Sergio and Diana Lorenzo want to have a child, but are unable to afford maternity coverage due to the rising cost of healthcare and the weak U.S. economy. I interviewed and photographed them for a MSNBC story about how financial concerns are causing some people to delay parenthood.

Click the play button on the left to listen to the couple discuss their situation.

Below is a screenshot of the story page on MSNBC.com.

At last! At last! A dream fulfilled

Forty-five years after Martin Luther King called on America to live out the true meaning of its creed – that all men are created equal – a senator from Illinois becomes the first African-American nominee of a major political party.

I worked as one of four MediaStorm producers, in collaboration with the world-class journalists at the Rocky Mountain News, to produce a 20-minute documentary on Sen. Barack Obama’s historic nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Incorporating the work of the Rocky Mountain News’ excellent photographers and videographers, as well as producer-generated man-on-the-street interviews, and commentary from the paper’s editorial staff, columnists and reporters, the piece aims to provide some analysis and historic context about what the events surrounding the convention mean for Denver, and for the country as a whole.

Produced on a lightning-fast deadline, the project launched just 36-hours after Sen. Obama’s acceptance speech.

Watch the project

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I am proud to announce that I have been named as one of the 100 Notable Multimedia Professionals by the multimedia blog Innovative Interactivity. I am humbled and honored to be named alongside such a talented group of creative and dedicated journalists.

Visit the site to see the others named.

Note: This article was originally published on The Coal War.

by Robert Browman
http://thecoalwar.com

Henry David Thoreau

Monday was birthday of the man who wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” That’s noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

During his life, Thoreau wrote more than 20 books on a variety of topics, but he is best known for Walden, which he published in 1854. The book chronicles the two years Thoreau spent at his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin near Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.

Many see his experiment at Walden Pond as a radical rejection of society in favor of a natural, wilderness life. In reality, Thoreau’s beliefs were more practical and moderate than extreme. The cabin at Walden wasn’t located deep in the wilderness. It was just on the edge of his hometown, not far from his family.

He didn’t entirely reject human society, nor did he completely embrace the wild. He condemned mankind’s destruction of nature, and he sought to find what he felt was a proper balance between the natural world and the needs of man.

Nevertheless, Thoreau’s eloquent descriptions of nature, and his thoughts about conservation, have moved and inspired generations of naturalists and environmentalists, from the more moderate to the most radical.

About the inherently destructive nature of society, Thoreau wrote:

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”

And:

“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”

He penned some of the most poetic and lyrical passages in the English language about man’s attachment to nature:

“We need the tonic of wildness – to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed . . . We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.”

And remarkably, in just seven words, he concisely articulated his philosophy about the world:

“All good things are wild and free.”

Happy Birthday Mr. Thoreau. Your spirit lives forever wild and free in the hearts of those you have inspired with your words.

Note: A slightly edited version of this article was published as the front page showcase piece on The Daily Yonder in mid-July 2010. The story is one of a series of articles I have written on the coal industry and mountaintop removal in my role as lead writer and co-editor of the The Coal War. All images below are by Chad A. Stevens, Director of The Coal War.

by Robert Browman
http://thecoalwar.com

Lorelei Scarbro, center, took part in a candlelight vigil to honor the miners who died in the April 5, 2010 explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine. Massey Energy is the same company Scarbro is hoping to stop from mountaintop removal mining Coal River Mountain. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

Dorothy, WV, lies in the valley between Kayford Mountain and Coal River Mountain in Raleigh County. For decades Kayford Mountain has been the site of a major mountaintop removal complex. Many residents in the community complain of property damage and cracked foundations because of the blasting. The ridges of Coal River Mountain, in the distance, might instead become a 220-turbine wind farm, providing electricity to power 150,000 homes. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

On February 3, 2009, the first nonviolent protest on Coal River Mountain brought attention to the campaign to build a wind farm. Five protesters, including Rory McIlmoil, left, and Matt Noerpel, chained themselves to an excavator on a mountaintop removal preparation site. The five were later removed and charged with criminal trespassing. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

Storms rolled over a mountaintop removal coal mine near Pikeville, KY, in May 2007. Mountaintop removal coal mining is practiced Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. Appalachian Voices, an advocacy group that has compiled the industry’s data, totals the damage at over one million acres. (Chad Stevens / The Coal War)

Lorelei Scarbro spends each day on her ancestral land in an Appalachian hollow living in fear that a coal company will soon destroy the mountain way of life she holds dear. Scarbro, a 54-year-old grandmother and coal-miner’s widow, lives in a house built by her late husband in the shadow of one of the last untouched mountains in the area, Coal River Mountain. Massey Energy is poised to blast it to smithereens.

Massey holds permits to surface mine Coal River Mountain using mountaintop removal, a process where up to 800 feet of a mountain is blown up so coal in the newly exposed seams can be scraped out with heavy machinery. Debris from the blast is then dumped into adjacent valleys and streams, often causing severe environmental and health issues for surrounding communities. The non-profit group Appalachian Voices estimates that 1.2 million acres of Appalachian forest has already been destroyed by surface mining.

Scarbro, who was born and raised in Coal River Valley, has witnessed the devastation caused by mountaintop removal first hand. “I have seen communities – “literally communities – destroyed, all for a greater profit margin for the coal companies.” she said. “If we are not successful in saving this mountain, then everything I have, and everything all my neighbors have, will be destroyed.”

Scarbro has been fighting for years to save Coal River Mountain from Massey’s bulldozers and dynamite. She is a currently trying to stop the blasting by seeking adoption of an alternative, sustainable-energy plan, The Coal River Wind Farm. The solution would fundamentally change the coal-based economy in West Virginia by halting mountaintop removal in favor of sustainable energy jobs, while allowing for continued traditional, subterranean coal mining.

Already, the wind farm has faced stiff opposition from West Virginia’s power brokers. Politics in the state has long been entwined with the coal industry.

Scarbro believes that by engaging in mountaintop removal, the coal companies are not acting in the best interest of the people of her state. “They have no heart, they have no respect for the living or the dead,” she said. “It’s almost like they don’t see us as living breathing human beings, we’re just to be erased out of their path. It needs to stop.”

Recent moves by the federal government suggest they want it to stop too. On April 1, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency announced stricter regulations intended to limit surface mining in Appalachia. Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the EPA, said, “Coal communities should not have to sacrifice their environment, or their health, or their economic future to mountaintop mining.”

The announcement gave new hope to opponents of the environmentally destructive process. “The spirit and ethic of the EPA’s guidance was that they were curtailing mountaintop removal,” Rainforest Action Network’s Nell Greenberg said.

Scarbro interpreted the EPA’s new rules as the government’s first step toward abolishing mountaintop removal altogether. “This is the beginning of the end for valley fills and mountaintop removal. We are not leaving our mountains,” she told the Huffington Post.

Less than two month’s later, the government shattered those hopes.

In late June, the agency recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers approve a permit sought by the coal company Coal-Mac for the Pine Creek Surface Mine in Logan County, West Virginia. The proposed mine will level 760 mountain acres, fill three valleys, and destroy more than two miles of streams.

Opponents of mountaintop removal see this action as a clear reversal of the position the EPA took in April. Some see it as yet another example of the federal government pandering to the coal industry at the expense of the environment. “We have seen mountaintop removal permits simply rubber stamped in the past,” Amanda Starbuck of the Rainforest Action Network said. “This feels like more of the same.”

But to Scarbro, the EPA’s decision is not just about acres, valleys and streams. To her, it is a betrayal of a promise made directly to the people of Appalachia. She expressed her disappointment to the EPA’s Lisa Jackson in a letter excerpted here:

I have been involved in the battle to stop, not regulate, mountaintop removal coal mining since the coal mine moved in next door to my home at the base of Coal River Mountain in Rock Creek, WV. I watched my husband die of black lung after 35 years as an underground union coal miner. I watch as people I love get sicker each day from contaminated water after raising their family in Prenter Hollow, WV.

I have left my very peaceful home 3 miles up in Rock Creek and traveled to DC many times in the past 2 years to help the powers that be to really see the face of coal. I hope that by telling the people on Capitol Hill how the decisions they make affect the lives of the people in the mountain communities they might begin to see us as valuable. Too often we are treated like collateral damage or just the price of doing business.

I was on the call on April 1 when you released the guidance for conductivity levels and I was very excited when I heard you say, “You’re talking about no or very few valley fills that are going to be able to meet standards like this.” The release of this guidance and your words brought hope to many people that long ago lost it. I have been very thankful for all of the steps this EPA has taken to improve life in the mountain communities of Appalachia, but I was heartbroken when I saw the decision on Pine Creek. Although I live about 1 ½ hours from this area I stand with the citizens there and I fear that this is just the beginning of many more permit releases.

We believed you when you spoke about “zeroing out valley fills”. Where I am from, sometimes all you have is your word. People here have historically made life altering decisions on nothing more than a handshake and their word. I am a 54 year old widow of a coal miner and the most important thing to me is clean drinking water for my grandchildren. I don’t believe that is possible if we continue to destroy and cover head water streams in Appalachia. Once again, I have lost hope. Please don’t let this be the final word on Pine Creek Surface Mine.

With the federal government sending mixed signals, and pressure building from both activists and the coal industry, the future of mountaintop removal remains uncertain. What remains certain is that Lorelei Scarbro will continue to fight for her home, for the people of Appalachia and for their unique way of life.

Note: This is one of a series of articles I wrote on the coal industry and mountaintop removal coal mining as part of my role as lead writer and co-editor for the documentary film The Coal War.

by Robert Browman
http://thecoalwar.com

Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. (Public Domain)

On April 5, 2010, an explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners. The incident was the worst coal mining disaster in the United States in forty years.

In the aftermath of the accident, much of the criticism of the company has focused on Massey’s CEO, Don Blankenship.

Opponents have long characterized the 60-year old Blankenship as an unscrupulous coal baron who flouts the law, buys political favor and sacrifices miner and public safety for the sake of profit. In the wake of the Upper Big Branch tragedy, investors and politicians are taking a hard look at Blankenship as well.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who is responsible for the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which holds $14.1 million worth of Massey stock, has called for Blankenship’s resignation. “Massey’s cavalier attitude toward risk and callous disregard for the safety of its employees has exacted a horrible cost on dozens of hard-working miners and their loved ones,” DiNapoli said.

Blankenship is no stranger to controversy. He is active in West Virginia politics, often employing tactics that ride on the edge of commonly acceptable business practices.

In 2004, Blankenship spent $3 million on a campaign to unseat a West Virginia Supreme Court justice he thought might rule against Massey in a case pending before the court. The campaign was successful, and when the case was heard, the new judge ruled in Massey’s favor.

A challenge to that case ultimately landed in the U.S. Supreme court, which overturned the state court’s ruling, finding that the justice’s failure to recuse himself was a Constitutional violation. In the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Not every campaign contribution by a litigant or attorney creates a probability of bias that requires a judge’s recusal, but this is an exceptional case.”

In an editorial about the case, USA Today called Blankenship’s tactics “venemous,” and wrote, “Blankenship has inadvertently done what no reform group ever could: He has vividly illustrated how big money corrupts judicial elections. It puts justice up for sale to the highest bidder.” The New York Times wrote “The majority’s recognition of the threat posed by outsize contributions amounts to a crucial statement that judges and justice are not for sale.”

Blankenship then set his eyes on the West Virginia Legislature, vowing to do “whatever it takes” to help the Republican party secure a majority in what has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold. According to the New York Times, winning candidates in the state usually spend less than $20,000 on their campaigns. Blankenship spent $6 million on various political initiatives, including donating funds to 60 candidates.

U.S. Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat from West Virginia, told the New York Times, “Don Blankenship would actually be less powerful if he were in elected office. He would be twice as accountable and half as feared.”

Blankenship’s effort to change West Virginia’s political landscape ultimately failed when at least 31 House Democrats he targeted for defeat retained their seats, leaving Democrats in control of the Legislature.

Blankenship is outspoken, and his personal political views have long riled environmentalists, organized labor, and some in the mainstream of the political spectrum.

In a speech at the Tug Valley Mining Institute, Blankenship lashed out at those who criticize him. “It is as great a pleasure for me to be criticized by the communists and the atheists of the Charleston Gazette as to be applauded by my best friends,” he said. “People are cowering away from being criticized by people that are our enemies. Would we be upset if Osama Bin Laden was critical of us?”

Blankenship is a staunch opponent of government regulation of the mining industry. He and Massey fight regulation by claiming the company acts responsibly towards the environment on its own.

But Blankenship’s views suggest he is less than concerned about pollution. “If Pelosi thinks that decreasing CO2 in this country is going to save the polar bears, she’s crazy,” he said during a speech. “If CO2 emissions are going to kill the polar bears, it’s going to happen. What we do here is not going to do it.”

Blankenship also denies the existence of global warming. “They can say what they want about climate change. But the only thing melting in this country that matters is our financial system and our economy,” he said.

In an interview with E&E TV a year later, Blankenship solidified his position. “I don’t deny the science behind global warming. I deny that there is any science that supports global warming”, he said.

Blankenship also believes energy conservation is a slippery slope which will lead to the erosion of the American way of life. “I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia, China and India in the last year or two, and I can tell you, that’s the first phase,” he said. “You go from having your own car, to carpooling, to riding a bus to riding mass transit, and you eventually get down to where you’re walking. And your apartments go from being nice apartments and homes with your own bathrooms, to sharing bathrooms and kitchens with four families, that’s what socialism and the elimination of capitalism and free enterprise is all about.”

Blankenship is a proponent of the controversial surface mining process called mountaintop removal. The process involves blasting up to 400 vertical feet off the top of mountains to expose underlying coal seams. Excess debris from the blasting, which often contains toxic byproducts from the mining process, is dumped in high volume into surrounding valleys and streams.

Opponents of mountaintop removal point to scientific studies showing severe environmental and health consequences resulting from the process, as well as irreparable damage to communities and culture as life-long residents are forced from their ancestral land.

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that “the impact of mountaintop removal on nearby communities is devastating. Dynamite blasts needed to splinter rock strata are so strong they crack the foundations and walls of houses. Mining dries up an average of 100 wells a year and contaminates water in others. In many coalfield communities, the purity and availability of drinking water are keen concerns.”

Blankenship disagrees. “Mountaintop mining does less damage than urban construction because it is temporary and properly managed with proper drainage controls and so forth. It is something that is ugly during construction, but if you look at it 20 years from now you can hardly see it.” Blankenship told WVIncOnline`.

Critics say the coal extracted via mountaintop removal can be mined by traditional means, without destroying pristine environmental areas, uprooting residents, and putting communities at health risk. They contend coal companies engage in the environmentally devastating process to reduce the amount of labor needed to mine coal, thereby improving bottom-line profit.

In 1950, it is estimated there were 125,000 coal miners working in West Virginia. By 2005, there were approximately 15,000.

The EPA reports that more than 700 miles of streams were buried under valley fills between 1985 and 2001, and over 800 square miles of mountains have been destroyed by blasting. The agency estimates that 2,200 square miles of forests will be destroyed to make way for mountaintop removal sites by 2012.

Proponents of mountaintop removal claim the process provides jobs for local communities while providing energy for the rest of the country. Environmental activists have long argued the health risks and damage to the environment outweigh those benefits, but their efforts have yet to stop the politically powerful coal companies.

As Massey begins blasting on one of the last untouched mountains in Appalachia — Coal River Mountain — local residents have embraced a new tactic: an alternative energy project. Activists with The Coal River Wind campaign say building a wind farm on Coal River Mountain would provide enough renewable energy to power 150,000 homes, provide new jobs for the local community, while allowing the coal company to mine coal underground.

Lorelei Scarbro, who is working to gain political support for the project, believes the choice for Coal River Mountain is clear. “One is clean energy that will last forever, and the other is dirty energy that is finite and will some day run out, ” she said.

But Blakenship believes that any move towards renewable energy makes the country less competitive. “Teach your children to speak Chinese, because if we’re going to play around with windmills and solar panels, we’ll fall behind,” he told NPR.

Massey is the leading practitioner of mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Blankenship is one of the most vocal advocates of the process.

Leading up to the recent tragedy at the Upper Big Branch mine, Massey Energy was cited for numerous violations by federal regulators. The mine has received more than 1,000 safety citations during the last five years, including 50 citations the month prior to the disaster. Two safety violations were issued the day of the explosion.

Blankenship has mocked regulators who work to make mines safe, saying, “the very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming. ”

Many are now questioning why Massey failed to act when notified of so many safety issues at the Upper Big Branch mine.

During an interview with Forbes Magazine in 2003, Blankenship was clear about his company’s approach to the regulatory process. “We don’t pay much attention to the violation count,” Blankenship said.

In 2005, Blankenship wrote a memo to mine superintendents that critics say illustrate his profit over safety approach. “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) you need to ignore them and run coal,” Blankenship wrote. “This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills.”