“Here’s to the Long Haul: Dark Green Religion and Planetary Thinking in Appalachian Environmental Movements”

Environmental humanities scholars have worked to develop alternative frameworks for understanding and relating to Earth’s systems in the hope of reforming the exploitative and extractive practices and attitudes characteristic of the Anthropocene. For example, Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that addressing climate change necessitated appreciating the entanglements between global (human) and planetary (Earth systems) scales. While Chakrabarty noted that ancient and Indigenous cultures may have retained approaches necessary for this work, he was skeptical of the ability of modern secular intellectual traditions focused on global justice perspectives to ultimately facilitate a planetary non-anthropocentric ethic. However, by only briefly engaging with themes of religion and religious studies, Chakrabarty may have overlooked some key analytical and methodological insights to help understand how such transitions toward planetary ethics might unfold. This paper utilizes religious studies lenses to examine how the experiences of radical environmental activists in Appalachia may inspire ethical insights and relations that move toward the planetary perspectives sought by Chakrabarty to challenge extractive practices and frame alternative, anti-extractive futures for the region. While many of these efforts may still be incomplete, imperfect, and fraught with challenges, they nonetheless suggest that movements toward planetary thinking may be underway not only in academic offices but also among some grassroots activist communities.