Sierra Student Coalition

Reflections on Power Shift from a Student Organizing Alum

By Sarah Hodgdon, Conservation Director Sierra Club

For anyone like me who joined the environmental movement after Earth Day 1990 (and is about to turn 40 this year!), I have a recommendation for energizing your activism: Join forces with the youth climate movement.

I spent last weekend at Power Shift 2011, the Energy Action Coalition's 10,000 person climate conference for youth activists (also heavily supported by our own Sierra Student Coalition), and I haven't felt this excited in years.

From being part of the movement-building training, to marching in the streets, to hearing about their success in meeting with the President, the youth have got it going on.

In a full circle moment, I got to spend some time talking with Lauren Kastner, the head of Indiana University's Beyond Coal campaign. I started as an activist working to convince Indiana University (IU) during my time there not to sell land to an incinerator company. The campaign had such a major impact on me that I'm still an activist today.

As a fourth generation IU alumna, I also care deeply about the university. And it's about time to get that coal plant off campus. IU has a coal plant right in the middle of campus called the Central Heating Plant that burns 68,000 tons of coal every year. The school also purchases coal-generated electricity from the grid from Duke Energy. 

Thankfully, Lauren and a great group of other IU students are working on this.

"Coal Free IU started in the fall of 2009 as one of the original Campuses Beyond Coal campaigns and we've been gaining momentum since then," said Kastner. "We have been successful in meeting with the IU VP of Facilities and Capital Projects twice now, but we've come away with no public promise of moving IU beyond coal.

"However, we have had a huge success in actually bringing clean energy to IU ourselves if the University won't. We won a $12,000 grant to install a two-kilowatt photovoltaic system on the roof of the student union and those are actually going up this week!"

Unfortunately, now IU is beginning a clean coal research project. The students of Coal Free IU are aghast.

"It is unacceptable for IU to buy into this rhetoric when we know that at no step of the way is coal clean," said Kastner. "From the mining to the burning to the disposal of toxic coal ash, coal is destructive to the environment, public health, and the economy. If IU wants to live up to its progressive and sustainable reputation, it must rethink its association with 'clean coal' research and invest in real 100% clean and renewable energy."

Kastner said she and other Coal Free IU students came back from Power Shift 2011 even more inspired to help make the Hoosiers coal-free - and she met other students from around Indiana committed to cleaning up the state's energy sources.

"It is incredibly important for Indiana to be vocal in this movement because we are a state with incredibly low environmental quality," she explained. "Students from all over Indiana attended Power Shift and are coming back with new skills and a sense of empowerment that will hold state lawmakers and corporations accountable."

Both Kastner and I strongly recommend Power Shift and the Sierra Student Coalition's Campuses Beyond Coal campaign to any young people looking to make a difference and connect with others striving to do the same.

"Power Shift 2011 was an incredible time for young people in the environmental movement to show their strength in numbers and prove to legislators, elected officials, and corporations that we are rising up against the continued destruction of the environment while also showing support for those who are protecting our public health."

Together we secure a clean energy future for our country.

Miami University Becomes 16th School to Move Beyond Coal

Oxford, OH: This week, Miami  University of Ohio announced it would immediately begin reducing the amount of coal burned on campus and eventually eliminate it altogether, validating the demands of Miami students who had worked for months to pressure the university to improve local health by abandoning coal.

 “The momentum and power of this movement has proven itself time and again,” said Christian Adams, a junior at Miami and a representative of Miami Beyond Coal. “Dirty coal power is clearly on its way out of both American campuses and communities. History is on our side.”

Miami’s decision – the fourth in Ohio this year alone – underlines a strong trend of schools in the state and across the country moving to reduce dangerous pollution and mitigate financial uncertainty by ruling out the future use of coal as an energy source. Just last week, Ohio University announced it would move beyond coal by 2016. Last summer, Case Western Reserve University announced it would also eliminate coal in its district heating system; this was followed in January by Oberlin College, which published a plan that calls for its coal plant to be eliminated in favor of landfill gas.

“This exciting move by Miami shows that young people in Ohio aren’t sitting idly by, waiting for campuses to protect our health and move beyond coal,” said Janina Klimas, coordinator of the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition. “Instead, students across the state are stepping up and organizing on their own campuses to make that transition a reality.”

Despite Miami’s strong commitment to move beyond coal, the deadline of 2025 set by the administration still falls far below commitments made by Miami’s peer institutions. Miami students and allies will continue to engage the administration to lock in additional goals for clean energy and to move up the 2025 sunset date for the coal plant.

“Every year that coal is burned on campus means more asthma, more lung disease, and more heart problems for local residents,” said Nachy Kanfer, Midwest Representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “That’s why we’ll keep pushing to eliminate coal as soon as possible.”

The Sierra Student Coalition has been instrumental in moving campuses across the Nation off coal. Miami University joins the ranks of Cornell University, Penn State University, Case Western Reserve University,Ohio University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Clemson University, Oberlin College, University of Louisville, Western Kentucky University, Eastern Illinois University, Western Illinois University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Missouri University of Science & Technology, SUNY-Binghamton, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“This victory at Miami University is proof that students are helping to lead the fight for clean energy,” said Mary Anne Hitt. “Nationwide young people are working to move their campuses and communities beyond coal to clean energy solutions – and they are winning.”

The students who have fought to move these campuses beyond coal are many of the same who will be gathering next week to participate in Power Shift, where over 10,000 young leaders will converge on Washington, DC to stand together to help push the nation to move beyond dirty energy sources that are harming the health of people and the planet. The New Organizing Institute, the Sierra Club and Energy Action Coalition will guide over 5,000 young people in building teams, telling their stories and developing leaders. On Monday April 18^th, participants will rally at the capitol to challenge those who stand in the way of progress towards building a clean energy future. For More information visit www.powershift2011.org.

See local coverage of the transition in the Miami Student: http://www.miamistudent.net/news/campus/miami-to-phase-out-coal-use-1.2141440

Searching for the right solutions to get off fossil fuels

Campaign coverage in Environment and Energy Daily (and important issue news source!) -- mentions Clemson, Missouri S&T, University of Iowa and the national campaign.

HIGHER EDUCATION: Colleges search for the right gear to shift into 'carbon neutral' (02/28/2011)
Joey Peters, E&E reporter

In the past few years, colleges and universities across the country have made goals to become "carbon neutral." Now many are discovering out how difficult that goal really is.

Nearly a decade of preparations and plans at the University of Minnesota, Morris, were supposed to make the campus carbon neutral by the end of last year. But now its students and officials realize things are more complicated than that.

 

Artist's drawing of a Colby College heating plant to be powered by dead wood.

 

"The more we understood about carbon, the more we understood we'd have great difficulty saying we're carbon neutral," said Lowell Rasmussen, the university's vice chancellor for finance and facilities.

The campus, a public version of a small, private liberal arts college, put its first wind turbine up in 2005 and just erected the second wind turbine, which should start producing power at the beginning of March. Together, they're expected to generate 70 percent of electricity for the 1-million-square-foot campus while 60 percent of the power they produce goes back onto the grid.

Morris also has had a biomass gasifier plant up and running since late last fall. So far, the school has used it to burn cornstalks, prairie grass and wood chips, but Rasmussen is still finishing up research on fuel. He said it took 18 months to figure out that fuel density, fuel moisture and fuel uniformity had a great deal to do with which fuels could work best.

Morris is in western Minnesota, an area swarmed by miles of flat prairies and not close to oil or coal sources. But a lot of agriculture surrounds the area, and it can provide sources for fuel. The campus is planning to work on contracts for fuel sources this summer. Rasmussen said the biomass gasifier will, at peak levels, produce 80 percent of the school's heating and cooling.

The campus also uses 32 solar panels. Could all this add up to carbon neutrality, if not today, then maybe sometime in the near future?

"I think we can say we produce more renewable energy than we use," Rasmussen said. "It's just complex. I'm not sure we could ever say we're completely carbon neutral."

Since the state has a renewable energy standard, the Morris-produced alternative energy going back to the grid gets claimed by the utilities, not the campus.

Changing your old heating system? The Sierra Club wants to help

One measure of how seriously schools are taking carbon neutrality could be the Climate Commitment, a document that gives college presidents a framework for campuses to follow that presumably leads to carbon neutrality. It involves taking emissions inventories, setting a target date to become climate neutral and making short-term action plans to reduce greenhouse gases, among others. To date, more than 600 U.S. colleges and universities have signed onto it. But these amount to first steps.

Phasing out coal could be the next step. The Sierra Club has been working on that for a year and a half through its "Campuses Beyond Coal" initiative. Nine campuses, many of them big state universities, have made commitments so far. Last week, Clemson University was the most recent to take the pledge.

Sierra Club's methods to promote this seem to be fluid. Sometimes student groups already seeking to rid their college from coal come to the Sierra Club for help, said Kim Teplitzky, coordinator of the initiative. Other times, the Sierra Club identifies and sends out staff to campuses with coal plants.

And then comes the hard part: figuring out what sustainable, carbon-free fuels to switch to.

Some schools have figured it out for themselves, Teplitzky said, pointing to the Missouri University of Science and Technology, which picked a geothermal solution.

But there are cases where school administrations came seeking advice. The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill -- one of the schools committed to phasing out coal -- is working with the Sierra Club's campus energy task force to come up with carbon-free solutions, Teplitzky said.

"Some of the challenges simply lie in the fact that a lot of these plants are old," she said. "The students are asking to change a big part of the infrastructure."

She's expecting U.S. EPA to come out with a rule soon that would raise the costs of keeping older coal plants on campus and prompt them to switch to renewable fuels.

Colby tries to kick its addiction to heating oil

The Sierra Club recommends switching to geothermal energy as one carbon-free alternative. With biomass plants, fuel switching becomes a bit more complicated.

 

The University of Minnesota, Morris, has had a long learning curve with this plant, which can burn cornstalks and prairie grass. Photo courtesy of the university.

 

"Biomass is certainly tricky," Teplitzky said. "It really depends where you're getting [the fuel] and how you're using it."

Colby College in Maine has a goal of being carbon neutral by 2015. It's also turning to biomass to help achieve that goal.

Currently, the small, private liberal arts campus is very dependent on foreign oil, said Pat Murphy, the college's physical plant director. That's because like Morris, Colby isn't close to fossil fuel sources. The campus is currently laying the groundwork for deciding on a fuel, Murphy said. She's looking into forest waste products and trying to keep the supply within a 50-mile radius, she said. Colby is planning to keep living wood off-limits.

But burning wood as an alternative fuel raises a question: Isn't it still polluting? Last summer, the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences released a study concluding that biomass solutions were not carbon neutral over short periods of time. Focusing specifically on forest waste, the study found that burning dead wood leads to temporary increases in carbon dioxide emissions before they're brought down.

This is because wood is not as dense in energy as fossil fuels, said Manomet President John Hagan.

"The good news is trees grow back and coal doesn't," he said. "Over time, forests will grow back and recover the CO2 that's been emitted."

Calculating the 'debt period' of dead wood

This could take anywhere from 15 years to a century, Hagan said, but it depends heavily on the type of wood used. If a biomass plant uses only waste wood, as Colby plans to, the "debt" period of emitting more greenhouse gases than before will be short. Cutting down living trees would extend this period.

The study says the immediate benefit of biomass depends on whether it's a heating or electric plant, along with the type of fuel it's replacing. The Colby plant will be used for heating and replaces oil, which the study says can start reducing emissions after five years.

In the long run, using dead wood as biomass fuel pays off, Hagan said. It may never lead to carbon neutrality, but he's concluded that's not necessarily the point.

"You don't need to be carbon neutral to be climate friendly. You just need to be better than fossil fuels," Hagan said.

At Colby, a consultant hired to help the school qualify for grants from Efficiency Maine found that the biomass plant would reduce carbon emissions by 13,500 tons a year. Another calculation, made through Clean Air-Cool Planet, had Colby reducing carbon emissions by more than 9,500 tons a year. Murphy said the college expects to see some emission reductions by later this year.

While disagreements over biomass's ability to help the climate exist, a stronger reason for its growing popularity could be its ability to support local economies.

The University of Iowa, which hasn't committed to carbon neutrality, uses oat hulls from a nearby Quaker Oats facility for its biomass fuel. Since the university spends $10 million a year on outside fuel, much of the reasoning behind using biomass lies with local fuel sources. The large campus has two coal boilers. It added biomass oat hulls to one of them in 2003 and has plans to add wood chip fuel to the other soon, said Ferman Milster, associate director of campus power plant.

Milster estimates that 11 percent of the energy currently produced on campus is renewable. It will be two years before it can burn a significant amount of biomass, he said. Much of the reasoning for the slower pace is because the school runs one of the biggest hospitals in the Midwest.

"If we lose a fuel source, we're putting people's lives at risk," Milster said. "So it's important that we have multiple fuel sources."

The school has a goal to make 40 percent of its energy renewable by 2020.

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The Proposed Serengeti Highway

Last Wednesday, the US Fish and Wildlife Services held a brown bag event to discuss the proposed highway across the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, Africa.  Although the Sierra Club tends to focus on conservation issues within the United States this planned highway will have disastrous effects on the entire ecosystem and cannot be ignored.

The Frankfurt Zoological Society released a statement on the issue:

We sincerely believe that the road will have disastrous effects on the entire ecosystem. The northern parts of the Serengeti and the adjacent Masai Mara are critical for the wildebeest and zebra migration during the dry season, as it is the only permanent year-round water source for these herds. Recent calculations show that if wildebeest were to be cut off from these critical dry season areas, the population would likely decline from 1.3 million animals to about 200,000 (meaning a collapse to far less than a quarter of its current population and most likely the end of the great migration).

The Tanzanian government has dismissed the environmental concerns brought to their attention by fellow activists and scientists and continues with their plans for a northern route across the Serengeti.  The commercial route will devastate the ecosystem, stop the great migrations of wildebeest, zebras, and elephants, destroy tourism revenue which will then cause job loss of up to tens of thousands.

Tanzanian tourism is a 1 billion US dollar business per year.  The industry employs 600,000 individuals and with current family dependent rates these jobs have an effect on up to 4.8 million people (avg. 8 dependents per employee).  The Serengeti is the main draw for tourists to Tanzania and because of this proposed road plan many travel companies have already stopped advertising the Serengeti as a potential stop on their 2012 travel brochures.

It is estimated that this new road will serve 437,000 people in the surrounding areas, but if the President of Tanzania would approve the plans of a road to the south the road could then service up to 2.3 million people and be far last detrimental to the ecosystem.  The southern route would not pass right through a bottleneck area of the great migration, nor would it cost 4.8 million dollars that the northern route is estimated to cost.  In an effort to stop the President of Tanzania from building the northern route the World Bank has offered to pay for the southern route.  Earlier this month the Tanzanian President released a statement that he would not accept the World Bank’s offer.

Please take your time to visit www.savetheserengeti.org and www.fzs.org to learn more and to see how you can help get the message across to the Tanzanian government on how detrimental their highway plans are and to participate in the upcoming 1^st annual International Serengeti Day on March 19, 2011.  

Purdue Cancels Plans for New Coal Boiler Marking 150th Coal Plant Down!

Plans for 150 New Coal Plants Scrapped
Transition to Clean Energy Picks Up Steam

Washington, DC: Purdue University has cancelled plans for a new campus coal plant, making the plant the 150th to be defeated or abandoned since the beginning of the coal rush in 2001. Thanks in part to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, in the last two years no new coal plants have started construction and the industry has announced the phase out of over 50 plants.

Purdue was the only university in the country planning to build a new coal plant. At the same time nearly a dozen other schools have committed to ending their dependence on campus coal plants by switching to cleaner sources of energy.

"The way people, businesses, governments and schools think about energy has shifted. The dirty coal status-quo is no longer acceptable," said Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. "It is clear that clean energy technologies—ones that don’t spew life-threatening pollution into our air and water—are the way to a prosperous, secure energy future."

At the beginning of the coal rush more than 150 coal plants were slated for construction. Today a majority of those projects have been defeated or abandoned because of tremendous grassroots pressure, rising costs and a slate of clean up requirements expected from the Environmental Protection Agency.

As major sources of life-threatening soot, smog and mercury pollution existing coal plants are coming under increasing scrutiny. Activists with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign are working on the ground in almost every state to phase out outdated coal plants and transition to cleaner, cheaper options for their area.

"The pollution from these coal plants is making us sick, worsening asthma, stifling childhood development and cutting short thousands of lives. Phasing out coal is essential to cleaning up our air and water, and protecting our families," said Verena Owen volunteer chair of the Beyond Coal Campaign. "Making the switch to clean energy, like wind and solar, is good for our health, but it will also create jobs which makes it good for our economy too."

For more, visit www.sierraclub.org/coal .

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Energy Debate Gains Steam at Penn State

Great article from Politico about our work at Penn State that highlights the complexities of moving beyond coal to clean energy, especially in the Marcellus Shale region - and why we need President Obama to stand up and support the EPA to enact and enforce rules that will protect public health. 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48673.html

Energy debate gains steam

By: Bob King

February 2, 2011 07:52 AM EST

 

When President Barack Obama travels to Penn State University on Thursday to promote his clean energy agenda, he'll visit a campus that has become a symbolic battleground in the national debate over coal, natural gas and the administration's increasingly controversial pollution regulations.

 

The university's trustees voted Jan. 21 to spend up to $35 million to convert an 82-year-old steam plant on Penn State's main campus in State College, Pa., to burn natural gas instead of coal by 2014.

 

The switch - inspired partly by the Obama administration's proposal to regulate emissions from industrial boilers - makes Penn State the latest of at least 10 U.S. colleges and universities to commit to shifting away from coal, a goal for student activist groups and the Sierra Club's national Campuses Beyond Coal campaign.

 

The decision dismayed supporters of Pennsylvania's coal industry while offering a publicity boost to the natural gas sector, which has been hammered lately over pollution concerns raised by the extraction technique known as "fracking." The shift also inspired mixed emotions among environmental activists who aren't fond of either fuel source, even though burning natural gas emits fewer greenhouse gases and toxics such as mercury than does burning coal.

 

People on all sides see a certain amount of symbolism in the switch occurring near the geographic center of a state in which both coal and gas play major roles.

 

Penn State, which operates a Coal and Coke Heritage Center on a campus southeast of Pittsburgh, also sits amid the Marcellus Shale natural-gas-producing region, where much of the fracking controversy has been centered. Coincidentally, the Sierra Club last week named a State College-based activist, Deborah Nardone, as director of a national campaign to "reform" the natural gas industry.

 

Pennsylvania also has much untapped potential for producing wind and solar power, said Kim Teplitzky, the Sierra Student Coalition representative for the Campuses Beyond Coal campaign. Those are the types of renewable energy alternatives that her group hopes Penn State will eventually embrace.

 

"It's a flagship school in Pennsylvania, which is an important state for all of these issues," Teplitzky said.

 

George Ellis, president of the Pennsylvania Coal Association, also saw symbolic importance in the trustees' decision but was less than thrilled about it.

 

"Penn State is in the heart of coal country," said Ellis, who called the trustees' decision "unfortunate" and "overly reactive." While the steam plant doesn't burn a huge amount of coal - generally less than 80,000 tons a year, none of it is produced in Pennsylvania - Ellis said the vote was significant in terms of "the message you're sending."

 

Obama's visit is expected to include a tour of labs working on ways to increase energy efficiency in buildings. Ellis said he hopes the president will also embrace energy production from homegrown sources such as coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power. "Coal is still our most affordable and reliable energy source," Ellis said.

 

Meanwhile, former-Pennsylvania-governor-turned-natural-gas-industry-adviser Tom Ridge issued a statement Monday welcoming the attention that the state's gas resources will receive - from both the president's visit and the university's fuel switch.

 

"Penn State is making common-sense investments aimed at leveraging the Marcellus Shale's abundant, clean-burning natural gas reserves for electricity generation," said Ridge, former secretary of the Homeland Security Department, who went to work for the Marcellus Shale Coalition last year.

 

But environmentalists said they hope natural gas won't have a long future at Penn State.

 

The trustees' decision drew criticism from the campus group Eco-Action, which had held demonstrations and meetings with administrators to call for an end to burning coal in the steam plant.

 

"The proposal of natural gas for the west campus steam plant is unfortunate, but not unexpected," the group said in a statement e-mailed to a campus blog. Eco-Action called on the university to "develop a plan for a swift transition away from fossil fuels. We won't be satisfied until this process is complete."

 

Teplitzky said students will continue to press their case for renewable fuels, and in the meantime, activists will urge administrators to increase energy efficiency in buildings on the sprawling campus.

 

But for now, she said, the vote is a victory toward the goal of ending all coal burning on college campuses.

 

"Certainly, we're not done with our work there," she said. "While gas is not the decision at Penn State, it is an important step."

 

A major impetus for Penn State's switch is the Obama administration's proposed boiler regulations, one of several Environmental Protection Agency efforts that have drawn attacks on Capitol Hill.

 

While the EPA has released only a draft of the boiler rule - the final version is due by Feb. 21 - if the university had stuck with coal, it would have spent substantial amounts on scrubbers and other pollution controls, said Ian Salada, manager of engineering services at Penn State's Office of Physical Plant. He said the result is "a fairly level playing field between the two fuels" - and switching to gas may even end up as the cheaper option.

 

The fuel switch will affect the campus's main steam plant, which produces steam to heat buildings and for other purposes, as well as a small amount of electrical cogeneration. That plant has four boilers that primarily run on coal, plus one that can already burn gas. A second steam plant can burn either oil or natural gas.

 

Salada said the university plans to continue exploring a range of other possible energy sources, including biomass and geothermal. For now, he said, none of the technologies appear able to offer enough reliable, economically feasible energy soon enough to meet the EPA's proposed 2014 deadline.

 

"On a personal level, I think we will be implementing some of those technologies in the near future," he said. "When it all shakes out, we'll probably have a number of different technologies ... instead of just one. Instead of converting everything to biomass, we might have one biomass piece of equipment, another sector that's geothermal and one sector that's something else."

 

Teplitzky said the campus's debate signals the importance of the EPA's regulations in creating an economic incentive to shift away from dirtier fuels. She said she hopes Obama will defend the agency against attacks from members of Congress who condemn the regulations as "job killers."

 

"It's critical that he stands up on this issue and sees that this is one of the most important issues to young people," she said.

MSU News on Student Government Resolution to be 100% Coal Free

From The State News at Michigan State University where SSCrs helped pass a student government resolution to move MSU beyond coal-

Student groups team up to call for sustainability

by Laura Fosmire published January 31, 2010

On campus environmental organizations MSU Greenpeace and the Sierra Student Coalition are encouraging the university to live up to its slogan of sustainability.

The groups helped pass a resolution through ASMSU’s Student Assembly last Thursday encouraging the university to abandon its use of coal at the T.B. Simon Power Plant.

ASMSU is MSU’s undergraduate student government.

Talya Tavor is president of MSU Beyond Coal, a campaign sponsored by the Sierra Student Coalition. She said other Big Ten schools — including the University of Illinois and Penn State University — already have made commitments to transition to renewable energy sources.

“Our goal is to get the university to make a public commitment to transition off of coal to 100 percent renewable energy,” she said.
Tavor said the consequences of burning coal can be extremely dangerous.

“After you burn coal, it produces coal ash,” she said. “It’s one of the most hazardous byproducts of this day and age. It’s scary because it’s not regulated at all. Household trash has more regulations on it than coal ash.”

Adam Liter, vice president of MSU Greenpeace, said solar or wind energy might be a more viable alternative.

“We want something that doesn’t contribute to health problems and won’t contribute to climate change,” he said. “Something that’s sustainable.”

Using alternative fuel sources also will save the university money, Tavor said.

“Recently, (President Barack) Obama said he wants to stop subsidizing fossil fuels, so solar energy and wind energy will be less expensive,” Tavor said.

“It’s kind of a domino effect. The more you invest in it, the cheaper it gets.”

ASMSU’s Student Assembly Chairman Chris Schotten said a big reason the resolution was passed unanimously by the assembly was the amount of input the representatives received from their constituents.

“There was a tremendous outpouring of support from the student body to support alternative energy,” he said. “Regardless of a representative’s worldview, their primary responsibility is to represent the voice of their peers.”

Emily Dobson, a political theory and constitutional democracy senior, said anything that helps the environment is a good thing.
“But we have to weigh the pros and cons,” she said. “We need to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.”

She said passing a resolution through ASMSU was a good channel for the environmental organizations to use.

“I think the university does listen to ASMSU,” she said. “It does seem to be the most formal way for students to get their ideas and opinions heard.”

The dirty truth about sustainability at Wash. U.

The following (awesome) Op-Ed was printed in the student newspaper at Washington University in St. Louis by student leader Adam Hasz calling for the university to kick Coal Baron Gregory Boyce off the Board of Trustees. 

http://www.studlife.com/forum/op-ed-submission/2011/01/26/the-dirty-truth-about-sustainability-at-wash-u/

January 26, 2011 | Adam Hasz 

This past Monday, the Office of Sustainability released the new Wash.U. Sustainability Pledge (available atsustainabilitypledge.wustl.edu). The pledge states that “Through each of us doing our part, the Washington University community can reduce our environmental impact and create a better future for generations to come.”

I love the idea of such a pledge, and I encourage the entire Washington University community to sign it. Given the dire threat climate change poses to our generation, we all share a moral responsibility to reduce our personal environmental impacts.

However, the rest of the Wash. U. administration seems to have missed the message about sustainability. While our school diligently works to promote personal lifestyle changes, many University decisions directly contradict its stated goal of long-term sustainability. And no Wash.U. policy is more hypocritical than our association with Peabody Energy CEO Greg Boyce.

Mr. Boyce is the leader of the world’s largest private coal company, and one of the arch-villains of the human race. Heard of Tony Hayward, the hated BP CEO during the Gulf Oil Spill? Well, Boyce is worse. His company has blown up mountains in the Appalachians, poisoned the water source of Navajo Indians at Black Mesa, and caused millions of cases of asthma and lung disease every single year, all in the pursuit of “cheap” energy from coal. And this doesn’t even include looming future climate catastrophes, caused largely by the carbon pollution from Mr. Boyce’s coal.

"Burning issue: MSU students call for end to coal as campus power source"

Another article about our November actions.  Talya from Michigan State will be one of the students with us Washington, D.C. next week talking to reporters and setting up thousands of pinwheels made by students across the country at the EPA and near Capitol Hill.  If you missed it, you can still join the action Dec 1 by posting facebook and twitter messages to Adminstrator Lisa Jackson thanking her for their work to protect public health. 

From The Lansing State Journal - Mich.:

EAST LANSING - Talya Tavor owns a "cute little carry-with-me-wherever-I-go nebulizer." It's a device that administers aerosolized medicine, easing the constriction in her airways, relaxing the bronchial muscles so she can breathe.

Her asthma is severe. She's used machines like it for most of her life.

Despite that fact and because of it, she was at the head of a student demonstration at Michigan State University last week, chanting at the top of her lungs.

"What's green?"

"Not coal," the crowd in front of her chanted in reply. All around them, paper pinwheels had been planted in the grass.

Coal has become an issue on MSU's campus over the past several months. Or, rather, the fact that the university's T.B. Simon Power Plant burns close to 250,000 tons of it each year.

Student activists from a number of organizations are pressing the university to find other, cleaner alternatives.

"Mining coal and using it to generate power is the single most destructive industrial process that we have today," said Tavor, president of the MSU chapter of the Sierra Student Coalition and the grass-roots coordinator for the organization's MSU Beyond Coal campaign.

"Because we have a coal plant on campus, we're the ones who are feeling the effects, health-wise, environment-wise."

What the group wants from MSU is a timeline for ending its use of coal, a pledge to move toward renewable sources of energy.

"The university has such an incredible opportunity to re-create its image," Tavor said.

Read the full article here (it's worth it!).

Actions for a Clean Energy Future Demonstrate Solutions!

Yesterday and over the past week students coast-to-coast demonstrated their demand for a clean energy future with displays of hundreds of paper pinwheels on more than 50 campuses. 

With the National Action for a Clean Energy Future students turned their quads, libraries, administration buildings and campus walkways into creative centers demonstrating our demand for cleaner energy to power our campuses and our nation.  The colorful pinwheels represent the creative and innovative solutions we need, and will now be sent to Washington, D.C. where local youth are bringing them to members of Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy on December 1st to demonstrate the demands of young people nation-wide. 

Here are some of the stories from yesteday...

At Mizzou students set-up 500 pinwheels at their quad. From the Missourian:

"The pinwheels were created by MU students out of recycled paper as a symbol our generation's desire for a clean energy future," said Melissa Vatterott, a spokeswoman for Coal Free Mizzou. "The pinwheel idea is used to symbolize clean energy sources, such as wind power."

University of North Carolina students used the event to focus on their university's broken promise to stop purchasing surface minded coal with their Music Saves Mountain event featuring Ben Sollee who helped them deliver a letter directly to Chancellor Thorp. 

Students gave away their pinwheels to passerbys  and university community members at Clemson University even engaging their favorite lunch lady as part of their effort to urge the university to expedite the retirement of their campus coal plant. 

In Virginia, the story about actions at both Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia reverberated state-wide.  Both groups are working to transition off coal burning in plants right on campus.  At Virginia Tech students set up hundreds of orange and maroon pinwheels to show that they need a better alternative to their coal plant that is responsible for coal dust accumulation in a nearby dorm and has been blamed for increased asthma attacks.  Similarly, at UVA coal dust and acid rain are causing their iconic university rotunda to literally crumble.

At Michigan State University students held a rally with more than 500 pinwheels calling for the school to transition their campus coal plant, the largest in the nation, beyond coal.  From the State News:  

“The windmill is kind of the easiest representation of clean energy,” [Eric Price, a leader of MSU Beyond Coal] said. “Five hundred of these pinwheels will … push for what we want to do — push for clean energy.”

Students set-up colorful displays at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, beat their goals for pinwheels at schools like Lewis and Clark in Oregon and are still planning big events at the University of Iowa and Indiana University for today and next week. 

And many, many more stories are still coming in!  Please share yours with us.  If you hosted an action, tell us about it and send us your photos.  If you missed it, don't worry!  You can still be part of the action on December 1.  Just sign our national petition to President Obama and we'll be sure you get info on upcoming events.