It’s Getting Hot In Here

Yesterday many of us were up in arms at a new Peabody Coal initiative “Coal Cares” that appeared to be aimed at helping kids with asthma, not by reducing pollution, but rather by making it a cool thing to do. While the website and media campaign were a stunt, they still served to highlight the absurdity that the coal industry is allowed to run rampant polluting our air and water and costing us millions of dollars in healthcare costs while they pocket the profits.

Here’s more on the project:

A charitable initiative by the world’s largest coal company to provide free “novelty-themed” inhalers to asthmatic children may have seemed for a moment like a (somewhat misguided) breath of fresh air, coming as it did from an industry whose emissions are directly linked to childhood asthma, and which is fighting to gut clean air legislation that would save children’s lives.

Coal Cares™ (www.coalcares.org) purported to “make asthma cool” with decorative and pop-culture inspired inhalers (“The Bieber,” “Harry Potter,” “My Little Pony,” and “My First Inhaler” were particular favorites). The site also announced that Peabody would offer $10 coupons towards asthma medication (about 5%-20% of the cost) for families living within 200 miles of a coal-fired plant. It featured a “Kidz Koal Korner” with asthma-related games for tots, an extensive asthma trivia section and FAQ (Peter the Great was asthmatic, who knew!), and a thorough condemnation of solar and wind alternatives.

It was, of course, a hoax, and it was aimed at Peabody Coal, which is lobbying ferociously against new pollution standards for power plants proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), standards the agency says will prevent 120,000 cases of childhood asthma each year in the United States. Peabody spent over $6 million lobbying Congress last year, and the industry has created a dizzying array of fake “grassroots” front groups to distort the public debate and fight legislation. Continue reading ‘Tackling Childhood Asthma Not Coal Industry Priority After All’

Clemson marks the 12th campus to make such an announcement since the Sierra Student Coalition launched our Campuses Beyond Coal campaign.  Here’s more info cross-posted from the Sierra Student Coalition blog.

After a year-long effort by students Clemson President Jim Barker announced the university will be investing in several university upgrades including ending the use of coal on campus!  The campaign, spearheaded by Students for Environmental Action at Clemson, has been working with the administration to stop burning dangerous coal in the campus steam plant situated near the aptly named “Death Valley” – the university’s football field.  Ending their use of coal is just phase I of several planned utility upgrades over the next five years and a significant step towards meeting the university’s commitment to reduce their overall carbon emissions to zero by 2030.

Students are excited and looking forward to another address by the President planned for next week at their “Solutions for the Next Decade” teach-in where they hope to hear more details for the transition.

“Clemson is making strides in becoming more aware of sustainability and taking concrete steps to reduce its carbon emissions.  No where is this more evident than in President Barkers’ announcement to begin Phase 1 of taking the campus coal plant offline.  This will catapult Clemson toward our goal of becoming a carbon neutral campus by the year 2030 and we are very excited to hear yesterday’s announcement,” said Graduate student and SEA leader Holly Garrett.

“This decision to move our university beyond coal shows that the university is really listening to the concerns of students and faculty who want a cleaner, healthier campus and demonstrates our dedication to environmental, economic and social leadership.  I’m very proud to go a university that is committing to building a clean energy future,” said CU Beyond Coal leader Rose Kinane.

“Now, we hope to see the university to continue invest in solutions like efficiency for our buildings and renewable energy projects that will make our school a 100% clean energy institution.”

Pinwheels and signs set up at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Right now hundreds of young people from all over the world are in Cancun, Mexico fighting for an international climate treaty.  And today, we’re taking over Washington, D.C. as well.

Over the past month students across the country held actions on their campuses to show our demand for the clean energy solutions we need and today those voices are reverberating throughout our nation’s capital. We’ve set up displays at the Environmental Protection Agency and near Capitol Hill showing off the bright, colorful pinwheels handmade by students from across the country.

Join the effort by posting your own messages to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Facebook and Twitter today.

This week the EPA celebrates their 40th anniversary, just in time for us to celebrate their awesome recent work to protect public health and stand up to Big Coal.  Their actions to implement new rules for polluting energy sources will help safeguard our communities by reducing pollution in our air and water.

At the same time, we’re working on our campuses to retire the fleet of more than 60 campus-based coal plants and move all our schools off coal to 100 percent clean energy solutions.  We’ve come to D.C. to show that we’re leading the way and ask our nation’s leaders to follow.

SSC Students put up pinwheels and signs on the pathway to Capitol Hill

Already schools like the University of North Carolina, University of Illinois and Western Kentucky University have committed to stop burning coal on campus. We’re on the way, but still have a lot of work to do and need our leaders in Washington to join us in creating a cleaner, safer, healthier energy future.

So let Lisa Jackson know you’ve got her back when she steps up to the plate to take on Big Coal.

Our generation was lucky enough to grow up with the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other federal environmental policies and we must ensure we maintain these critical protections for the health and prosperity of our and future generations.

Cross-posted from the Sierra Student Coalition:

From the Missourian, Photo Credit: Lindsay Moser

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 yesterday…

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 mountaintop removal coal with their Music Saves Mountain event featuring Ben Sollee who helped them deliver a letter directly to Chancellor Thorp. Continue reading ‘Students Take Action for Our Clean Energy Future’

**UPDATE: The Board of Regents approved the proposal to install 3 wind turbines at the new UNT stadium.  The turbines are expected to be up this spring and will help power the stadium and Eagle Point campus!**

The University of North Texas, like most of our nation’s universities, relies heavily on coal-generated power for its electricity. It’s not one of the 60+ schools with their own campus coal plants, but still get nearly half of its electricity from a Texas coal plant.  That’s bad news for our climate and the health of communities in this state that already has dangerously high levels of air pollution from power plants.

So, like students on more than 50 campuses they’ve teamed up with the Campuses Beyond Coal campaign to do something about it and push the university to switch to 100% clean energy, starting now. Today, as their Board of Regents meets and deliberates on a proposal to install three wind turbines at the site of their new LEED Gold stadium, the Sierra Student Coalition group has set up more than 1,500 handmade paper pinwheels to represent the clean, safe and prosperous energy future they envision.

Over the next couple weeks students at more than 50 campuses are doing the same as part of the Sierra Student Coalition’s National Action for a Clean Energy Future. After their campus events students are shipping their pinwheels to Washington, D.C. where a group of local youth will be setting up demonstrations around the city.  The demos will represent the voices of young people from Oregon to Illinois to Georgia who all want to see their campuses and our nation move to clean energy solutions. You still have time to join the action and plan an event for November 18th at your school to draw attention to your community’s coal dependence and potential to switch to clean, innovative and safe energy solutions. Sign-up to join this visionary, bright action for our future!

PSU Student Rose Monahan at Penn State Beyond Coal rally outside the campus steam plant

Penn State University is moving forward a request from university administrators for funds to convert the West Campus Steam Plant off coal, making it the newest school to make such a move the wake of an active Sierra Student Coalition Campuses Beyond Coal campaign. The request was slipped into the Board’s agenda after a year-long student campaign urging the university to stop burning coal at the plant which sits right in the middle of the flagship campus, and was helped along by strong new EPA regulations that will require several campus coal plants to clean up their acts.

The pending EPA rule targets industrial boilers, such as those on many campuses including Virginia Tech, Michigan State, Indiana University, the University of Iowa and several others. The new rules are designed to protect residents who live near and downwind from these coal plants. Specifically, the rule will substantially reduce emissions of toxic air pollution, like mercury, arsenic and cadmium, which can cause cancer, reproductive disorders and other serious health problems. Continue reading ‘Penn State Next to Join Growing List of Campuses Moving Off Coal’

This past weekend marked World Environment Day, a UN-sponsored green washing extravaganza.  The focus event for the Americas in Pittsburgh featured a world record-setting flotilla of kayaks and canoes, a policy-oriented “Water Matters” Conference, a screening of the new doc Gasland, and a lot of signs declaring it World Environment Day.

The ironies abounded – from Coca Cola (notorious for stealing water from impoverished communities in India) and other corporations speaking about water conservation to a celebration of our precious, yet terribly threatened and already oh-so-contaminated three rivers with their sewage overflow, toxic dumping and now unregulated natural gas drilling, called “fracking” in the Marcellus Shale.

It wasn’t all a loss though as we seized the opportunity to call attention to the terror of gas drilling in our state and beyond.  Several residents did a successful on-kayak banner deployment demanding we “Stop Drilling Marcellus” at the flotilla (release below the jump). Members of the Pittsburgh Student Environmental Coalition (PSEC) planned a dance mob that got rained out, but didn’t stop them from collecting petitions and talking to tons of locals about the threat of fracking.  And the capstone was a screening of Gasland (watch this movie!) to a packed house of over 200 people who united in collective anger, frustration and a call for a ban on drilling, at least until substantial regulations are in place.

Overall the day gave us, local residents, an opportunity to elevate the dialog on this terrifying threat to our rivers, drinking water and land, even while allowing for corporations and politicians to flaunt astro-turf green pasted on smiles. Continue reading ‘UN World Environment Day: A Sham, An Opportunity’

Cross posted from Bruce Nilles’ blog on Climate Crossroads

We’ve had some disturbing news come to us from the coal industry. It’s appropriate that it comes to us on April Fool’s Day, as it is a coal industry iPhone application that is designed to fool the American public about the devastating cost of coal.

Watch this video from our Executive Director Michael Brune to learn more.

While this iPhone app is a bit shocking, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised coming from an industry that, besides the coal carolers and the coal coloring books, also unveiled pro-coal cell phone ringtones last year. (We gave those ringtones a reality check in this video)

Check out the Sierra Club’s website on this latest coal industry embarrassment to learn more: www.sierraclub.org/scrubber

Right now, hundreds of people of all ages are marching through the heat towards Concord, NH and Des Moines, IA walking to raise the profile of global warming in the national public debate. They’re demanding our leaders take action now to reduce emissions 80% by 2050 and create 2 million new jobs for Americans.

Iowa kicked off with 50 people Thursday morning in Ames, getting some great TV coverage and is holding strong as they march south toward Des Moines where Iowa-native Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, will join them to reinforce the urgency of the issue and the need for major action.

New Hampshire’s Tuesday kick off in Nashua had over 200 people and there’s been a strong group of around 100 marching every day. Their marchers include 2-year-old Nicci Metcalf who has already learned chants including “No coal!” and “Oooh… Its hot in here…” and an organic farmer marching with her two sons.

Read the dispatches from each state at www.climatesummer.org and keep checking back for daily videos and photos. Also, check out our coverage in the Nashua Telegraph and Des Moines Register and listen for us on NPR where there will be continuing coverage in the Northeast and internationally on the program American Voices. Here’s a video from NH:

Free food AND fighting global warming???

It’s true. Right now students all over the country are joining the effort to ReEnergizeUS by helping with recruitment for marches happening August 1-5 in New Hampshire and Iowa. Over 30 students have dedicated their summer to organizing across these two states and building towards the Marches to ReEnergizeUS. The goal is to raise the profile of global warming solutions in the national public debate by capitalizing on all the public attention focused on these two early primary/caucus states. We’re demanding our leaders at all levels take immediate action to reduce emissions 80% by 2050 by building a clean energy economy that would create 2 million new jobs for Americans.

The ReEnergize Iowa and ReEnergize New Hampshire student teams have worked their butts off, but now they need YOUR help for the final push to get people to turn out for these historic events. Students around the country are helping out by doing remote phone banks of residents of Iowa and New Hampshire who have signed our petition and said they’re interested in coming out. We need about 80 hours of committed remote phone banking – and that means you.

There are three ways to participate:
1. Phone bank on your own from home, preferably Wednesday 7/25 from 6:30-9pm EST during the group remote phone banks
2. Phone bank on your own at a different time – either Tues or Thursday evening around the same times
3. Get a group of friends together for a phone banking party with free pizza compliments of the SSC for any group that clocks a total of 10 hours! You can do this from home or a local Sierra Club or Energy Action Coalition partner office (i.e. Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Global Exchange, CCAN, etc.). Just let me know if you need help finding a space and see below for parties already happening in DC, MD, MI and Philly. Continue reading ‘Fight Global Warming, Eat Pizza!’