With climate change bearing down on us, the moment we are currently living in has great potential to be a “time of rupture.” However, this will depend first upon being able to expand our imaginations beyond the status quo. People are born into a world where the rules of social life and institutions around them seem natural and immutable. Without being able to perceive beyond this limited vision, it is likely to remain so. The coalfield to prison pipeline is extremely complex and multi-faceted and will require more than just a little creativity to overcome.

This climate fiction hopes to inspire and expand your thinking beyond business as usual and “unleash your imagination.” Creating a more just and sustainable world will first begin with imagining its possibility.

Flip through the entire book below, or explore it via the links on the right.

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OCTOBER 11, 2030

A Birthday Call From Barret

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I never wanted to work in the mines. My entire life, my father tried to dissuade me from following in his profession--and I can see why.” I speak into the air, my phone somewhere nearby picking up my tired voice. “Your grandfather was a quiet man and talked very little about his life below ground, working on his knees deep within the Appalachia coalfields following underground portals that would pop a man out in another state if he were brave enough to follow.” The chair spins as my feet push off the ledge underneath the window.

“Around the same time, I was working odd jobs around our small town of Roxana, I met your mother when I was working at the Dollar General. She came in looking for a Styrofoam cooler and a bag of ice but no amount of ice could cool her off!”

“Gross, Pa” Barret interjected.

“What? I was your age that summer. And within one year of meetin her that June morning, you were born and Grandpa was gone.”

“You’ve told me that story before, I know how it ends. Listen, I’mcalling to ask about how y’all been doing today! October 11th, it’s your 40th birthday! Hope Sam has been keeping you good company! What have you been up to?

“The rain hasn’t stopped in what feels like a fortnight so I’ve jus been trying to stay warm and wish for sun.” The sunlight passes through raindrops on the living room window.

“At least you’re making wishes, Pa,” Barret concedes.

“Unfortunately, young Sam here isn’t quite potty trained yet so the kitchen smells a bit like urine and I swear it’s not my cooking.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be there with you to eat your piss poor cooking!”

“Woah! You better watch it, Barret. Lucky for me, I’m still eating smoked elk from my last hunt. How’s the food at school?”

“Doesn’t compare to your smokin’ game... But school has been kickin my butt this semester. My computational geotechnical course has been brutal. Who needs to know what a spectral stochastic finite element method is!?”

“Certainly not me and I’m even working with the new geotechnica mining drones, they take most of the guess work out of it... Well I don’t want to keep you too long from your studies, Barret. Call me when your exams are over.”

“Thanks, Pa. And you be safe down there. I’ve heard that the rains are going to keep for a few more days at least.”

OCTOBER 20, 2030

A Walk In The Rain

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I worked at the rare earth mineral mine in Roxana. Took the job to support Barret as much as I could. Just like my own father, I worked to feed my small family, and I did despite the toll it had on me and the land. However, now most of the mining occurs with drones that can dig deep into the mountain. Deeper than Grandpa ever dug, and deeper than any human could on their knees. While I dig from an armchair behind a computer, the land struggles to support the extraction ravaging the hillsides and the atmosphere continues to fill with burned fossil fuels.

Fall rain never came in 2028. Perhaps it was the collapse of the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larson C ice shelf, or the loss of all Artic Ice, or Siberian, Canadian, and the Amazon forests burning down to a fraction of what they were a decade ago. For whatever reason, 2028 was the driest year in Eastern Kentucky in decades. Only surpassed by 2029. And then by 2030. Tensions had grown over the past decade nationally and globally. The tension was like a powder keg: one drop of water could ignite it all. And in some places around the world, it did. But the iPhone 20 came out and the rare earth mineral mines were being extracted at all-time highs.

Then a miracle, the storms came in 2030. At first there was jubilation and dancing when the rains started. Music could be heard up and down every holler. But then it kept raining. One storm after another lined up across the Atlantic, seeming to make up for all the lost time. The dry conditions were ideal for rare earth mineral mining with minimal water intrusion in the mines and impoundments. Yet that much dry material was like an unstable sponge, and when six major storms swept across the peaks of the Appalachians, the dry and arid slurry impoundments suddenly became highly unstable.

The first storm was welcomed by the surface. Even the second storm was pleasant and things flowed well. The rain continued and the next two storms fully saturated the soil which held back America’s largest mine slurry impoundment. The fifth storm roared into the valley and the impoundment-- holding back nearly billions of gallons of mine tailing slurry-- was noticeably sagging in the center. I noticed on a soggy walk with Sam. I called my manager at the mine; they said they knew about the issue and trusted the embankment would hold.

OCTOBER 23, 2030

The Day of the Flood

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At 1:52 am, on October 23rd, 2030, the largest coal slurry spill in history occurred in the Roxana valley.

A total of 1.3 billion gallons of black mining slurry spread over the flooded plains down-stream, killing all aquatic life, flowing through broken levees, and damaging millions of acres of crop land from Western Kentucky to the Mississippi Delta. Nearly seven times larger in volume than the Deep-Water Horizon spill, the deluge of black slurry from the Roxana Mineral Mine Slurry Impoundment became the spark that ignited the change the world needed. A total of 1,700 people died from the flooding, and countless more will be affected by the poisons found in the black slurry across the plains. Scores of people will die from the shrinking grain supplies from the already stressed fields downstream.

With these cataclysmic events, a shell-shocked country passes the Green New Deal legislation, prioritizing Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta for land and water remediation projects, the scale of which the world had never seen. Nothing would ever be the same. Nothing could ever be the same.

JUNE 4, 2034

Mountain Mentors

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Standing 17 hands, Juanita is the ideal design for speed and efficiency, running only on grass with no need for fossil fuels. Unless you count the small amount of methane that she releases at some of the most inappropriate times. But her comedic gastrointestinal timing is just one of the reasons she’s perfect for my work. The horse carries all of what I need for my work helping decarcerated individuals return to a decarbonizing society. I spend two weeks on the trails and one week off. Juanita carries fifty pounds of camping equipment, some bushcraft tools, a rifle, and a few pounds of dried elk meat from my smoker back home. Meanwhile
Sam is always ahead smelling for wolves, bears, elk, dear, and his favorite: squirrels.

The sun was high in the sky as Juanita and I waited at the exit gate of Big Sandy. Sam was busy with a virtual friend. A dozen other men and two women stood with different forms of transportation. Some with ATEVs, a few with horses, and others with just a good pair of boots and two backpacks. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Mountain Mentors lead expeditions in the woods of Kentucky with people who were released from drug-related incarceration. Mountain Menotrs work with them as they transition into a society radically different from the carbon-based one they left before the Flood.

After several people come through the gates and head on their way with their new mentors, Dameon Curtis is the next name to come up on the release board. We saunter over to the tall young man. His body weak from years of addiction. Drugs needed to numb the pain of living in a dying society. I lower myself from Jaunita and introduce myself and her to Dameon.

“Names Jason, call me J. And this hear is Juanita,” She shakes her head and mane as if she’s excited to see him. And in truth, she probably is. Juanita and I have done this over three dozen times now, each new friend a new journey in an economy made for people not profit.

“Nice to finally meet you Jason... I’ve never been this close to a horse before,” Dameon says squinting looking up at Jaunita.

Suddenly, Sam dashes across our conversation, finally realizing that we have a new companion.

“This here is Sam. Sam, this here is Dameon.” He reached down and greeted the new companion.

“Now Dameon, we got a lot to learn and a lot of places to go over the coming days. And it looks like Sam there got it in first, but may I be the second friend to tell you: welcome to the Mountain Mentors a division of the newly formed CCC.”

JUNE 5, 2034

Horsing Around Timber

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We spend the next two weeks exploring different landscapes and opportunities in the area, sharing stories about our life struggles, getting to know each other and the road underneath us. The first stop is the Kentucky Timber Co-Op, a silviculture collective that values health of members and the forests that sustain their livelihoods. Growing mushrooms and ginseng, as well, they eat and drink well. Agriculture saturates much of people’s daily lives today, even deep into the shadows of an oak pine forest.

Horses are used as the machinery here. Their hooves tread lightly on the forest roots, not compacting the earth as the 10,000 lbs. diesel lumber machines once did. This process conserves and improves the productivity of the forest as well as provides animal companionship to many individuals with their own internal battles.

AUGUST 5, 2050

Old Mountains New Homes

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You know I’m growing old of these hologram conversations, Barret,” I tell my son for what feels like the hundredth time.

“That’s why we’re actually calling today, J! Marta and I were talking last night about school for Sylvie. She’s really interested in the Jr CCC programs of Eastern Kentucky and we are putting in her application later today.”

I put down my coffee mug on the table, needing to hold onto something more stable.

“I can see you’re speechless, J,” Marta smiles, excited to share the news. “We really like the new public housing going up in some of the mountains out there, too!”

“And Sylvie recently picked up an interest in guitar, too!” Barret continues, “I think she might do well to learn some of the banjo. Didn’t Mom used to play?”

“Yeah, she sure did, I can still remember laying by the stream listening to her ‘practice.’ She wasn’t the best, but good enough to make me fall in love. You know an old friend Dameon teaches music at a Jr CCC program over the way. Perhaps I’ll reach out to him and get his thoughts.”

“Well, if all goes well, Sylvie will be starting school in a months’ time and--”

“I’ll be damned,” I was still trying to gather my thoughts, “I knew a lot of people were moving out here to the new towns they’re building, but I thought those were going to be for climate migrators only, y’all are tellin’ me that you’re coming back to the mountains in less than a month?”

“I am, Pa, and I think it’s going to be real good for all of us.”

MARCH 14, 2053

Jr CCC Carpentry Class

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Slyvie! Take your darn shoes off before running in here like that!”

“Sorry Grandpa J! I’m just excited to tell you what I made at school today!”

“Well, what’s that!?” I stand in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, bracing for the excitement that only a 13 -year old can have at 4 in the afternoon.

She jumps back to the doorway and removes her boots. Then, she swiftly stands back up and sprints to the kitchen stool, hopping up on it. She dives in, “So you know how they have been teaching us all about cycling materials?” She continues before I can respond, “Well, we have been learning all about the carbon cycle and how carbon moves throughout the world from the rocks, to ocean, to trees, to even us! Humans! We are carbon!”

I laugh, thinking about how much word Carbon has determined so much of my life. She quickly says, “Well, they said one way to keep carbon from entering the atmosphere is to use the wood that is storing carbon.”

“Like, burning it!” I joke.

“Not funny. Obviously, no. Building and maintaining it. So we took apart old wooden pallets that could have been thrown away and made a bench out of it! I have all the pieces ready to screw together tomorrow first thing in the morning!”

I smile wide, knowing that her life is far better than anything I could have dreamed of when I was her age only a few miles away from here. I was thirteen when I first snuck into my father’s medicine cabinet. Fifteen by the time I was bent. And nineteen when I swore it all away when her father was born.

“Well, what do you think of that!?”

“I sure think that’s pretty neat! It actually reminds me of a Co-Op I used to visit...”

MAY 6, 2060

To The Future World Builders

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J!” Marta yells my way across a crowded amphitheater. “J! Down here!” Marta stands waving a few seats from the entryway. I mosey over, slower than I used to be but still well able to walk the steps carved into the moutaintop ampitheater. Barret stands up and helps me into my seat. “How you doing, Pa?”

“My anti-cancer meds are really taking it out of me.”

“Are they that bad?”

“No, not all. Taste like willow bark actually. Just wish my father or your mother could have had them, and then they might have been able to join us today.”

Marta leans in, “We all wish that, but I know Sylvie couldn’t be happier that they exist today and you can see her graduate from the CCC with a degree in bioremediation!” She puts her hand on my shoulder. I meet hers with mine. “I’m a lucky old man; I’ll give youthat much.”

The lights come on, and over the speakers comes a deep announcer’s voice, “Before we get started with our graduation in the Black Rocks Ampitheater, we would like to take this time to pay respect to all the land users before us and stil to come. From Cherokee, Chickasaws, and Shawnee, our ancestors that settled here,
the familiers of coal miners, and now the world builders of today, and the ones still to come. We thank you.”

I notice the curtains begin to rustle and a face pops out, Sylvie scans the audience and lands her gaze on me. I can spot her grandmother’s ears from any distance. She winks and pops her head back in.

“And to start this celebration of land work done and land work still to do, we present the graduating class Bluegrass Ensemble!”

The three of us begin clapping and then hollering along with other proud families as five young adults walk out on stage with a whole host of instruments. Sylvie stands in front with a microphone at her face. She turns to look at the other musicians, with a nod the sound of bluegrass consumes the mountain

The long history of extraction and exploitation in Appalachia has left the region environmentally degraded and economically on the brink. While confronting the sheer number of crises our world concurrently faces may seem overwhelming, if not impossible, a more just and sustainable future in Appalachia is possible. 

With this final image, we present a version of what this future may look like. In this future community where Barret’s grandchildren would live, land reclamation has been fulfilled for most of the abandoned mining land. New homes and care centers are built with reflectant rooftops on the slopes too difficult for reforestation. A huge quarry is turned into an amphitheater. Fossil fuels are prohibited. Direct air capture fans and scrubbing towers are built and connected to carbon storage sites. A reservoir and detention ponds are responsible for stormwater management, drinking water cleaning, as well as hydro-electricty generation. Geoengineering is improved to no longer harm the ozone layer by making use of a substance calcite derived from the former coal beds.

While this is just one possibility of the future, we hope that this is a starting point for you to start dreaming about what your own version of a better world would look like.