This project critically evaluates liberal development plans created for Central Appalachia by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) through a historical materialist lens. It demonstrates that these plans and their explicitly liberal origins are not sufficient for the working classes in the region to achieve a sustainable 'post-coal' future. Central Appalachia is one of the most impoverished regions in the United States and its political economy was shaped largely by coal mining that was overseen by absentee proprietors. This mono-economic structure has bred unique political conditions in the region. The economics of coal have historically influenced most political decisions. As the coal industry has declined, the region has been subjected to multitudes of economic development plans from the ARC. However, Central Appalachia still exists as an impoverished peripheral zone within the United States' political economy. This thesis is motivated by the decline of coal and the economic and ecological hardships this has created for the region's working-class, and the urgent need to begin envisioning a post-coal future for the region which avoids the insufficiency of liberal economic development. The thesis is not purely an attack on the ARC as an organization, but is rather a critique of the methods they use to enact economic development and shows how these methods are not only inadequate for the Appalachian working class, but all working classes subjected to the liberal economic development model. / Master of Arts / This paper evaluates the efficacy of the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) economic development plans. The ARC is the federal agency tasked with reducing poverty in the Appalachian region and was created in 1965. They have enacted over 28,000 development plans and spent $4.5 billion since 1965, but Appalachia is still relatively impoverished in comparison to the rest of the United States. This impoverishment is largely due to the prevalence of the coal industry in the region and the fact that most political and economic decisions were influenced by the coal industry. However, the industry has been declining for several decades now, and this has created economic hardship for many in the region, as there are very few industries that have taken its place, leading to widespread unemployment. This paper focuses specifically on the Central Appalachian region of Southeastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, Northeastern Tennessee, and West Virginia. These states had the highest amount of people employed in the coal industry during its heyday, so they have borne the brunt of its decline. I offer a critique of the ARC's model of development and suggest solutions for mitigating the difficult situation in Central Appalachia and explore how the region can achieve a 'post-coal' future that does not rely on the current mechanisms of the ARC's model of development. This critique is informed by historical perspectives that highlight how Central Appalachia was structured as a peripheral zone in the larger US economy that served only to enrich the metropolitan areas of the US and world at great cost to the people of Central Appalachia and their natural environment. I perform my analysis through a historical overview of the economic structure of Central Appalachia as well as a content analysis of six ARC documents that outline their frameworks and methodologies for achieving economic development. While the paper is a critique of the ARC, the emphasis is more so on the particular method that the ARC uses to achieve economic development in the region.

Le sujet de la présente thèse est La soutenabilité de l’accumulation du capital et de ses régimes : une approche macroéconomique en termes de soutenabilité forte. Elle s’articule en deux parties. Deux chapitres composent la première : le chapitre 1 s’inscrit dans le débat sur la possibilité d’un capitalisme stationnaire. Il analyse l’absence des rapports sociaux spécifiques du capitalisme dans les travaux de certains économistes écologiques au moyen d’exemples historiques de crise écologique et des théories éco-marxistes. Le chapitre 2 discute les analyses monétaires de certains économistes écologiques selon lesquelles un état stationnaire est incompatible avec un système dans lequel la monnaie est créée comme une dette portant intérêt en adoptant un point de vue post-keynésien. La deuxième partie est plus empirique et se compose de trois chapitres. Le chapitre 3 examine la relation sociale à l’exergie au sein du régime d’accumulation fordiste et du capitalisme financiarisé et mondialisé. L’approche en termes d’énergie est intégrée à un cadre théorique régulationniste informé par l’approche en termes de démocratie carbone. L’objectif est d’identifier des ruptures dans les modalités d’usage de l’énergie qui accompagnent les transformations observées dans d’autres domaines. Le chapitre 4 prolonge le précédent au moyen d’une analyse économétrique de la relation PIB-CO2 pour la France de 1950 à 2013 en tenant compte de la rupture dans les régularités de l’accumulation du capital entre le régime d’accumulation fordiste et le régime d’accumulation néolibéral ainsi que des possibles asymétries. Le chapitre 5 analyse les ambitions nationales en matière de réduction de gaz à effet de serre, dénommées volontarisme carbone, replacées dans le contexte du capitalisme globalisé et financiarisé contemporain. / The subject of my PhD is The sustainability of capital accumulation and its regimes : a strong sustainability macroeconomic approach. It is composed of two parts. The first one is composed of two chapters that review the literature on two aspects : The first chapter tackles the debate on stationary capitalism. It reviews the way capitalism is taken into account by ecological economists and analyzes it in light of historical examples of ecological crises and of insights from eco-marxist theories. Chapter 2 tackles the debate about the so-called monetary growth imperative analysed from a post-Keynesian point of view. The second part is a more empirical one and is composed of three chapters. Chapter 3 attempts at framing the exergy-useful work approach into a régulationnist theoretical framework informed with insights from the Carbon democracy approach. It investigates the social relationship to energy in the Fordist and Neoliberal accumulation regimes. The fourth chapter attempts at furthering the third chapter by investigating the CO2 - GDP relationship through econometric means taking into account structural breaks between accumulation regimes and possible asymmetries. Chapter 5 investigates the commitment of countries to reduce their greenhousegas emissions within the context of globalized finance-led capitalism.