Just finished this video about a region near and dear to me. I highly recommend you rent it from your library. It does a great job of highlighting how the environment and economy are tied together. Environmental Sustainability = Economic Sustainability.
Appalachia is a national treasure. It is a region stretching
from New York to Alabama, comprising the oldest mountains in North America. It
is home to the most ancient forest in the world and one of the greatest
collections of mineral wealth on the planet. From the early sixteenth century
when the region's name first entered the historical record, Appalachia has been
a place of mystery and mythology. It has been romanticized, maligned,
discovered, rediscovered, exploited, redefined, but only vaguely understood. In
fact, more is known about Appalachia that is untrue than about any other
region of the country.
APPALACHIA:
A History of Mountains and People
is the first film series ever to chronicle the riveting history of one of the
oldest mountain ranges on earth and the diverse peoples who have inhabited
them. Ten years in the making, this four-part series weaves the insights of
both the sciences and the humanities into a spellbinding portrait of one of the
world’s great ecological treasures.
The central characters of the series are the Appalachian Mountains
themselves. The central theme is the story of how the mountains have shaped the
people and how people have shaped the mountains — the dynamic interaction of
natural history and human history.
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Appalachia is unlike any other region in America. Nowhere
else in America is the ancient history of the earth so openly revealed as in
these mountains. And nowhere else in America is the story of man’s interaction
with nature so dramatically evident.
At the same time, Appalachia is quintessentially American.
Surrounded by half the population and two-thirds of the industry in the United
States, Appalachia has experienced in full force the impact of humans on a
mountain ecosystem. Here in Appalachia, the tensions between private ownership
and public good have been played out over and over.
The story begins with the birth of the mountains during what
the writer John McPhee has termed “Deep Time.” It chronicles the spectacular
geologic upheavals which created an immense treasure of minerals carpeted by
the richest temperate forest in the world. The story continues with those who
came seeking the treasures of the land — from the first nomads ten thousand
years ago to today’s hikers on the Applachian Trail.
APPALACHIA
is the story of the Shawnee, the Iroquois and the Cherokee; the story of the
first Spanish explorers and the early settlers: German, French, Scotch-Irish
and African. APPALACHIA is the story of larger than life characters such as
Daniel Boone, Attacullaculla, William Bartram, Mother Jones, and Thomas Wolfe.
It is the story of the black bear, the white-tailed deer, the spotted
salamander, and the American chestnut tree. It is also the story of mountaintop
removal mining, the most destructive mining practice the world has ever known.
Above all, APPALACHIA provides a window onto the
defining question of our age; how to use the land to provide the needs of today
and at the same time preserve it for the future. The story of Appalachia is the
story of our struggle as a people to find our true and proper relationship to
the natural world.
