By Jean Ambrose October 3, 2026
Property rights have never been absolute. Owning land gives a person important rights, but those rights do not mean that anything can be done on that land without affecting others. The law of nuisance has long recognized this basic idea: One person’s use of property cannot unreasonably interfere with another person’s use and enjoyment of his or her property.
This issue has become especially important as industrial activity moves into rural communities. Fossil-fuel development, waste disposal, mining, and other industrial operations can bring noise, dust, traffic, odors, pollution, and other changes to areas that were once quiet and largely agricultural.
Now, a similar debate is developing around large data centers. These facilities support cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and many other digital services. But they can also require huge amounts of land, electricity, water, cooling equipment, backup generators, roads, and transmission lines.
The question is not whether data centers provide useful services. They do. The question is whether the benefits and the costs are being fairly shared.
One of our neighbors, Deborah Baker, lives in Little Hocking on property her family has owned since 1964. It is rural farm country. A couple of years ago, Baker was in another state with her grandchildren when a fracking-waste disposal facility was built about a quarter-mile from her home.
When she returned in 2025, she noticed a loud, nonstop humming, a constant vibrating white noise that could be heard inside her house as well as outside. At night, she says she needs earplugs to sleep.
Baker learned that the nearby facility, Arrowhead Disposal Services, receives wastewater from hydraulic-fracturing operations in West Virginia and pumps it into a deep underground formation. She believes equipment at the facility is responsible for the noise.
Baker went to the facility several times and asked whether something could be done to reduce the noise. At first, she says, workers denied that the noise was coming from their operation. Eventually, personnel took a decibel measurement. Baker says the measurement was taken at the end of her driveway while she was not there. She therefore could not see how the measurement was taken or know the conditions under which it was made.
When she continued raising the issue, Baker says she was told that no regulations were being violated and that she should stop contacting the facility or the police would be called. Her response was simple: “I come here with a noise concern and your answer is to threaten me?”
That raises an important distinction. One question is whether a certain noise level violates a regulation. Another question is whether a person should have to live with constant industrial noise in her home.
Baker has also reported seeing water repeatedly running across a local road and saturating nearby farmland. Testing indicated that the water was groundwater rather than a leak from a municipal water system. More research would be needed to determine whether the disposal operation caused the groundwater to reach the surface.
But that question points to a larger problem. Industrial activity does not always stop at the property line.
Water crosses property lines. Air pollution can travel. Noise travels. Trucks use public roads. Changes to the landscape can affect neighboring properties. In other words, a company can legally own its property while its activities affect people who never agreed to those activities.
The same concern applies to data centers.
A community may welcome new investment, construction, jobs, and tax revenue. At the same time, residents may have legitimate questions about electricity use, water consumption, cooling systems, backup generators, noise, traffic, and new transmission infrastructure.
The basic question is simple: Who gets the benefits, and who pays the costs?
A company can purchase land and have every legal right to build on it. But the people living nearby may still experience consequences they did not choose.
A quiet rural landscape can become an industrial landscape. Roads can carry more construction and service traffic. Large cooling systems can produce constant noise. New power lines and other infrastructure may require additional land. Water and electricity that were once used mainly by homes, farms, and existing businesses may face new demands.
These concerns do not automatically mean that development should be stopped. They do mean that the costs of development should be considered along with the benefits.
Economists have a term for some of these costs: external costs. These are costs created by an economic activity that are imposed on people who are not part of the transaction.
A gas company may profit from extracting a resource. A mineral owner may receive royalties. Workers may receive wages. Governments may receive taxes and fees.
But what about the neighbor who hears the noise every night?
What about the homeowner whose property becomes less desirable because an industrial facility is built nearby?
What about the family that must deal with increased traffic, changes to the landscape, or concerns about water and air?
The same questions can be asked about a data center. The company may make a major investment and provide valuable digital infrastructure. But nearby residents may experience construction, noise, pressure on local utilities, and a permanent change in the character of their community.
As Baker puts it, “I’ve taken good care of this property all these years, but why would anyone buy it now with all of this nonstop noise? It’s daily torture!”
That is not simply a question about money. It is a question about what ownership means.
A fair system should ask whether the people who profit from an activity should also bear a meaningful share of the costs that activity creates. Economic development can be valuable, but the right to make a profit should not mean that someone else must quietly accept all of the consequences.
Clean air, clean water, quiet places to live, and healthy communities are not luxuries. They are part of what makes property valuable in the first place.
The law of nuisance recognizes an important principle: owning property does not erase responsibility. Saying “It is my property” does not end the discussion when activities on that property create serious and preventable effects on others.
The goal should not be to choose between property rights and economic development. The goal should be to protect both property owners and the communities around them.
People who own land should have meaningful rights. Companies should be able to invest and develop property. But neighbors should also have meaningful rights to live safely and peacefully in their own homes.
The real question is not simply what one person or company is legally allowed to do with its property. The larger question is what kind of community we want to create when one person’s economic activity changes the lives of everyone around them.
Ownership is a right. But ownership also comes with responsibility. Public officials must not give corporations permission to evade their responsibilities as an enticement to locate in our community.
Jean Ambrose is a founding member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Last Updated: October 16, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Vote not just for climate, but affordability
Eric Engle October 10, 2026
The energy research company Energy Innovation recently completed an analysis, Associated Press coverage of which was published in last weekend’s edition of the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, that found that “households will pay an average of $6,500 more for energy, cumulatively, through 2040” because of policies and actions of the Trump regime and congressional Republicans.
The analysis “focused on the sweeping package of tax breaks that slashed funding for clean energy tax credits, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump signed; environmental rollbacks, including clean air and power plant rules and the revocation of a scientific finding that underpinned the U.S. fight against climate change; the loosening of fuel economy standards and blocking of California’s novel rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035; and federal actions to stop wind, solar and hydrogen projects.”
The analysis found that “these changes will result in annual household energy costs rising in every state in the contiguous U.S., plus job losses in 47 of 48 states and losses to the gross domestic product in 46 states.” The analysis also projects “37,000 additional premature deaths from air pollution, $72 billion in additional healthcare costs and more than 9 billion tons of additional carbon pollution because of the environmental rollbacks.”
West Virginia’s entire congressional delegation, especially Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, were huge supporters of the One Big Beautiful Bill and of the environmental rollbacks the analysis covered. Meanwhile, West Virginians have been and continue to be hit particularly hard by rising costs of energy, due in large part to our state’s highest-in-the-country reliance on coal-fired grid power.
To quote from reporting by Charleston Gazette-Mail Reporter Mike Tony, “Citing an analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration data, the U.S. Joint Economic Committee–Minority in November projected that West Virginia’s average 2025 household electricity expenses would reach $1,960, more than any bordering state except Maryland despite West Virginia having easily the lowest per capita personal income among those neighbors in 2024, per a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis analysis.”
Tony continues, “The West Virginia Housing Development Fund last year published a state housing needs assessment that found there are more than 266,000 energy-burdened households in the state (37% of all households), meaning they pay more than 6% of their household income on electricity and other fuel expenses. One in every five burdened households were low-income and had among the top quarter of highest energy costs in the state, the report found…”
Fortunately, the West Virginia Office of Energy is finally implementing two home energy efficiency programs–the Home Owner Managing Energy Savings (HOMES) program and the Home Efficiency Appliance Rebate (HEAR) program–that are designed to help qualifying households offset the cost of whole-home energy improvements (HOMES) and support qualifying high-efficiency appliances, equipment and related home improvements (HEAR). These programs were funded with $88.2 million for West Virginia under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, energy legislation signed by President Biden that received no Republican support. Over four years after the passage of the IRA, we’re finally seeing these programs come into being. I plan to try qualifying for one of the programs to see if I can get a little help replacing my gas furnace with a far more efficient model. You can see if you qualify at bit.ly/WVHomeEnergyRebates.
I wish there were more good news but, unfortunately, energy ratepayers are also faced with the buildout of data centers. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that by 2030, data centers will use 11.8% of U.S. electricity, as much as the state of Texas, which is the U.S.’s most power-hungry state. A recent article in Forbes on the data center construction boom stated, “Over the next four years, they could eat up another 457 terawatt-hours of electricity–enough to power California for nearly two years.” A recent Gallup poll found that 70% of Americans opposed building AI data centers in their communities.
You wouldn’t know about that 70% opposition nationwide listening to Gov. Patrick Morrisey or most of the Republicans in the supermajority at the WV State Legislature. House Bill 2014 of 2025 made abundantly clear that they don’t particularly care how people feel about data centers in their communities. Friends of mine in Mason County have already suffered immensely from property damage and noise and loss of beloved woodlands from the early days of the building of a data center campus practically on top of them.
We don’t need more data centers; we need affordable, reliable, cleaner renewable energy. I have a 14.2 KW, 34-panel solar array on my home via a solar leasing program through the solar installation company Solar Holler. In just the last two weeks, my array has generated 576.3 kWh, while we have used 349.4 kWh, which has resulted in our exporting 220.3 kWh to the grid for credits. Even at the height of summer with air conditioning going almost around the clock, our array met 73% of our power needs.
I encourage you to check out Solar Holler and the numerous other installation companies working. Solar Holler did a fantastic job installing my array and they use only IBEW union labor and operate out of Huntington, WV, but there are other great companies getting in on leasing programs or offering other great financing options as well. Everyone should be able to maximize their home’s energy efficiency and take advantage of solar and other renewables. That starts with public policy.
We at Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, as our great yard signs say (we still have plenty of yard signs available), want you to be a climate voter, but we also want you to vote for lower utility bills and greater energy affordability across the board. Early voting starts Oct. 21 in WV and Election Day is Nov. 3
Eric Engle is board president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: October 3, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: When one person’s property rights become another person’s nightmare
By Jean Ambrose October 3, 2026
Property rights have never been absolute. Owning land gives a person important rights, but those rights do not mean that anything can be done on that land without affecting others. The law of nuisance has long recognized this basic idea: One person’s use of property cannot unreasonably interfere with another person’s use and enjoyment of his or her property.
This issue has become especially important as industrial activity moves into rural communities. Fossil-fuel development, waste disposal, mining, and other industrial operations can bring noise, dust, traffic, odors, pollution, and other changes to areas that were once quiet and largely agricultural.
Now, a similar debate is developing around large data centers. These facilities support cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and many other digital services. But they can also require huge amounts of land, electricity, water, cooling equipment, backup generators, roads, and transmission lines.
The question is not whether data centers provide useful services. They do. The question is whether the benefits and the costs are being fairly shared.
One of our neighbors, Deborah Baker, lives in Little Hocking on property her family has owned since 1964. It is rural farm country. A couple of years ago, Baker was in another state with her grandchildren when a fracking-waste disposal facility was built about a quarter-mile from her home.
When she returned in 2025, she noticed a loud, nonstop humming, a constant vibrating white noise that could be heard inside her house as well as outside. At night, she says she needs earplugs to sleep.
Baker learned that the nearby facility, Arrowhead Disposal Services, receives wastewater from hydraulic-fracturing operations in West Virginia and pumps it into a deep underground formation. She believes equipment at the facility is responsible for the noise.
Baker went to the facility several times and asked whether something could be done to reduce the noise. At first, she says, workers denied that the noise was coming from their operation. Eventually, personnel took a decibel measurement. Baker says the measurement was taken at the end of her driveway while she was not there. She therefore could not see how the measurement was taken or know the conditions under which it was made.
When she continued raising the issue, Baker says she was told that no regulations were being violated and that she should stop contacting the facility or the police would be called. Her response was simple: “I come here with a noise concern and your answer is to threaten me?”
That raises an important distinction. One question is whether a certain noise level violates a regulation. Another question is whether a person should have to live with constant industrial noise in her home.
Baker has also reported seeing water repeatedly running across a local road and saturating nearby farmland. Testing indicated that the water was groundwater rather than a leak from a municipal water system. More research would be needed to determine whether the disposal operation caused the groundwater to reach the surface.
But that question points to a larger problem. Industrial activity does not always stop at the property line.
Water crosses property lines. Air pollution can travel. Noise travels. Trucks use public roads. Changes to the landscape can affect neighboring properties. In other words, a company can legally own its property while its activities affect people who never agreed to those activities.
The same concern applies to data centers.
A community may welcome new investment, construction, jobs, and tax revenue. At the same time, residents may have legitimate questions about electricity use, water consumption, cooling systems, backup generators, noise, traffic, and new transmission infrastructure.
The basic question is simple: Who gets the benefits, and who pays the costs?
A company can purchase land and have every legal right to build on it. But the people living nearby may still experience consequences they did not choose.
A quiet rural landscape can become an industrial landscape. Roads can carry more construction and service traffic. Large cooling systems can produce constant noise. New power lines and other infrastructure may require additional land. Water and electricity that were once used mainly by homes, farms, and existing businesses may face new demands.
These concerns do not automatically mean that development should be stopped. They do mean that the costs of development should be considered along with the benefits.
Economists have a term for some of these costs: external costs. These are costs created by an economic activity that are imposed on people who are not part of the transaction.
A gas company may profit from extracting a resource. A mineral owner may receive royalties. Workers may receive wages. Governments may receive taxes and fees.
But what about the neighbor who hears the noise every night?
What about the homeowner whose property becomes less desirable because an industrial facility is built nearby?
What about the family that must deal with increased traffic, changes to the landscape, or concerns about water and air?
The same questions can be asked about a data center. The company may make a major investment and provide valuable digital infrastructure. But nearby residents may experience construction, noise, pressure on local utilities, and a permanent change in the character of their community.
As Baker puts it, “I’ve taken good care of this property all these years, but why would anyone buy it now with all of this nonstop noise? It’s daily torture!”
That is not simply a question about money. It is a question about what ownership means.
A fair system should ask whether the people who profit from an activity should also bear a meaningful share of the costs that activity creates. Economic development can be valuable, but the right to make a profit should not mean that someone else must quietly accept all of the consequences.
Clean air, clean water, quiet places to live, and healthy communities are not luxuries. They are part of what makes property valuable in the first place.
The law of nuisance recognizes an important principle: owning property does not erase responsibility. Saying “It is my property” does not end the discussion when activities on that property create serious and preventable effects on others.
The goal should not be to choose between property rights and economic development. The goal should be to protect both property owners and the communities around them.
People who own land should have meaningful rights. Companies should be able to invest and develop property. But neighbors should also have meaningful rights to live safely and peacefully in their own homes.
The real question is not simply what one person or company is legally allowed to do with its property. The larger question is what kind of community we want to create when one person’s economic activity changes the lives of everyone around them.
Ownership is a right. But ownership also comes with responsibility. Public officials must not give corporations permission to evade their responsibilities as an enticement to locate in our community.
Jean Ambrose is a founding member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Posted: September 26, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: In Ohio, renewable sourced electricity can be an affordable choice
By Dawn Hewitt September 26, 2026
Most of the time I am grateful to live in Ohio. Ohio is one of only 13 states that allow consumers to choose their electricity supplier, and one of only 9 states to allow municipal energy aggregation. The city of Marietta, for example, is able to negotiate with electricity suppliers to get a good, fixed-rate deal for AEP customers within city limits. AEP owns and manages the grid in southeastern Ohio, and supplies electricity to those who don’t designate an alternative supplier. AEP’s standard service option (SSO) rate per kWh is 10.97 cents from July 1 through Sept. 30, 2026, and the City of Marietta’s aggregated electricity rate from October 2025 through December 2026 is 9.86 cents per kWh.
Even though Marietta negotiates good deals for electricity, I opted out long ago. Marietta’s aggregation supplier, Dynegy, sources 60.8% of its power from fossil fuels and 30.5% from nuclear. AEP’s SSO uses 59% fossil fuels and 32% nuclear. I’m willing to pay extra to power my home with sunshine and wind, but as it turns out, I pay less! My current electric rate per kWh is 8.91 cents. I’ve been paying that fixed rate since November 2025.
My house is 100% powered by renewable energy – even though I don’t have solar panels on my roof or my own private wind turbine. My electricity is unaffected by nighttime when the sun isn’t shining or when the wind isn’t blowing. Since my power comes from the same grid as everyone else in town, the actual electricity that flows into my outlets might well be generated by coal, oil, or natural gas (unfortunately). But when I pay my electric bill, I am paying for AEP to buy the amount of renewable energy I have consumed from Shipley Energy, who offered me that very good deal for 100% wind power.
I picked Shipley’s offer using “Apples to Apples” at Energychoice.ohio.gov. For years, each time my electricity supply contract expired I’ve searched that website for the best deal on fixed-rate renewable energy. I’ve consistently scored a contract that beats both the AEP SSO and Marietta’s aggregation rates — and I’m paying for pollution-free electricity.
Sadly, the City of Marietta does not offer a renewable-energy aggregation option. Some Ohio communities, including Athens, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, offer a 100% renewable aggregate option. Cleveland’s rate, from August 2026 to July 2027, is 10.457 cents per kWh – which is less expensive than AEP’s SSO and less than a penny more per kWh than the nonrenewable energy rate Marietta negotiated a year ago.
Of course, I have no idea what AEP’s SSO will be when the current rate expires in a few days, or what Marietta will be able to negotiate for its aggregation rate in January. No matter. I’m not going to power my house with yucky old dinosaurs as long as I have the choice to use clean, renewable energy – and it’s even at a competitive price!
My account with Shipley Energy will expire on Nov. 10, so once again I will have to compare and choose my electricity supplier. I’m going to wait until early November to make the decision, but as of late September, according to Apples to Apples, I could sign up for a three-month fixed rate of 8.89 cents per kWh for 100% renewable energy, which would get me through what are likely to be the coldest months of the year. I hope this offer is still available a month from now.
With such a short term fixed rate, I’ll have to go through this process again in January, which is a bit of a bother, but since the costs of renewable energy are falling, it’s possible that I’ll find another great deal. The costs of renewable energy are, indeed, falling, because unlike extraction of oil, gas, and coal, “extraction” of wind and sunlight is free. Furthermore, technological advances such as whole-house battery storage and plug-in “balcony” solar suggest that renewable energy options will continue to be even easier and cheaper. And unlike fossil fuel production, renewable energy isn’t subsidized by taxpayers. Even with an unfairly tilted playing field renewable energy is increasingly competitive.
I’m sorry that readers of this column in West Virginia can’t choose their electricity supplier – unless they generate their own. Mon Power, however, allows its customers to fund solar power in West Virginia for as little as $2 per month. For more information, see https://tinyurl.com/WV-solar. And if you think West Virginia should become the 14th state to allow energy consumers to choose their own electricity supplier, visit https://www.resausa.org, and encourage your state legislators to enable it!
Dawn Hewitt chairs the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta, is managing editor of BWD magazine, and is active with Washington County for Safe Drinking Water.
Posted: September 19, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Are we prepared?
By Rebecca Phillips September 19, 20264 min read
2026 brought a summer of flash floods. We all remember the devastation inflicted on parts of West Virginia in July and August. Last month, as some areas began recovering while others were inundated, Charlise Robinson used this column to point out the need for more flood resilience in the state. More recent news has shown us more widespread devastation, and we in our river towns must face the question: are we ready for the next flood?
In mid-August, heavy rains and flash floods brought much of southern and central Ohio to a standstill, destroying homes and disrupting lives. In Indiana, seven people died in the floods. On Aug. 29, heavy downpours raced over baked, burned-over Arizona land and caused flash flooding that killed two hikers in the Grand Canyon and caused dozens to be evacuated. As of this writing, one man, a friend of the two dead hikers, is still missing. On Aug. 26, melting permafrost caused a glacier on the Nepal/Tibet border to collapse, registering as a magnitude 5.2 earthquake on seismographs. A wall of water and debris rushed down 45 miles of the Trishuli River, killing more than 1,300 people, with over 5,000 still missing. Some of the bodies were carried 150 miles downstream into India.
There is a common denominator to these far-flung disasters: climate change. The world’s oceans have warmed, leading to an increase in average air temperatures worldwide. For every 1°F of warming, the air can hold 4% more moisture, moisture that exits the atmosphere in the form of extreme precipitation events. A 2021 article in Climate and Atmospheric Science notes that, worldwide, 1 in 4 of the record rainfalls since 2010 can be attributed to climate change. Our country’s 2023 National Climate Assessment notes that rainfall events in this country have grown heavier over the last fifty years, with the Ohio River Valley experiencing one of the largest increases in hourly rainfall rates. These downpours are exceeding the soil’s ability to absorb them, leading to more floods.
We often associate increased heat with drought and wildfires, but, paradoxically, both of these can contribute to flood intensity. In places like the American West, extended periods of drought have created land so hard-baked that its ability to absorb rainfall is impaired. This impermeability was a factor in the intensity of the flash flood that tore through the Grand Canyon last month. Wildfires, besides exacerbating soil dryness, leave a lot of debris, creating debris flows that add to floods’ destructiveness. Though wildfire was not a factor in the Nepal flood, the US Geological Survey description of that event uses the term “debris avalanche” to describe the flow and its effects, which included the destruction of an international border crossing and the total inundation of many villages.
While the Mid-Ohio Valley is not at risk of the kind of flood that caused such devastation in Nepal, we are vulnerable. A 2017 study by the Army Corps of Engineers found that Ohio’s temperatures are likely to increase 16% by the end of the century, making our climate more like that of today’s Alabama. Stronger storms will be interspersed with longer periods of drought, leading to reduced water levels of as much as 50% in inland rivers like the Muskingum and more dessicated, impermeable soils. That same Corps of Engineers study found that, with the likely increase in extreme rainfall events, the Ohio River may start experiencing storm-induced surges of as much as 25% as soon as 2041, a mere fifteen years from now.
Most of our flood-prevention infrastructure was built more than 60 years ago for a very different climate. Our dams, levees, and floodwalls were built to prevent floods like those of 1913 and 1937, not those we are likely to see in the future. If our storms continue to intensify, will the current protections be enough? Only time will tell.
***
Rebecca Phillips is an Appalachian native, a WVUP retiree, and a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Last Updated: September 13, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: In my life
By Giulia Mannarino
September 12, 2026
As a child growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania, I remember the weather having four separate seasons during the calendar year. There seemed to be a specific winter, spring, summer and fall that were distinct and different. Although summers could be hot, daily temperatures rarely reached 100 degrees. Torrential rains and out of season snow storms were rare. Tornadoes and earthquakes never occurred locally or in nearby states. But the changes in the temperature and weather experienced in my own short life span seem astounding. Short at least as compared to the age of our universe or our planet. The seasons have changed over the years. Since the 1950s, average temperatures across the country have climbed steadily. Heat events have become more common. At the same time, there are fewer freezing days, record low snow levels and intense rainfalls. Not only are there more events like wild fires, flooding, droughts and other consequences of global warming but the duration and intensity of these events are increasing. Global warming acceleration itself has nearly doubled over the last decade. This situation is causing unusual and dramatic events such as the recent melting glaciers that flooded Tibet and Nepal villages and Grand Canyon hikers swept away by an extreme flash flood.
The concept of global warming first appeared in 1824 when French physicist Joseph Fourier proposed that Earth’s atmosphere traps heat acting like a blanket to keep the planet warm. In the 1850s, American scientist Eunice Foote and Irish physicist John Tyndall independently conducted experiments demonstrating that CO2 and water vapor are heat trapping gases. In 1896, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius was the first to hypothesize humanity could change the climate on a global scale. Further experiments and research continued throughout the 1900s. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson was the first president who warned about the dangers of burning fossil fuels when a report from a Science Advisory Committee titled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment” was presented. An entire section detailed the modification to heat balance and marked changes in climate that will be caused by use of fossil fuels. This was a few years before prominent climatologist Dr. James Hansen’s testimony in Congress on June 23, 1988. At that time, Dr. Hansen was the lead witness before a landmark hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. His declaration that human caused global warming could be detected was significant in bringing anthropogenic climate change to the forefront of political and public discourse.
In the past, global warming was much less partisan. On June 12, 1992, at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil, President George H.W. Bush signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC is the foundational international environmental treaty that laid the groundwork for all future global climate efforts, including the Paris Agreement. Its primary goal was to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to prevent dangerous interference with the climate system. In spite of the global reaction to this serious situation, the fossil fuel industry continued to be self-serving. It fired their employee scientists that legitimately reported on the seriousness of the climate crisis. The industry also continues to run disinformation campaigns that intentionally lead to confusion and politicization. The current administration is dismantling decades of science based public health and environmental protections that benefit polluters and in some cases enrich their own bank account.
President Harry S. Truman said; “Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician and I’ll show you a crook.” In fact, Trump earned $2 billion the first year he was back in office. It saddens me that the fossil fuel industry and certain politicians continue to show disregard for our environment and future generations. This past Friday was the anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. Although this massive tragedy killed many, it led to significant changes in emergency response, aviation security and international cooperation. I recently came across a quote from Joan Baez, one of my “Sheros.” Her wise remark on the current situation was “I have hope, in people, in individuals. You don’t know what’s going to rise from the ruins.”
Let your hopes as well as your actions shape the future.
Giulia Mannarino of Belleville, is a grandmother concerned about her two granddaughters’ futures and a member of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action
Posted: September 5, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Dolly’s mountain legacy – keeping Appalachia wild
By Griffin Bradley September 5, 2026
News & Sentinel
On Aug. 25, the world lost a giant in so many respects. Especially in this day and age, you are hard pressed to find a person who bridges nearly every divide and who so few people, if any, have an unkind word to say about them. Dolly Parton, a self-proclaimed country girl from the mountains of east Tennessee, created a legacy that spans so many pieces of today’s popular culture, but almost none more than her love and respect for our natural world, and the lengths she went to keeping them as wild as could be.
If you’ve never heard Dolly talk about her beloved Smoky Mountains or nature in general, I implore you to stop reading, head to Google, and take a listen. In her witty, country tone, she told stories of her life in the mountains, recalling how the rolling hills and babbling streams of Appalachia shaped the way she viewed the world. While seeing its beauty, she also saw the negative impacts people were having on the lands that she so loved.
“We’re just mistreating Mother Nature — that’s like bein’ ugly to your mama,” she said. “We need to take better care of the things that God gave us freely. And that we’re so freely messin’ up.”
In her songs, the natural landscape around her was impressed upon you, drawing on imagery not unfamiliar to many of us in the Ohio Valley.
“Life is as peaceful as a baby’s sigh,” where, “crickets sing in the fields nearby,” she wrote in her 1972 song, “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” That song, named an official state song of Tennessee in 2022, is one of many odes to nature that Dolly sang throughout her over-60-year career.
Beyond just talking and singing about nature, what Dolly did to protect it is just as important.
Dolly was an avid philanthropic champion for environmental initiatives across Appalachia, giving her time, star power, and personal wealth to causes near and dear to so many of us. As in her music, she was unafraid to take on the challenges many thought to be too large or complex to tackle, seeing them as just the very things that needed her attention the most.
In 1991, Dolly partnered with the American Eagle Foundation to establish the Eagle Mountain Sanctuary, a facility for bald eagles and other birds of prey unable to survive in the wild. She participated in the opening of the sanctuary, and over the last 35 years has helped expose millions of people to the conservation and rehabilitation needs for these animals through her support.
Through programs at her famed Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, millions of park guests have been educated on issues of conservation and environmental need in a way only Dolly could provide. Using entertainment and style, Dollywood has acted as an ambassador for conservation across the Smokies, with guests taking the meaningful impact it has back home with them across the globe.
After the devastating 2016 Tennessee wildfires, Dolly established programs through her own charity and the Dollywood Foundation to provide assistance to impacted families as well as disaster cleanup. Dolly donated millions of dollars of her own alongside raising millions more through her fundraising effort, Smoky Mountains Rise. Without Dolly’s direct stewardship, there’s simply no telling how widespread the long-term environmental and community impacts of the wildfires may have been.
As we watch tributes to Dolly Parton roll in from all around the world, I hope we are able to find our own connections to the place that we call home, and are able to stand up for it when we know it’s right. For Dolly, I find National Geographic’s closing statement from their 2022 write-up on her life, music and legacy especially poignant.
“Parton is unafraid to stomp her glittery heel when it comes to caring for the environment — her message is clear and she is increasingly amplifying it wherever she travels.”
Thank you, Dolly, for all you gave us. We will always love you.
***
Griffin Bradley is a lifelong Wood County resident, graduate of West Virginia University, and a contributing author for Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
Last Updated: September 9, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Let that sink in
By Linda Eve Seth August 29, 2026
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now. — Chinese Proverb
Carbon is an essential element to all life on Earth. Like DNA and protein, it is one of the molecules that make up our bodies. Carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, or CO2, is part of the air we breathe in every day. It can also be found in plants, rocks, oceans and fossil fuels. However, in the form of carbon dioxide gas, it can be very dangerous, and since industries emit a lot of CO2, it causes the planet to get warmer. Fortunately, there are natural ecosystems that store this carbon dioxide in what are called “carbon sinks.”
A carbon sink is any natural or artificial reservoir that absorbs more atmospheric carbon dioxide than it releases. By removing greenhouse gases from the air, these systems play a critical role in the natural carbon cycle and mitigating global climate change. The most effective, important carbon sinks on Earth are oceans, forests, and soil. Just like a kitchen sink holds water, a carbon sink holds carbon. In nature, things that release carbon into the air (like burning fuels or human breathing) are called sources. Things that suck that carbon out of the air and store it are called sinks. CO2, is a greenhouse gas, which means it traps heat from the sun and warms up the planet. If we didn’t have carbon sinks like oceans and forests soaking up huge amounts of this gas, Earth would get much too hot.
When we burn too many fossil fuels, we release excess carbon into the air. The carbon sinks try to soak it all up, but climate change is making it harder for them to do their job in several ways:
Ocean Acidification: As oceans absorb too much CO2 the water becomes more acidic. This makes it very difficult for marine animals like corals and shellfish to build their shells.
Wildfires: Warmer, drier weather leads to intense forest fires. When trees burn, they release all their stored carbon right back into the air.
Warming Waters: Water, especially the ocean, also acts as a carbon sink. A warmer ocean is less able to dissolve and hold onto carbon dioxide.
Trees are nature’s carbon storage units. As they grow, trees pull CO2 out of the air through photosynthesis and use the carbon to build their trunks, branches, roots and leaves. Because that carbon is stored in the wood and other plant tissues, the tree acts as a “carbon sink” — it takes in more carbon than it releases and keeps it out of the atmosphere for years, or even centuries, depending on the life of trees — while releasing oxygen back into the air.
In one year, a mature tree can absorb the equivalent of a half a metric ton of carbon dioxide. Altogether, forests in the U.S. offset about 16% of greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks, power plants and other sources. In fact, forest ecosystems are the largest land-based carbon sink on Earth.
Forests have been quietly cooling the planet for decades, but their role is increasingly under threat. Historically, by removing CO2, forests have acted as a reliable planetary thermostat. They regulate Earth’s temperature, drawing CO2 from the atmosphere, and lock it in trees, roots and soil — carbon that is emitted if trees are cut down. In a typical year, forests and other vegetation absorb roughly 30% of the carbon that humans emit from burning fossil fuels — a vital climate service performed at virtually no cost by trees around the world, from tropical rainforests to temperate and boreal forests. Deforestation reverses this absorption, releasing stored carbon and turning these areas into carbon sources
The past several years have not been typical. Recent research reveals that extreme fires have caused forests to absorb far less carbon than usual in 2023 and 2024, weakening their cooling effect. During those years, forests absorbed only a quarter of the carbon dioxide they do in an average year. 2023 marked the lowest “forest carbon sink” in over two decades when considering the loss of trees’ stored carbon and greenhouse gases caused by burning.
This recent sharp drop is also part of a longer-term decline, where the margin between forest emissions and carbon removals appears to be narrowing. With emissions from deforestation and other forest disturbances rising, the world’s forests risk shifting from a carbon sink to a carbon source.
Losing the world’s forest carbon sink will have catastrophic consequences for people and the planet. Without urgent intervention, a continued decline in forests’ ability to absorb carbon could accelerate climate change, increasing the frequency of deadly extreme weather events, and disrupting rainfall patterns that underpin water and food security.
Until next time, be kind to your mother Earth.
***
Linda Eve Seth, SLP, M.Ed., is a mother, grandmother, concerned citizen and member of MOVCA.
Last Updated: September 9, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Root of all evil
By Vic Elam
August 22, 2026
When I hear the assertion that we are in a race with China to build up our artificial intelligence capacity it makes me wonder where this level of concern was when we were handing over the keys to the electric car and the renewable energy that powers it to China.
In recent weeks I’ve tuned in to various business news television programs and have found that AI has dominated the business world and in fact is propping up the economy as wealthy investors reap healthy rewards from what some refer to as the AI boom, which is returning record profits on investment. This AI boom requires data centers to handle an immense amount of data, and the data centers enable other data intensive processes such as bitcoin mining and Flock videos. Meanwhile the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the world, BYD (a Chinese company) cannot build cars fast enough to meet world demand – BYD is prohibited from entering the U.S. market by a 100% tariff.
Although renewable energy investment is highly profitable it cannot compete with AI and many of the reasons are because of input costs. AI data centers and renewable energy are not playing on a level playing field, although I will argue that the field should be leveled.
During the infancy of renewable energy there were growing pains. Renewable energy sources were not reliable and not nearly as efficient as they are now, were costly to employ and not cost-effective. Over time, renewable systems improved in reliability and cost-effectiveness and now renewable energy is cheaper to produce than fossil fuels even though the U.S. taxpayer provides approximately $50 billion in direct subsidies for fossil fuels annually. Because of the advances in renewable energy and battery storage over the years, most of the new electrical production worldwide is now renewable. Changing the U.S. electric grid to operate with renewable energy is not easy, but it has been and continues to migrate in that direction, albeit slowly.
The U.S. electrical supply has been placed under demand by the proliferation of data centers, so much so that in many places the electrical grid cannot meet the demands. Also, energy costs are typically the largest cost input for data centers. Some of the new data centers are expected to use as much as 4,000 megawatts of electricity (equivalent to 3 million-4 million homes’ usage). Some data center companies are going off the grid and building their own power supplies. Typically, the fuel for these power plants is gas, and they are placing data centers in areas where there is an ample supply of natural gas. But gas is not the clean energy source it was once heralded to be, emitting carbon, methane and other harmful pollutants, and that’s after the environmental destruction caused in the gas extraction. Also, they are targeting rural areas where there is less organized resistance to their installations.
One thing that never comes up in the business news coverage of the AI boom and all the profits that wealthy investors are making from it is the impact that the proliferation of data centers is having on largely rural America. Cloaked in secrecy these behemoths move into rural America, get non-disclosure agreements with county or city officials and start buying up property. Often, local residents have no knowledge of the threat until it is too late. I don’t want to rehash the effects of data centers that have been well documented by myself and others in this column, I simply want to point out that the people who stand to profit from the AI boom are only a few landowners who sell their property for development and wealthy investors who will not be living with the harmful impacts. Few jobs will be created. Meanwhile, the harmful impacts from data centers will continue and likely grow as the demand for energy and water grows. One of the unfortunate outcomes of the AI boom is that in their urgency to produce electricity to power these data centers most companies are not investing in renewable sources and going the quick and easy route of gas power plants, some even looking to bring old retired nuclear plants back online. Adding concern is that while renewable energy projects go through the normal process to meet environmental compliance standards, data centers are given a green light to avoid many of those standards meant to protect ourselves and the environment.
I can’t help but think that if the industrial complex had put as much effort into developing this country’s renewable energy infrastructure over the last two decades or more as it has at building data centers in the last two years then we would be in a much better position to provide the needed energy without raising rates and without the environmental consequences. But I am not thinking with my wallet, and I am not already heavily invested in fossil fuel production.
To make things worse, many financial experts are growing concerned about an AI bubble, similar to the real estate bubble that burst in 2008 except about four times the size. I’m no financial wiz, but best I can synopsize this is that several companies are fighting to be the dominant players in the AI data center race and between investors and borrowing, there is in the order of trillions on the line and currently the demand for the AI is not backing up what’s being invested. This may lead to a financial collapse that leaves all of us paying the bill and data centers abandoned on the landscape.
I have no concerns about AI done responsibly and wealthy people who consider how their actions impact others. We can always do better, but if the power of the dollar is the only thing with meaning, then we are doomed to be subservient to it. As the saying goes, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” I think that many of us should take stock in what is really important.
***
Vic Elam is an avid outdoorsman and contributor to organizations that share his concern for our environment, including Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action
Posted: August 15, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: C8, water and household pollution management
By Callie Lyons
August 15, 2026
If you live in the Mid-Ohio Valley and rely on public water, it is worth knowing whether your community is filtering for C8 and other forever chemicals.
The region is widely known for C8 contamination linked to DuPont Washington Works. What most people probably don’t realize is that Parkersburg, the community most closely identified with this global crisis, has yet to implement a filtration system to deal with the problem.
Across the Mid-Ohio Valley, the pollution is widespread, yet some communities have filtration and others do not.
Some of us have benefited from filtration for years thanks to class-action litigation against DuPont, which resulted in the construction of granular activated carbon filtration systems for six public water systems in 2005: Lubeck and Mason County, West Virginia, and Belpre, Little Hocking, Pomeroy and Chester/Tuppers Plains in Ohio.
Independent of litigation, the city of Vienna installed a water treatment facility in 2017 to comply with the U.S. EPA’s health advisories.
Parkersburg has never had dedicated C8 or PFAS filtration. And the water system has come up with some pretty creative ways of delaying the inevitable. Recently, the Parkersburg Utility Board has been developing plans for a granular activated carbon treatment system. So far, those are future plans.
Whether your water is currently being treated or not, here’s what you need to understand about filtration.
Think of it as pollution management. Pollution, like your household garbage, needs to be collected, contained and removed so you can reduce your family’s exposure.
Filtration doesnt make the pollution disappear, just like a garbage truck doesn’t make your trash disappear. The garbage truck is the mechanism for collecting and removing. Likewise, granular activated carbon collects and captures these industrial chemicals so they can be removed from your water.
Filtration technology relies on a strength that is also its limitation. Carbon is remarkably good at capturing pollutants, but it can only hold so much. Overfill a garbage truck and that truck is going to be spilling your trash on the highway. Likewise, if you overburden the carbon material, it will become saturated and unable to contain the pollution. Filters have to be replaced on schedule to remain effective. And so filtration comes with ongoing maintenance and expense.
Filtration works. It can work extremely well. But it has to be managed.
Even if your community has municipal PFAS filtration, I believe people in the Mid-Ohio Valley should consider an additional layer of filtration for the water they actually consume. And if your public water system doesn’t yet have dedicated PFAS treatment, there is even more reason to understand your options.
You don’t necessarily need an elaborate or expensive whole-house system for effective management. A simple GAC (granular activated carbon) filtration pitcher used for drinking water can offer your family an additional layer of protection and one more way to reduce exposure.
The Mid-Ohio Valley has spent more than a quarter-century learning an extraordinarily difficult lesson about C8. It’s time we learned more about protecting ourselves from this very real and ongoing health threat.
Municipal filtration is an important layer of protection. Household pollution management is another layer of protection — and one you can control.
Remember: Exposure avoided today cannot become a health problem tomorrow.
Posted: August 8, 2026 by main_y0ke11
Climate Corner: Why is there a war on renewable energy?
By George Banziger
August 8, 2026
One would think that with the profusion of data centers, the growing need for more electricity for manufacturing, and the need to keep electric rates for residential consumers affordable, we should want energy from all sources: oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, wind, and solar. But our state and federal governments seem to be opting for fossil fuels only. In the recent past we have heard public officials from both parties advocate for “all-of-the-above” energy sources. That message seems to have disappeared.
In March of this year President Trump paid TotalEnergies, a French company, $1 billion to terminate its wind energy project off the U.S. east coast. This tipping of the scale to favor fossil-fuel interests is in addition to the panoply of federal benefits for the oil and gas industry. The U.S. government provides substantial subsidies to the oil and gas industries, amounting to approximately $34.8 to $40 billion annually. These subsidies include various tax breaks, direct spending, and regulatory advantages that support fossil-fuel production and consumption (e360.yale.ed). These subsidies are part of broader energy policy aimed at supporting domestic fossil fuel production. Recent reports indicate an increase in subsidies, with an additional $4 billion allocated annually over the next decade.
Admittedly, there have been some incentives for renewable energy projects in recent years, such as the Investment Tax Credit, the Production Tax Credit and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. These incentives have diminished considerably since the recent Trump presidency and pale in comparison to the benefits that have accrued to the oil and gas industry over the past several decades. One might argue that federal investments and incentives for renewable energy are desirable since they serve the long-term national interest of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing our dependency on foreign sources of oil and gas.
In the state of Ohio Senate Bill 238 specifies set-back regulations for wind turbines by increasing the distance to 1,125 feet from the nearest residential structure and requires public information sessions for wind-turbine projects. But when it comes to high-pressure hydraulic fracturing, i.e., fracking, drilling rigs not only can be placed adjacent to public lands such as state parks, but according to 2026 legislation can now be placed within state parks. Oil and gas companies can impose “forced pooling” for leasing of drilling rights on private properties. Ohio has one of the most aggressive forced pooling laws in the region. If 65% of mineral owners in a drilling unit sign a lease, companies can request a mandatory pooling order for the remaining landowners. What this means for landowners: If enough of your neighbors sign, you could be forced into a drilling agreement. You will receive royalties, but you lose the ability to negotiate your contract terms. No such forced pooling is offered for wind or solar projects.
Solar projects were seriously evaluated by the Ohio Department of Health for safety and health issues. There has been no serious study of the safety, health, and environmental risks of fracking and of injection of production waste despite the high rates of accidents in these enterprises.
Senate Bill 52, passed in 2021 by the Ohio Legislature and signed by the governor, allows counties to ban wind and solar projects. In Richland County, for example, 11 of 18 townships have been designated as restricted zones so that no wind or solar projects can be developed in these areas.
The group, Save Ohio Parks, with which I have been affiliated, for several years has been involved in organizing opposition to fracking projects near public lands in the state, most of which involve the eastern part of the state. We have informed volunteers about parcels being “nominated” for fracking in the vicinity of state parks and encouraged those volunteers to submit oppositional statements to these proposals to the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission. The latter group has rubber stamped every “nomination” (most of which are submitted by out-of-state companies) for parcels to be offered up for fracking despite the hundreds of comments in opposition. There has been nothing from the state legislature for renewable projects comparable to SB 52.
In West Virginia HB 5381 describes the state’s comprehensive energy plan, which strongly favors coal, the most expensive, unhealthy, polluting, and dangerous form of energy to extract.
The issue of data centers has been brought to our doorstep in Washington County with the non-disclosure agreement that our county commissioners have arranged with a developer for a data center in the Waterford community. This particular data center is apparently on track for development, but around the U.S. things are different. More than 500 counties and municipalities have imposed serious restrictions and even blocked the development of data centers — 190 since June — and the pace of moratoriums has accelerated. In addition, 50 data centers already planned have been canceled. Nevertheless, data centers have an inexorable momentum. Data center development, if it does proceed, needs to be accompanied by community benefit agreements, guarantees of local employment, responsible usage of water, and assurances that electricity rates for residential consumers would not be increased. What would also make the idea of data centers more palatable than it is currently would be the use of renewable energy as the primary source of energy for these electricity hogs.
Bill McKibben in his recent book, “Here Comes the Sun,” documents that solar power is the least expensive source of energy and that despite the barriers it faces in the U.S., and with the help of advances in battery technology, it has shown impressive gains in adoption throughout the world. These points should demonstrate that solar power should be embraced rather than considered an enemy against which war should be waged.
***
George Banziger, Ph.D., was a faculty member at Marietta College and an academic dean at three other colleges. He is a member of the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta, a member of the Washington County for Safe Drinking Water, and a contributor to Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action team.
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