Research in environmental justice reveals that low-income and minority neighborhoods in our nation’s cities are often the preferred sites for landfills, power plants, and polluting factories. Those who live in these sacrifice zones are forced to shoulder the burden of harmful environmental effects so that others can prosper. Mountains of Injustice broadens the discussion from the city to the country by focusing on the legacy of disproportionate environmental health impacts on communities in the Appalachian region, where the costs of cheap energy and cheap goods are actually quite high.

Through compelling stories and interviews with people who are fighting for environmental justice, Mountains of Injustice contributes to the ongoing debate over how to equitably distribute the long-term environmental costs and consequences of economic development.

Contributors:
Laura Allen, Brian Black, Geoffrey L. Buckley, Donald Edward Davis, Wren Kruse, Nancy Irwin Maxwell, Chad Montrie, Michele Morrone, Kathryn Newfont, John Nolt, Jedediah S. Purdy, and Stephen J. Scanlan.

• Foreword
  Donald Edward Davis
• Introduction: Environmental Justice and Appalachia
  Michele Morrone and Geoffrey L. Buckley
• Part One. Perspectives
  • 1: The Theoretical Roots and Sociology of Environmental Justice in Appalachia
    Stephen J. Scanlan
  • 2: A Legacy of Extraction: Ethics in the Energy Landscape of Appalachia
    Brian Black
  • 3: Pollution or Poverty: The Dilemma of Industry in Appalachia
    Nancy Irwin Maxwell
• Part Two. Citizen Action
  • 4: “We Mean to Stop Them, One Way or Another”: Coal, Power, and the Fight against Strip Mining in Appalachia
    Chad Montrie
  • 5: Commons Environmentalism Mobilized: The Western North Carolina Alliance and the Cut the Clearcutting! Campaign
    Kathryn Newfont
  • 6: Injustice in the Handling of Nuclear Weapons Waste: The Case of David Witherspoon, Inc.
    John Nolt
• Part Three. In their Own Words
  • 7: Housewives from Hell: Perspectives on Environmental Justice and Facility Siting
    Michele Morrone and Wren Kruse
  • 8: Stories about Mountaintop Removal in the Appalachian Coalfields
    Geoffrey L. Buckley and Laura Allen
• Afterword: An American Sacrifice Zone
  Jedediah S. Purdy
• Contributors
• Index