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By Bob Weaver
A recent study has named West Virginia second-least environmentally friendly state lagging while clinging to coal, gas and oil to feed the economy.
Politically, state leaders have for years voted against initiatives to embrace cleaner technology, although they sometimes throw it a bone.
The personal finance website WalletHub released a study titled "Greenest States," looking at which U.S. states are the most and least environmentally friendly. The study compared each of the 50 U.S. states on 27 key metrics including air quality, water quality, gasoline consumption per capita, percentage of energy consumption from renewable resources and many more.
These metrics were used to rank each state across three main categories; environmental quality, eco-friendly behaviors and climate change contributions. The rankings across these categories were then used to determine an overall ranking for each state.
West Virginia ranked 49th in the study, earning the title of the second-least green state in the U.S. The Mountain State ranked at or near the bottom in all three category rankings, coming in 42nd in environmental quality, 45th in eco-friendly behaviors and last place (50th) in climate change contributions. | 
