No more coal

Lauren Kastner is the Coal-Free IU media coordinator.

America is at a crossroads as we face a cooling economy and a warming world. The solution is investing in new, clean energy for America, which can strengthen our economy, put people back to work, reduce our dependence on dirty oil and coal and tackle climate change.

From coal ash and mining to soot and carbon pollution, coal is a dirty business and makes up more than 30 percent of America’s global warming pollution.

Yet even now, as we are still realizing the full impact of coal, we are still burning coal in more than 500 coal plants nationwide, one of them right here on IU’s beautiful campus on Fee Lane.

Sierra Club’s Coal-Free IU is working hard to support the Obama Administration’s efforts to regulate energy and the environment. We recently staged a “guerilla theater” event at the Sample Gates and in the Indiana Memorial Union food court that humorously demonstrated why IU must stop using coal power. Crowds of people stopped (and some even took videos on their cell phones) to learn about the need for strong regulations to help clean up pollution, including soot, mercury and coal ash from facilities like the coal plant right behind the Kelley School of Business.

Mountaintop removal coal mining has already damaged or destroyed nearly 2,000 miles of streams and threatens to destroy 1.4 million acres of land by 2020. And burning coal in old and inefficient coal plants like the one on IU’s campus creates significant health impacts, causing asthma, lung cancer and other respiratory issues.

These old, dirty coal plants are among the worst contributors to the 21,000 hospitalizations, 38,000 heart attacks, and 24,000 premature deaths caused each year by coal pollution.

After coal is burned, the ash is stored in open-surface mines, like the one in Gibson County, containing harmful levels of arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxins, which can leak out slowly to contaminate drinking water sources or even flood nearby communities with a life-threatening wave of toxic sludge, as the nation watched happen last year in Knoxville, Tenn.

Rather than seeing these efforts as a threat to jobs and the economy, such regulations should be seen as the path forward to protect people’s livelihoods. Strong regulations put us on a path to cleaner technology that boosts economic growth, creates jobs and protects the planet. IU, as a research institution, should be a leader – not a regressive force.

According to the National Resources Defense Council, “Indiana produces 96 percent of its electricity with coal and is the No. 1 emitter of carbon dioxide per capita in the country.”

In the past we didn’t have a choice about how to power America. Today we can do better.

The bottom line is that it’s time to clean up coal and build a clean-energy economy, starting at IU.