Climate Scientists and the Governor of Maine are gathering in Orono today to discuss the changing climate of the 21st century. UMaine Students, led by Amy Marchessault and Robbie Goodwin plan to ask the Governor if he will support a coal moratorium for the state. Watch the streaming webcast here.
Learning of a world-class climate conference in their university, UMaine Power Voters quickly mobilized to take the conference by storm. Students plan to ask questions such as if presenters agree with Al Gore’s encouragement of young people to use civil disobedience promote the Oct. 29th webcast to Power Vote nation.
UMaine Power Vote is only 3 weeks old, but already they have energized their campus, collected over 700 pledge signatures, and are uniting campus green groups around a big campaign. What other schools that were previously not involved in Power Vote will jump on board in the FINAL 11 DAYS until the election?
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While I am no fan of coal, you bring up a serious point. The largest recent change in US power infrastructure was the construction of 200 GWe of gas turbines in the 1990’s. Gas turbines are the easiest and quickest devices to build, so replacing ~500 GWe of coal will certainly be an enormous challenge. Similar large projects such as the interstate road network or the TVA grid took over 20 years to complete.
I am not saying it’s impossible (especially if it is scheduled over longer than the ten year timeframe I often hear proposed), but the breadth and scope of such a shift seems to get glossed over in the press.
Do you really think that banning coal is possible. Where do you expect all the excess power to come from? As mentioned above we already have the infrastructure. Maybe over time it is possible to phase it out but you can’t just ban it. It’s foolish to think you can.