By Janie Ekere for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Kentucky News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

A new report from Invest Appalachia, a self-described social investment fund, looks at ways to bring economic development to Central Appalachia as climate change increasingly determines where Americans live.

The report released in May analyzed emerging climate data from Appalachia. According to its findings, Central Appalachian states like Kentucky and North Carolina will likely see a population increase due to climate change-related migration. Mild temperatures, high elevation, and abundant rainfall make the region well-suited geographically to accommodate this population influx. 

“Some of the data we included in the report shows that the region actually compares really favorably to the Great Lakes region, parts of New England in terms of actual anticipated weather impacts and status as a climate haven,” Andrew Crosson, CEO of Invest Appalachia and co-author of the report, said in a phone interview. Crosson co-wrote the report with Invest Appalachia’s director of community impact Baylen Campbell and the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies’ outreach and engagement specialist Nicholas Shanahan.

The report included a map that identified counties with “climate receiving” geographies based on a set of nine different climate risk factors. As more people are expected to leave states like California and Texas in the coming years, the map projected the Great Lakes and Appalachia as likely “climate receiver” regions (marked in blue). 

Most of the available climate receiving data that Invest Appalachia’s researchers reviewed has focused on states like Michigan and Wisconsin. These states possess robust urban infrastructure in addition to geographic advantages similar to those of Appalachia. Like these states, Appalachia’s population has grown in response to both the pandemic and climate change, the report found. But little climate research has focused on the region, especially rural parts of the region, up until now. 

“We basically call for more study of that topic, both of understanding the factors that will be driving climate migration into the Appalachian region, but also situating Appalachia within the national dialogue as a region that is going to be critical along with some other rural parts of the country. It’s gonna be critical to national-scale climate resilience as a population-absorbing region.”

There are still significant challenges to climate change adaptation in rural Appalachia, according to the report. Available climate data for the region has focused on historical records and has not been adequately updated to reflect emerging climate patterns. Though its geography provides better overall protection against climate catastrophes, Central Appalachia is still seeing increased temperatures and flooding due to climate change. A record-breaking flood in July 2022 in East Kentucky, for example, killed 45 people and displaced thousands more. The region is also still recovering from the effects of the fossil fuel-based economy.

“Landscapes have been altered by extractive industries in ways that it has now been proven exacerbates flooding,” Crosson said. “Surface mining, strip mining, lack of proper remediation/reclamation work means that there’s less absorptive capacity, that streams are disrupted from their normal flows. All of that exacerbated the effects of the massive rainfall events in eastern Kentucky that led to the [recent] flooding.”

The report also found that not all Central Appalachian communities can handle the potential population increase equally. The influx of higher-income inhabitants from other states could lead to rising rent and housing prices as demand outstrips supply. Marginalized people in rural areas may face the risk of homelessness or may be forced to move to areas with fewer protections from climate change as a result of gentrification, according to the report.

“Once you have compounding climate impacts, and then you have climate migration on top of that, the people who are going to suffer the most…are the same as the people who are going to suffer from climate-driven rural gentrification,” Crosson said.

While the report called for further research of the region to develop strategies for climate adaptation, it proposed measures that can be taken now toward this goal. Rural Appalachia has faced a long-term lack of government and private sector investment in basic infrastructure and community services which leaves little funding for climate adaptive measures. Reversing that underinvestment is a critical first step in building lasting climate resilience, the report found. 

“When you have a chronically disinvested region, the perception of risk — the perception of not being investible — is something that has to be overcome,” Crosson said. “We’re trying to…show outside funders and investors in particular that this is the region of innovation. A region where people have a vision and they need the resources to execute on that vision.”


Janie Ekerey wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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Three environmental nonprofits filed suit Wednesday against the California Air Resources Board to oppose the expansion of a program allowing oil and gas companies to offset their pollution by buying credits from huge farms producing natural gas from animal waste.

Last month, the state amended the low carbon fuel standard to expand credits favoring biogas, arguing it removes methane from the waste stream and creates renewable power.

Tyler Lobdell, staff attorney for the nonprofit co-plaintiff Food and Water Watch, said the program is actually a perverse incentive for factory farms to get bigger.

"The biggest operators, the biggest polluters, are the most rewarded," Lobdell pointed out. "That is the incentive structure here. Go out and be as big and as polluting as possible, and you will see the largest reward from our program."

The low carbon fuel standard is intended to reduce carbon pollution by incentivizing the transition to clean cars. The lawsuit argued the credit program prioritizes pollution-heavy practices over sustainable solutions.

Lobdell noted manure only produces methane when large quantities are liquefied at concentrated animal feeding operations. He suggested the state require factory farms to manage their manure in ways which do not rely on anaerobic environments emitting methane.

"The real solution to addressing pollution is to reduce the pollution, not to monetize it and lock it in for generations," Lobdell contended. "We should be requiring these facilities to more sustainably manage their waste. That would have climate benefits, that would also have benefits to local air quality and to local water quality."

The lawsuit asks the court to require the California Air Resources Board to disclose, analyze and mitigate the environmental impact caused by the change to the low-carbon fuel standard. The other two plaintiffs include the nonprofits Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.


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Business leaders, clean transportation advocates and other experts say new technologies are helping to accelerate the transition to clean trucks and sustainable freight across Pennsylvania. Members of the Clean Trucks Pennsylvania Coalition are calling on federal and state leaders to back programs that support the deployment of clean-power trucks across the Commonwealth.

Jordan Stutt, senior director, northeast region with CALSTART, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing clean transportation solutions, said the goal is to get gas and diesel-powered trucks off the road.

"We are going to take one of the busiest freight corridors in the country, I-95, and turn it into one of the first zero-emission freight corridors in the U.S. That investment and the jobs that it will bring underscore that this transition to clean trucks is all about opportunity," he said.

The coalition is urging Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and state and local leaders to adopt the Advanced Clean Trucks Act. Advocates say the act would reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050.

Brooke Petry, field organizer with Moms Clean Air Force of Pennsylvania, said zero-emission trucks are the key to cleaning up the air Pennsylvania families breathe. When residents of South Philadelphia step outside in the morning, the air often has a distinct toxic smell, and she added that toxic air pollution doesn't harm everyone equally.

"Here in Philadelphia, children of color are hospitalized for asthma complications at five times the rate of their white peers. Reducing harmful diesel pollution from trucks is a key component to address climate justice in our city and beyond," she explained.

Erin Johnson, Registered Nurse with the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, said diesel exhaust is responsible for multiple types of respiratory illnesses and cancers in the region.

"The trucks, buses, trains and port operations that keep goods and services moving through our region also contribute to deadly air pollution. Diesel exhaust contains more than 40 known cancer-causing organic substances. The good news is that we have solutions to this diesel pollution problem," she said.


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Members of the environmental nonprofit GreenLatinos are involved in a push to get more Latinos across Texas involved in the fight against methane gas. Texas is one of the largest producers of the hazardous chemical.

Rogelio Meixueiro, Texas community advocate with GreenLatinos, said a large part of the campaign is educating the community.

"They tell me all the problems that they're experiencing, and the moment I connect with them the fact that there's a fracking site less than a mile away, they start seeing how, 'yeah ever since we moved to this area, we started having breathing problems.' The one that hurts me the most is really the birth defects. Learning that Latino women are some of the most impacted with birth defects is heartening," he explained.

He added that meetings will be held across the state over the next six months, culminating with a final day of action in Austin before the state Legislature.

The organization is forming what they call the Latino Methane Table, to make sure everyone has a seat at the table. Meixueiro said elected officials are passing laws that directly impact the immigrant population, and they hope to give them a voice before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

"We're seeing how Latinos are constantly affected the most in the agriculture fields, construction. It's so hot, often we don't associate 'oh, methane' - the thing that we are getting out of the Permian - is actually the one that is creating some of the conditions," he explained.

He added the state has a history of being unfair to minorities.

"For Dallas and Fort Worth, what we're noticing is that there's a long history that is tied with redlining. And we notice how often the communities with the most amount of permits approved for fracking - fracking near day-care centers, fracking near homes - it's usually areas where particularly Latino and Black communities live," he continued.