In the 1970s and 1980s, Austin spoke to Protestant, Catholic, Evangelical and Eastern Orthodox groups across the United States, and trained young ministers in environmental awareness through the ecumenical Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center in Berea, Kentucky.
[1] Austin based his early books on his experiences among Appalachian people advocating against strip mining for coal.
This has long been clear to ... Richard Cartwright Austin, for example, a Presbyterian minister working among the poor in Appalachia, [who] reports on his experience in trying to stop irresponsible strip mining: "I learned early on from my years as a pastor in Appalachia ... that the only defense those mountains have from exploitation by the energy conglomerates' bulldozers is the poor, isolated people who live in those hollows, who care so deeply that they would fight for that land.
American Electric Power planned to build America's largest pumped-storage hydroelectric facility at Brumley Gap in southwestern Virginia.
Books in the series include Building Utopia: Erecting Russia's First Modern City,[5] East of Cleveland,[6] Dreams and Depression,[7] and The Measure of All Things.
[8] In addition, Austin edited two other books as part of the series: Letters from the Pacific, a Combat Chaplain in World War II[9] and Give God a Flower.