existed; we just haven’t paid enough of them with our power bills and corporate bottom lines. We pay for them with sickness, premature death and degradation of our fragile planet.

I was encouraged to see that the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce has invited journalist James Fallows to be a keynote speaker at its annual meeting July 12 in Louisville. He will talk about his December cover story in The Atlantic magazine, Why the Future of Clean Energy is Dirty Coal.

Fallows’ article — click here to read it online at TheAtlantic.com — is excellent. For one thing, it punctures illusions on both the political right and left. Yes, climate change is real and carbon emissions must be dramatically reduced to avert disaster. No, renewable energy cannot replace coal — at least not in our lifetimes.

Because coal will be essential to civilization for generations, the sensible thing is to figure out how to mine and burn it more cleanly, Fallows wrote. Most of that responsibility must fall to the United States and China, which together produce more than 40 percent of man-made greenhouse gasses and bring different strengths to the fight to reduce them.

Fallows profiled U.S. and Chinese scientists who are working on innovative solutions. The most intriguing experiment may be “underground coal gasification.” Jets of oxygen, mixed with steam or chemicals, are blasted into coal seams deep underground. That creates a chemical reaction, producing a gas that can be piped out and burned to create electricity. The process avoids the need for traditional mining and leaves most of coal’s nasty by-products underground.

Kentucky politicians and business leaders could learn a lot from Fallows’ thinking, which transcends ideology to see the coal issue for what it really is — a technology problem to be solved.

Rather than fighting a “war” to protect pollution, Kentucky’s leaders should look past political clichés and entrenched economic interests.

They should position Kentucky to be a leader in meeting the technical and economic challenge of making “clean coal” a reality instead of an oxymoron. It won’t be cheap, easy or painless for anyone, but it is the smart thing to do.

Kentucky-born filmmaker Peter Byck has no doubt that climate change is real, that human activity is causing it and that people must take significant action to stop it from destroying the planet.

But when he set out to make his new documentary, Carbon Nation, Byck didn’t necessarily want to change skeptics’ minds. He wanted to show them that many remedies for climate change are worth doing for other reasons — like making and saving money.

“We wanted to make a positive film — a solutions-based, no-blame, no-shame movie,” Byck said.

Carbon Nation will have its first Lexington screening at 7 p.m. Tuesday at The Kentucky Theatre. The screening is sponsored by the Kentucky Energy & Innovation Roundtable and the Idea Festival in Louisville. Tickets are $10.

Byck was born and raised in Louisville and studied filmmaking at the California Institute of the Arts. He has worked a lot in the film industry, including being assistant to the producer of the 1988 hit A Fish Called Wanda.

But his passion is making documentaries about society’s relationship to the environment. One of his earlier films, Garbage, won the documentary award at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 1996.

Carbon Nation includes a tutorial on climate change that is less preachy and more solutions-oriented than former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth. Much of Carbon Nation is a series of profiles of people who are doing creative things to make or save money, operate businesses more efficiently, make the environment cleaner, make people’s lives better, and fight climate change, whether or not they intend to. Among them:

Cliff Etheredge has created one of the world’s largest “wind farms” in West Texas by organizing small ranchers like himself. Windmills generate electricity for utilities — and steady income for the ranchers.

Retired Army Col. Dan Nolan tells how the military is reducing energy consumption in Iraq by finding more fuel-efficient ways to cool temporary buildings. In addition to saving money, it is putting fewer military convoy drivers in harm’s way.

Arthur Rosenfeld, the father of California’s building and appliance efficiency standards, talks about how his work has saved consumers billions of dollars during the past three decades. Former CIA Director James Woolsey is promoting plug-in hybrid cars. And Bernie Karl in Alaska is doing pioneering work with geothermal energy that is saving companies he works with a fortune.

Byck said Karl is an example of someone fighting climate change while still doubting its existence. “I realized that you didn’t have to believe that climate change was a problem to do all these things that could solve climate change,” Byck said. “He just likes clean air and water, and he doesn’t like smokestacks.”

Carbon Nation has been showing in theaters around the country for the past year to build credibility for broader distribution. “The trick with any film, especially a small indie film like this, is getting more people to see it,” he said.

Byck said a major studio is negotiating on-demand video rights with cable companies. The film will soon be sold in Wal-Mart stores and through Walmart.com, he said.

While Carbon Nation has a natural audience among environmentalists and liberals, Byck said he is especially proud that many conservatives have seen and liked it. The film recently received a glowing review on the Creationcare.org blog of the Evangelical Environmental Network.

Byck hopes the film also will be seen by more business people, especially in states such as Kentucky, where energy conservation and renewable energy development could be big business opportunities.

Byck said solution-oriented films like his can be an antidote to poisonous politics and media portrayals of America as a polarized society. He thinks the only way to solve major problems is by finding a “respectful center” in which to discuss them.

“The film is doing what we wanted it to do,” Byck said. “It’s reaching a lot of people like my Uncle Phil, who is a very conservative guy. We wanted to present an argument that made sense to him — an economic argument, a national security argument.”

So what does Uncle Phil think of Carbon Nation?

“He loves the film,” Byck said. “I was relieved.”

The University of Kentucky’s College of Design received confirmation Wednesday that its project, Kentucky River Cities: Louisville, Paducah, Henderson, will be included in the 5th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam next April.

“It’s a big deal to be included,” Michael Speaks, dean of the UK College of Design, told me when I wrote this column about the project April 25. “They get a huge number of applications from all over the world.”

The architecture and urban planning exhibition, held every other year in Holland, says it “aspires to stimulate a wider discourse on the relationship between our environments and the quality of our lives.”

The 5th Biennale will explore new ways of planning and creating more sustainable cities.  The exhibition will focus on three cities — Rotterdam, Istanbul and Sao Paulo — but will include other examples of innovation around the world, such as the Kentucky project.

College of Design students and faculty, along with professionals from around the world and UK’s Center for Applied Energy Research, been working with community leaders in Henderson, Louisville and Paducah to research and plan ways of revitalizing industrial riverfront districts to boost the local economies.

How do you turn liabilities into assets, then use them to improve the economy? That is a challenge facing the University of Kentucky’s College of Design and leaders in three Kentucky cities along the Ohio River.

While the work in Henderson, Paducah and Louisville is still in early stages, it could soon get some international attention. UK hopes to receive confirmation next week that its Kentucky River Cities project has been chosen for inclusion in the 5th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in April 2012.

The architecture and urban planning exhibition, held every other year in Holland, says it “aspires to stimulate a wider discourse on the relationship between our environments and the quality of our lives.” Next year’s Biennale will explore new ways of planning and creating more sustainable cities, which over the next few decades are projected to house 80 percent of the world’s people on less than 3 percent of the earth’s surface.

The exhibition will focus on three cities — Rotterdam, Istanbul, and Sao Paulo, — but will include other examples of innovation around the world. “It’s a big deal to be included,” said Michael Speaks, dean of the UK College of Design. “They get a huge number of applications from all over the world.”

Henk Ovink, director of national spatial planning for the Netherlands and a Biennale organizer, has visited Kentucky three times to speak at the college and observe the River Cities project.

The River Cities project began nearly four years ago as a five-day design workshop in Henderson by the college and the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, where Speaks then directed the graduate program. Several people from those schools were Henderson natives, and they were trying to help local business and civic leaders imagine how to redesign and revitalize the cities to adapt to the changing economy.

After Speaks moved to UK a year later, “The Henderson Project” was broadened to include other Ohio River cities that face similar issues. Along with local leaders and design professionals, the college is working with UK’s Center for Applied Energy Research and architects from Los Angeles, Detroit, Holland and Norway.

“It’s an opportunity to show that design is not just about aesthetics,” Speaks said. “Good design can be a real economic value-adder, and it can change the economics and cultural makeup of cities.”

UK students also are working on redevelopment ideas for an area of Louisville’s West End near the Ford Motor Co. plant and investigating long-term possibilities for reusing a former uranium enrichment plant in Paducah.

But most of the work has been in Henderson, with a focus on the Henderson Municipal Power & Light Plant No. 1, an old coal-fired plant that was decommissioned a few years ago.

Originally, city leaders thought the power plant needed to be demolished to redevelop the area. But Speaks said that has turned to looking for ways to renovate the huge plant for uses such as a convention center, offices for energy-related companies or even an IMAX movie theater.

“We have tried to make ourselves part of these communities,” Speaks said, by working closely with local leaders to help create design solutions that will meet their needs and achieve their goals.

The River Cities project is an example of how Speaks wants the college to become a state resource, offering design-related help for economic and social issues. Another example is a project that has designed attractive, affordable and energy-efficient homes that can be mass produced at idle houseboat factories around Lake Cumberland. Another idea on the horizon: creating a Kentucky Mayor’s Institute for Design to help local officials with urban planning issues.

This kind of collaboration could have applications far beyond Kentucky, which is why the Biennale is interested in showcasing UK’s work.

Chick on each thumbnail to see complete photo:

Construction crews worked Tuesday to dig out rock and dirt for the foundation of Wildcat Coal Lodge, the new $7 million home for the University of Kentucky’s basketball players. Photo by Tom Eblen

Demographics is destiny, which is why Kentucky’s business and political leaders should be taking a close look at data released this month from the 2010 census.

Here are a few of those demographic trends from the census and other recent reports that are worth keeping in mind:

Diversity and age: Kentucky’s population grew 7.4 percent between 2000 and 2010, bringing the total number of state residents to 4,339,367. Almost all of that growth was among minorities, especially Hispanics, whose numbers more than doubled.

“Immigration is a positive, not a negative,” said Ron Crouch, research director for the state Education and Workforce Development Cabinet and one of Kentucky’s most respected demographers. “Without immigration, we would be a state in decline.”

The population of Kentuckians younger than 18 grew at only one-third the rate of older residents. “We’re not going to have a growing work force unless older people work longer,” Crouch said.

What’s more, minorities accounted for all of the overall growth among the state’s younger people. To keep its economy strong, Kentucky must do a better job with education, especially considering the achievement gap that often exists in schools between minority and white students.

Health and well-being: Crouch said one alarming trend is the continued rise in births to unwed mothers. Almost 42 percent of children born in Kentucky in 2009 were to single mothers — up from 36 percent in 2005 and 8 percent in 1970.

“A growing portion of our families are at risk,” he said, because most of these unmarried mothers are already poor, and single motherhood is a big factor in keeping them and their children poor.

When looking at government transfer payments in Kentucky, Crouch said, the big money is in retirement, disability and rapidly rising health care costs. Those costs will increase as the overall population continues to age. By comparison, he said, “Welfare, food stamps and unemployment insurance are drops in the bucket.”

Another concern is that, in many Kentucky counties, large segments of the population are chronically jobless, a situation that doesn’t show up in traditional unemployment measures. Because these people haven’t paid into Social Security and Medicare, taxpayers will face even bigger costs as they age and require medical care.

“The Medicaid crisis today is going to get much worse,” Crouch said.

Location and economy: While much of the nation’s Northeast and Midwest are in decline, and the Southwest faces serious issues, Kentucky’s location in the growing Southeast offers economic growth potential. The state’s abundance of water will be an important asset in the future, Crouch added.

Kentucky’s population growth was primarily in the center of the state — especially inside the so-called Golden Triangle of Lexington, Louisville and Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati — and along interstate highways.

The Golden Triangle counties have the highest per-capita income, while the lowest is in parts of Eastern Kentucky. “But if you have a job in Eastern Kentucky, you are making wages at or above the rest of the state,” Crouch said. That is mostly because of health care and retail jobs, he added. The coal industry, where employment has fallen dramatically in recent years, plays a much less significant role.

Bowling Green outgrew Owensboro and became Kentucky’s third-largest city, thanks largely to its location along Interstate 65 between Louisville and Nashville.

The Elizabethtown region also experienced strong growth. It is likely to continue to become a more significant player in the state’s economy as growth follows the Army’s decision to move more support personnel to nearby Fort Knox.

While Kentuckians continued the trend of moving from rural counties to urban and suburban counties, most of the state’s rural counties saw less decline than those in most surrounding states, such as Illinois and West Virginia.

Since consolidating some of Kentucky’s 120 counties will likely never happen because of politics, the growth of urban regional economies will make cross-county planning and cooperation more important than ever. And booming suburban counties will have to do a better job of managing sprawl to protect quality of life.

Overall, Crouch thinks, the state’s trends show promise for good economic growth, but it will require more investment in education, infrastructure and health care to keep Kentucky competitive.

If we can learn anything from recent headlines, it is that powering our economy and lifestyle will only get more difficult and expensive, at least in the near future.

Japan is struggling to avert catastrophe from an earthquake-damaged nuclear power plant. The crisis has the rest of the world taking a second look at the safety of its nuclear systems.

Kentucky outlawed nuclear power in 1984 until the federal government came up with a plan for storing spent fuel, which it has yet to do. The ban was prompted by a leaking radioactive dump in Fleming County that took years to contain. The state Senate voted last month to repeal the ban, but the bill died in the House.

Should Kentucky reconsider nuclear power, which now provides 20 percent of this nation’s electricity? Maybe so. We’re in no position to ignore any source of energy. But Japan’s disaster reminds us nuclear power is an imperfect, unforgiving technology that can be dangerous and costly.

I spent the early years of my career covering another example, much closer to home.

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which provides electricity to parts of Kentucky and six other states, narrowly averted a nuclear accident in 1975 when one of its reactors in Alabama caught fire.

By the time I started covering TVA in 1981, the utility was raising electricity rates and writing off billions of dollars in investment because officials realized the agency was building too many nuclear reactors.

Then, in 1985, TVA shut down all its reactors after its own nuclear engineers secretly came to me and other reporters with evidence that raised questions about whether those plants had been built safely. That led to years of repairs and billions in additional cost.

Coal provides half the nation’s power and more than 90 percent of Kentucky’s power. Electricity has been cheap in this state, because many of the health and environmental costs of mining and burning coal have been ignored. That is changing, because it must.

The Environmental Protection Agency last week proposed tighter rules for how much mercury, other toxic substances and particle pollution coal-fired power plants can release into the air. The EPA claims the rules will save 17,000 lives a year, and the $10 billion cost of making plants cleaner would produce $100 billion worth of health and environmental benefits.

Utilities will fight the new rules, just as they fought many previous rules that made coal-fired plants much cleaner and safer. Expect opposition, too, from many politicians, especially those in the pockets of industries that fund their campaigns.

They will say we “can’t afford” to protect public health or the environment, and higher standards will “kill jobs.” Change is inevitable, though, because research shows that pollution and climate change are killing a lot more than jobs.

Many of those same politicians have fought against fuel-economy standards for vehicles, leaving us all the more vulnerable to political instability in the Middle East and rising demand for oil in developing nations such as China and India.

Increasing domestic oil production in ways that harm the environment isn’t the answer, because that would barely make a dent in the price or supply of what is now a globally traded commodity.

So what is the answer? There isn’t one, but many.

We must invest in research and technology to mine, drill and burn coal and oil more cleanly and efficiently. We must incorporate whatever lessons are learned from Japan’s crisis to make nuclear power safer.

We must develop renewable energy sources — solar, wind and biomass — that will be able to sustain civilization long after coal and oil are gone. Government must play a significant role in this research where private industry cannot or will not.

Perhaps more than anything, we must get serious about designing buildings, vehicles and gadgets to use less energy. Conservation isn’t as difficult as many people think. Take, for example, Kentucky’s many new energy-efficient school buildings, including one in Warren County that will generate as much power as it uses.

We have a choice: ignore the headlines and fight inevitable change, or learn from them and get serious about balancing our needs and desires with those of future generations. Anyone who thinks we can maintain our energy status quo is a dim bulb.

Kentucky’s legislators have shown unusual willingness this year to waste their time and taxpayers’ money.

Keep teenagers in school? Protect the elderly in nursing homes? Create a more fair and adequate tax system? Can’t get it done. But lawmakers have plenty of time to push legislation that belabors the obvious.

Republicans want schools to set aside time for children to say the pledge of allegiance, which, by law, they already do. Democrats want a constitutional amendment to protect the right to hunt and fish, which has never been threatened.

Most telling of all, two lawmakers want to proclaim the right of Kentucky’s coal industry to do as it pleases. Kentuckians know the coal industry has always done that, with plenty of help from our politicians.

Rep. Jim Gooch, a Providence Democrat and climate-change denier, proposed legislation that would exempt coal mining from the Clean Water Act and other federal environmental regulations if the coal never leaves Kentucky.

Even more ridiculous is a Senate joint resolution calling for Kentucky to be a “sanctuary state” for the coal industry, freeing it from regulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That proposal was made by Sen. Brandon Smith, a Hazard Republican who once managed a company the EPA went after for spilling 7,000 gallons of oil into a Laurel County creek.

Gooch and Smith say the coal industry should only be regulated by the state. But what they really want is no effective regulation at all. Too often, they amount to the same thing.

Consider this example from last week’s headlines: State regulators must submit a plan to the U.S. Office of Surface Mining by April 1 to raise the cash bonds coal companies must post to ensure that land is reclaimed after mining. In dozens of cases since 2007, companies shut down and left a mess that their bonds didn’t begin to cover. This time, as previously, state regulators are raising bonds only because federal regulators are forcing them to.

The coal industry is freaking out about federal regulation more than usual. That is because, for the first time since the Clinton and Carter administrations, the federal agencies charged with protecting the environment and regulating mine health and safety are being allowed and encouraged to do their jobs.

The proposed state legislation is especially embarrassing because Gooch and Smith are chairmen of the House and Senate committees that oversee Kentucky’s natural resources. But Steve Beshear, a usually sensible governor, managed to outdo them both in pandering to the coal industry. In his State of the Commonwealth address, Beshear colorfully called for less federal regulation of coal. “Get off our backs!” he shouted. “Get off our backs!”

I’m sure the coal barons loved Beshear’s performance. It reminded me of a previous generation of Southern governors, railing against the feds for insisting that their states acknowledge black citizens’ civil rights. It was Beshear’s George Wallace moment.

The truth is, we must mine and burn coal for years to come until sustainable energy technology is ready to replace it. But coal must be used responsibly, because we also need clean air, clean water and land that is capable of supporting life and an economy long after the coal is gone.

Not all coal companies are bad actors. But the industry as a whole has always cared more about big profits than protecting miners’ health or respecting the environment. Reform has never come without federal regulation, and the industry has usually fought it every step of the way.

Thankfully, the legislation proposed by Gooch and Smith won’t amount to much, except a waste of public time and money. States cannot just ignore federal law — that issue was settled pretty clearly by the Civil War.

The lawmakers say they want to “send a message” to Washington. They’re sending a message, all right. The message is that King Coal has the best Kentucky politicians money can buy, and the rest of us need the feds to protect us from them.