Climate Ground Zero (CGZ), founded in February 2009, is a non-violent civil disobedience campaign against mountaintop removal mining based in the southern coalfields of West Virginia.
[1] According to their website, Climate Ground Zero believes "that the irrevocable destruction of the mountains of Appalachia and its accompanying toll on the air, water, and lives of Appalachians necessitates continued and direct action".
[5] Climate Ground Zero began in February 2009 as a local extension of the regional network Mountain Justice, a coalition of anti-MTR groups across Appalachia that formed in the summer of 2005.
[1][6] On January 3, 2009, in what became the first protest of the campaign, Mike Roselle, James McGuinness, Glen Collins, Rory McIlmoil and Matthew Noerpel were arrested for chaining themselves to a bulldozer on Coal River Mountain.
As the protesters’ attorneys Thomas Rist and Roger Forman state in an appeal to the West Virginia Supreme Court, the "TROs are incredible in the illegality of their scope and effectively curtail all free-speech activities.
Congressman Ken Hechler, Co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch and Goldman Prize winner Julia Bonds, Sierra Club director Michael Brune, have been arrested as part of the campaign.
[34][35] Other notable participants include local celebrities Vernon Haltom, Co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch, Larry Gibson, founder of the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, Lorelei Scarbro, head of the Coal River Wind Project, and Chuck Nelson, full-time volunteer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Alliance for Appalachia.