The US The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared that July 2021 was the hottest month ever.

And right on queue, we’ve witnessed an avalanche of unprecedented climate disasters in the past few weeks – fires, floods and record heat.

Climate change looks bleak and its effects tragic, and not just in fragile environments but also in the very epicentres of the fossil fuels industry. As renewables begin their inexorable rise as the dominant energy source, uneconomic coal fields are being abandoned, as are the communities that provided generations of labour.

West Virginia is synonymous with coal mining. Once a Democratic Party stronghold, the state was the strongest supporter of Donald Trump in 2020, a reward for the former president who promised to make coal great again.

That renaissance never happened. Instead, scores of coal mining companies have declared bankruptcy, leaving the landscape scarred and unrestored.

But never to be denied, nature looks like it might have the last laugh. In this video from the World Wide Waste video series, we see how a combination of ingenuity and entrepreneurialism is helping to heal the land and provide employment for former coal miners.

It’s hard to think of any activity more distinct from coal mining than flower farming, but it’s obvious as we listen to the workers just how much they relish their new roles. For many of them, they too are being rehabilitated just as are the mine sites.

For us at Switched ON Living, our job is to stay positive. Optimism is one of our core values, and if we look hard enough even in the most forlorn of environments, we’ll find the stories that inspire us to flourish for decades to come.