It’s Getting Hot In Here

From Lora DiFranco, Ecolympics coordinator at Oberlin College:

Oberlin College’s first Ecolympics came to an end Saturday as we announced South Hall as the winning dorm during the closing ceremonies. Run almost entirely by students, this month we hosted dorm energy competitions, waste audits, and eco-volunteer days where students earned points for their dorm. South has won a pizza party for their dorm by winning the competition.

Oberlin has had a Dorm Energy Competition every year for the past four years. Dorms usually decrease their energy use around 20%, saving the college hundreds of dollars and thousands of pounds of carbon emissions. This year, taking a hint from Duke’s Eco-Olympics, we thought, “Why not host other events that can have the same effect as the Dorm Energy Competition?” Most Oberlin students are very aware of the environmental issue facing our world today, but sometimes people need a straight-up incentive to change their behavior.

As the coordinator for Ecolympics and a senior who is graduating in a month (!!!!), I’m definitely relieved that the events are over. However, the over-analytical part of me is ready to start then next phase: the review.
Continue reading ‘Oberlin Ecolympics Wrap Up’

Following an ongoing story, we’ve got another notch in our belts and another victory against coal. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, the only campus in the country with an active proposal for a coal-fired power plant, has canceled its plans. University President Glenn Poshard said a study suggests the plant would be too expensive.

The Student Environmental Center at SIU played a role in this victory. A monthly column by an SEC member recently highlighted the problems with “clean coal”, while the SEC’s Eco-Dawgs green fee campaign has been making great advances towards sustainability on campus.

Mountain Justice Spring Break 2008, March 1-9 in southwest Virginia, will bring you face to face with the devastating effects of mountain top removal and coal industry abuse, and give you the skills and knowledge you need to fight back! Through education, community service, speakers, hiking, music, poetry, direct action and more, you will join local communities in the struggle to maintain their land and culture. People can attend for part or all of the program, and costs are very modest - find out more and register(!!!) today.

I believe that MJSB is the single greatest opportunity all year to catalyze the analysis and leadership we need in order to win the struggle for a clean energy future. Join me and the rest of the MJSB Planning Collective next week. It will change your life.

From Leo Sprinzen, Oberlin student, 2-12-08:

My first experience in direct action was in response to coal fired power plants. I stood in line with fifty others outside of the houses of two men who may be responsible for a new coal plants, while spokesmen talked with the men in power. After standing attentively for ten long minutes in front of each house I filed out with the others feeling surprisingly elated. Information is powerful and letting the people in charge know how I and my fellow demonstrators felt by standing shoulder to shoulder holding arms and quietly looking down the most powerful Ohioans who live by coal spurred a sense of empowerment bigger than I could have imagined.

Continue reading ‘My First Direct Action’

Starting at 10 this morning on the snowiest day of the year, five students at Ohio State began a sit-in to demand ethical standards for the purchase of wood and paper. The members of OSU Free The Planet!, a student group, vow to stay until President Gordon Gee signs an agreement to stop the University from buying wood products obtained from Indigenous conflict areas and to include more recycled content in paper and lumber used on campus.

Forest issues are heavily intertwined with climate issues. The 6-year logging blockade of the Grassy Narrows people is our struggle too. They are protecting one of our most valuable tools to combat climate change - the Boreal Forest. Our liberation is tied up in theirs.

The 5 students inside are supported by a group of more than two dozen of their supporters rallying outside the President’s office, who will be standing in solidarity as long as it takes. Police are reportedly on the scene, but have not indicated any intent to arrest. Check the Rainforest Action Network’s blog for updates through the day.

Support the students by signing on to their petition. Free The Planet is also asking supporters to call the President’s office to encourage him to sign the agreement: President Gordon E. Gee (like guy except with an ee), The Ohio State University - (614) 292-2424.

This Feb. 8-10, over 70 students from the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition gathered at the Ohio Area Student Environmental Summit (OASES) in Columbus to set campaigns and form structure for the brand new state network and to tell officials that we will not stand for new coal fired power plants in Ohio!

We decided to take our concerns to the top, and make house visits to two people key in deciding on American Municipal Power’s proposed coal power plant in Meigs County, Ohio. More than 50 students dropped by to visit and deliver letters to Director of the Ohio EPA Chris Korleski, and the President and CEO of AMP-Ohio Marc Gerken on Sunday to let them know that we think that AMP’s proposed coal power plant is one of the greatest threats facing Ohio today, and that the hearing process on proposed power plants is unjust and disempowering to Ohio citizens.

We need your help, to keep the pressure up on these targets. We have form letters and talking points below.

Continue reading ‘Ohio students ask leaders to stop coal plants, and need your help!’

Hey so I haven’t been posting much on here lately, but it isn’t for lack of activity. There are definitely things coming up in Ohio to watch out for.

Anyways, I want to take a minute to say two things:

1) Let’s get freakin real, friends. Climate change is going to fuck us up, and we have got to do something now. I’m both scared and excited about what’s coming, and I think you should be too. I want to see real and disciplined commitment to building a new world together.

2) Nobody is going to fix this for us. These elections are a distraction. Corporations will always be slaves to profit, unless and until we alter the nature of corporate law. In short, it’s up to us.

I clearly want something, am aching for something - I don’t know what it is, but I think I’ll know it when I see it.
Whatcha got?

from Rachel Rothgery, student at Oberlin College

My last article in October was entitled “A Setback, Not a Defeat.” The “setback” regarded a City Council 4-3 vote which authorized a contract with AMP Ohio’s proposed coal power plant. “A Setback, Not a Defeat” was not an empty promise.

11pm Tuesday (11/6) night, newly-elected Councilman David Sonner popped open the champagne bottle, and the table of Councilmen and volunteers and sponsors toasted to a greener future. Oberlin will reject the Oberlin coal-fired power plant contract!!!!

For the last month I have been working for four Council candidates: David Ashenhurst, Jack Baumann, Charles Peterson, and David Sonner. The four of them adopted me as Campaign Manager after my canvassing team doubled the signature goal needed to sway our Mayor’s vote from “for” to “against” an incoming coal plant. (He was the 3rd vote against the contract in October.) If approved, the coal-fired plant will serve over 30 municipalities around Ohio, fueling over half of our electricity needs for the next 40 years. The aim of humble environmentalists like me is to get enough cities to reject the contract and cripple plans for the plant. Recently, Westerville, OH became the first to reject the contract. Oberlin City Council authorized the contract, but the next elected Council will be empowered to revoke authorization. After the “setback,” it was clear that a new Council was necessary.

Continue reading ‘Onward for Energy Justice Part II: Success!’

From Faye with SEAC:

We’re looking for dedicated and effective leaders and organizers to join the 2008 Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) National Council. Please review the overview of NC responsibilities.

Email your responses to the below questions to faye@seac.org by Friday, November 16, 2007. The current National Council will announce its selections by Friday, December 1.
Continue reading ‘Apply now to be on SEAC’s 2008 National Council’

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:
Continue reading ‘Onward for Energy Justice: Monday night was a Setback, not a Defeat’