Onward for Energy Justice: Monday night was a Setback, not a Defeat

The City Council of Oberlin, a small town in Northern Ohio that houses Oberlin College, well known for its environmental and progressive nature, voted Monday whether to lock the town into a 40-year purchasing contract for a proposed coal plant in Meigs County, OH, which is part of the highest concentration of proposed coal plants in the country. The students gathered 140 commitments from townspeople to voluntary tax themselves in order to at least delay the decision, bumping the total such commitments to about 230, and delivered them to Council right before their meeting Monday night.

They also brought my good friend Elisa Young, whose farm is in the thick of the coal proposals, to address the Council. This is the account of the “compromise that made no one happy”.

from Rachel Rothgery, a student at at Oberlin College:

Yesterday I received an email from Mayor and Council President Dan Gardner. In it he expressed the same pride and hope for the community’s fight against the coal plant that I felt as I left our 4-3 defeat Monday night:

“First, let me thank you all for your extraordinary efforts over these last few weeks. You all transformed this issue from an inevitability to an on-going debate. Remember that the very notion of needing and wanting to find alternatives was heretical when we started. The phrase “off-ramp” referred to highways, not power sales purchase contracts when we started. The present reality that no one on council wants to purchase coal if they don’t have to was not present when we started.”

Monday night was a setback, but certainly not a defeat. Mayor Gardner himself was the latest convert, leaving us only one vote short of an eventual rejection of the plant. Yes, I write “eventual” with the utmost confidence. We have until March to earn that extra vote, and here’s what we have on our side:

1) November elections to shift Council opinion to our side.
2) Some of the world’s finest Environmental Studies scholars fervently devoted to studying alternatives to the plant.
3) Some of the world’s most impassioned, progressive, and active students rapidly contacting me, asking how to get involved.
4) The town’s support; NOT ONE speaker advocated for coal. ALL were staunchly opposed. Oberlin participated in the Underground Railroad, and the College was the first to accept blacks and women. Our legacy of taking the lead in moving society forward, whether inconvenient or not, was repeatedly mentioned throughout the debate.
5) Elisa, from where the coal will be mined. She stood in front of the council with a jar of black “drinking” water from her neighbor’s well (once drinkable since Civil War times). She astounded and brought tears to both the Council and public. After her compelling plea, not a single soul in the room could, with good conscience, say that they wanted coal.

The 4 Council members who voted for the plant claimed that they only wanted something to fall back on in case no alternatives are found by March. Or they didn’t want to stick the next Council with nothing.

Well next time around they won’t have either excuse. And we’ll bring Elisa back so that they won’t forget what they told us Monday night: “None of us really want coal.”

The promise is stamped on their foreheads now. Monday night was a setback, not a defeat. Not at all a defeat.

-Walk the talk - Rachel, Oberlin College-