Sierra Student Coalition

Sierra Club Gives College Basketball Clean Energy Boost

In a unique move this month the Sierra Club and Sierra Student Coalition are making moves into college basketbal fandom by sponsoring games with two of the top teams in the nation. The Sierra Club Clean Energy Match-Ups Jan 12 at Indiana University (vs. Minnesota) and Jan 17 at the University of Kentucky (vs. Arkansas) will featuer Sierra Club giveaways, signs, logos, radios spots and presentations.

“We hope to get more Hoosier basketball fans involved in making Indiana a leader off the court by retiring the coal plant on campus and replacing it with clean energy solutions. Moving off coal will mean cleaner air and a healthier campus that Hoosier fans can be really proud of,” said Megan Anderson a senior at Indiana University and President of Coal-Free IU which has been campaigning to move IU beyond coal for nearly three years.

The idea behind the games is to connect fans with the idea that athletes and all students will perform better if they have cleaner air to breathe. Both Indiana and Kentucky operate dirty coal plants right on campus. At IU the campus plant is the largest single source of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide pollution in the county.

“I grew up in rural Kentucky as a Wildcats basketball fan and now as a student I’m working to make sure UK is a real leader by investing in clean energy that will create good jobs here in Kentucky, boost our economy and mean healthier air and water for everyone,” said Patrick Johnson a senior at the University of Kentucky and leader of Greenthumb, the campus group working to move UK off coal on campus. “I couldn’t be more excited to see two things so important to me come together with the Sierra Club Clean Energy Match-Up here in Kentucky.”

In addition to the games the Sierra Club is running full-page newspaper ads and local students are hosting campaign actions incluuding a major petition delivery at IU where leaders will present the more than 5,000 petitions collected since the campaign launched in 2009 to IU President Michael McRobbie.

The games have already earned significant coverage in both Kentucky and Bloomington, IN. Here's just a few of the clips so far:

Lexington Herald-Leader (front page!): Sierra Club sponsoring Kentucky basketball game

Indiana Daily Student: Coal Free IU Launches Week of Action

Kentucky Kernel: Sierra Club sponosoring UK-Arkansas Game

See the full press release here: http://action.sierraclub.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=224123.0

Hope & Change are Real: I’ve Seen It

by Quentin James, Sierra Student Coaliton National Director

Some people say I have a gambling problem. No, its not that I go and lose hundreds of dollars in casinos, but rather I take too many lofty risks based mostly on hope. An example of this is when I dropped out of school in 2007 to go and work for then Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign. As an African-American male, leaving behind a full scholarship at one of America’s most prestigious private universities wasn’t received well by anyone. In fact, there was even some campaign staff that didn’t think it was a good idea. But I took a risk because for the first time ever, I felt I could make a difference because a politician believed in my generation and me.

Fast-forward four years later, and many young people have started to wonder if President Obama will keep true to candidate Obama promises and rhetoric. Admittedly, I was one of those critics, but after yesterday’s State Department decision to reassess the Keystone XL pipeline; I feel the tide shifting dramatically. When I started at the Sierra Club in May, I was told about this lofty goal to organize young people to try and stop this pipeline and I thought "that will be extremely difficult" before the end of year. Nonetheless, in August, the Sierra Student Coalition gathered its top 50 youth leaders in St. Louis, MO to talk about our work for the upcoming semester, and there our “Stop Keystone” youth campaign was launched.

Over the course of the past few months, young people participated in both the official State Department public comments process, as well as used untraditional methods to bring attention to President Obama. In St. Louis, students from Washington University organized and raised grassroots dollars to attend an Obama Campaign fundraiser, where they asked the President directly about the pipeline. At the University of Colorado, students also organized to ask the President about the issue during a speech about recent student loan assistance.

These actions coincided with a campaign from the youth climate movement entitled “100 Actions for 100% Clean Energy” where young people organized over 100 actions all across the nation to stop dirty energy and transition their universities to 100% clean energy. In fact, just two weeks ago our culminating event garnered national press attention as we met with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Jon Carson and Ronnie Cho from the White House Office of Public Engagement about the Keystone XL pipeline, as well as other environmental issues. And just last week, we saw over 12,000 people gather to encircle the White House and show the President we are here ready to support his decision to stop the pipeline.

I mention all of the efforts because yesterday the environmental movement witnessed and realized grassroots organizing works. Our young people saw democracy work for the 99%. I regained my confidence in President Obama. These are not just dismissible observations, but for me, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” in a long time.

Quentin James is the National Director of the Sierra Student Coalition and National Board Member for the NAACP, where he is the Vice Chair of the National Climate & Environmental Justice Committee.  Quentin also served as the Deputy Youth Vote Director for Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign in Ohio.

 

Battling (and Twisting!) to Move UGA Beyond Coal [VIDEO]

 

UGA Sierra Student Coalition does "The Twist" in a beyond coal dance mob

by Grafton Tanner, UGA Beyond Coal

So many great things going on with the University of Georgia’s Beyond Coal Campaign.  Where to begin....

UGA has its own coal boiler located on campus and burns about 500 tons of coal every day.  It only runs four to five months out of the year, and at 46-years-old, it is arriving at the end of its operational life.  We here at UGA Beyond Coal have been urging our president to set a date to retire the coal boiler and to establish a task force of students, faculty, administrators and operational staff to start planning for a cleaner, more renewable energy solution for the University.

Beyond Coal started the semester in full force with steadfast petitioning and phone banking.  As of now, there are well over 1,300 petitions signed by UGA students urging President Adams to determine a date to retire our campus coal plant. 

Several phone bank sessions later, UGA Beyond Coal hosted a massive call-in day on campus to further push for a date to retire the plant.  We set up our station in Tate Plaza (which is the crux of the entire campus) and flagged passersby to join us in making calls to President Adams.  From 10:30 to 2:30, over 215 calls were made.  The staff members we talked to over the phone were incredibly nice and assured us that our requests would be forwarded to the president.  Sweet success, y’all.

Fast forward a bit to the highly successful and talked-about flash mob we held in Tate.  On a cool, wet, unsuspecting Wednesday at around 12:10 PM, a large group of Beyond Coal members seemingly appeared out of nowhere and cut a rug in front of hundreds of students walking through Tate between classes.  The music blared, and we danced for clean energy.  When the music paused, we crouched, and facts about the health effects of coal were read by members of the team.  We attained several media hits, informed innocent bystanders of what was really in the air they were breathing, and boogied.

All of these actions were loads of fun and helped us gain momentum, but the real celebration came when the Student Government Association passed Resolution 24-05 calling for the retirement of our campus boiler and for the creation of a task force, including students and faculty, to determine the best alternative energy source.  And not just a few members of the faculty.  I’m talking 65 professors are currently supporting the task force.  Needless to say, there is some cause for celebration here in Athens, GA.  Good things are happening, and we are finally seeing the change we’ve been fighting for.

But it’s not over yet.  We are still waiting for administration to step it up as much as we have.  So far, no official statement has been made from them about a date to retire the boiler.  We are as busy as ever urging President Adams to move this campus beyond coal.

Editor's Note:

Since Grafton wrote this post there have been dueling Op-Eds in the Red and Black, UGA's campus news paper.  

According to the Administration in their editorial (The University’s stance on the coal plant) they acknowledge that the aging coal plant is nearing the end of it's operational life, but refuse to commit to a date to retire it officially or appoint a task force to seek healthy, clean energy solutions for the university.  

Students quickly responded (Administration stretches truth in its stance on coal plant) pointing out that the Administration has not been nearly as cooperative as they suggested and making the case for moving off coal quickly since it negatively impacts the health of the Athens community and the school is missing a real opportunity to invest in innovative, clean and healthy solutions.  

SSC & Youth Leaders Meet EPA Admin Lisa Jackson, White House Reps

by Zach Carter Mechanical Engineering junior, University of Iowa Sierra Student Coalition Co-Founder

October provided an explosion of action in response to 100% Clean: 100 Actions for Clean Energy.  This project easily met the goal of engaging students on campuses across America to create fun and effective actions to promote and demand clean energy.  From dancing flash mobs, to petition drives, to coal slurry impoundment field trips, we raised awareness and got our message out for clean energy! 

The climax event was a convergence of over thirty student leaders in Washington DC for two roundtable meetings.  We met with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson at Howard College, and later at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with White House Office of Public Engagement Director Jon Carson and White House Youth Liaison Ronnie Cho.  Both meetings went very well.

We thanked Administrator Jackson for continually standing up for people and the environment.  We discussed the importance of the mercury rule she is litigating, and the point behind her recently coined phrase “to dirty to fail,” referring to aging, super-polluting coal power plants that are on unsustainably irresponsible life support.  We discussed the urgency of the Keystone XL pipeline dilemma, and of course, the Tar Sands Action White House sit-in was recognized.  Thankfully, Jackson is not blinded, as some seem to be, from the global environmental disaster that the KXL pipeline would become. 

Director Carson and Youth Liaison Cho listened to our concerns, personal stories, and of the grassroots work we do in our campus communities every day.  We represented our movement well, and stood up for the clean future we believe in.  My main takeaway results from being challenged to grow our coalition larger, and to include our local representatives and senators in our outreach.  To paraphrase, Carson said when our senators are calling the White House talking about us, then we will be deemed successful.  It’s on. 

Upward with the Good Fight,

Zach

UNC Students Act Out Their Demand For Green University Investment

Cross-posted from Coal Free UNC

10:50 AM on October 18^th the Sierra Student Coalition launched its first major event for its “Beyond Coal” Campaign: a rally that promoted their cause and raised awareness by seeking support and interaction from passing students. Participants approached the Wilson Library steps and moved replica bags of money from the “dirty coal investment” side to the “clean energy investment” side, represented by a giant replica coal plant and replica windmills, respectively.   The interactive nature of the event helped students understand the basic idea of the campaign’s main goal: the transition from investment in coal companies to investment in cleaner, more responsible energies.  Students also had the opportunity to participate in photo petitions that will be included with other petitions and handwritten letters and delivered to Chancellor Thorp at an upcoming meeting between the Chancellor and the Sierra Student Coalition.  Energetic students stayed and chanted and the crowd of clean energy advocates made clear their increased support for this cause.  The event was a brilliant effort on the part of the Beyond Coal campaign to reach out and show the student body what we’re all about.

Ever since the Chancellor’s promise to cease the use of coal energy at the university, the Sierra Student Coalition has been thrilled about their start to a coal free UNC.  Now Beyond Coal seeks to finish the job, and the rally was just the first step in doing so.  The second phase of the “Beyond Coal” campaign aims to officially remove UNC and all of its ties to dirty coal energy.  The University still has a $2 billion endowment that is partly invested in coal companies that contribute to the dirty and dangerous coal mining and burning. The Sierra Student Coalition hopes to negotiate with the heads of the school and management company and come to an accord that not only makes its investments transparent but also divests its holdings in coal energy companies. Though this will take a lot of work, the success of the rally highlights the support the group has garnered on campus: an essential asset to the campaign. As a well respected university, UNC’s student body has a huge potential to have a large impact and push the school to be more environmentally responsible simply by coming out and expressing their support.

“I’m really excited about all the energy and motivation of this organization,” freshman Jasmine Ruddy said. “I’ve seen a lot of organizations that express a lot of good ideas, but don’t go anywhere with them. The Sierra Student Coalition is one of the most motivated groups on campus; it’s all about action and getting things done.”

Recent articles by the Associated Press and Rolling Stone Magazine have presented the realities of the declining coal industry.  The national scope of these articles and the hard facts they presented reinforced the importance of moving away from risky financial investments in coal and added a new level of urgency to the UNC Beyond Coal Divestment campaign.

The campaign has taken this national recognition and used it as inspiration as it moves forward.

At a recent general body meeting, the group members in attendance participated in a hand written letter drive in order to emphasize the real, human impacts of the destructive coal industry. The students relayed their personal experiences with coal or reasons for getting involved with the Beyond Coal campaign in letters that will be delivered to the Chancellor at the upcoming meeting between the Chancellor and the Beyond Coal group.

Also upcoming are a number of other events that will continue to raise the profile of the divestment issue over the next few months.  In November, Beyond Coal is planning to sponsor a panel of experts on green investing. By raising awareness and building a broad alliance of supporters, the SSC hopes to show the school that if we are ready to stop burning coal on campus, we should make certain that we are not funding the coal industry either.

#Occupy I-5: A Revolutionary Road Trip

Claire Meints, Whitman student and climate organizer, chalks for an event on campus.

by Lauren Ressler, SSC Northwest Organizer

After stops at twelve universities over the course of eighteen days in a journey totaling over one thousand miles I have reached an important conclusion: students in the Pacific Northwest are taking campus climate organizing to new heights. Here is what a small fraction of these schools are doing:

Did you know the students at Western Washington University are trying to protect their community from a massive coal export facility being proposed just a few miles off campus? Their first kick off meeting garnered the participation of more than 100 students inspired by some seriously herculean outreach efforts lead by a small number of young people who don’t want to breath the harmful dust from the coal trains; who don’t want their bay to suffer from black tides as a result of the same contamination entering the waterways of Bellingham; who don’t want their city to be the lifeline between the US and Asia for one of the dirtiest industries in the world. Western student, Chelsea Thaw, commented, “The energy at the meeting was palpable. This issue has been a galvanizing force for student activists and an opportunity to learn from elders in the community who have grown up the town are fighting to keep it the way they remember it.”

Have you heard about the creative way Whitman students are showing solidarity with the global movement to stop the development of the Keystone XL pipeline? At a school of only 1500 students, they are organizing more than 50 volunteers to visually represent how all students, no matter their origin, are affected by fossil fuel consumption by creating a human map of the US. This is the launch event for a bold beyond fossil fuels campaign that is already getting significant attention.

Moving south, my visit to Portland left me thinking about food in an entirely new way. I am an urban gardener and frequenter of many a farmers market, so you might be surprised that I had an incredible time planning a Fried Food Fest with students at the University of Portland. Members of the Biodiesel club at UP are turning grease to gas that will power many campus appliances. Co-founder, Dan Browne, says, “It has been fascinating hearing everyone’s different interests in biodiesel from business to engineering this year. There are so many different facets to biodiesel that anyone can get involved; you get out what you put in.”

Eugene, OR was the southernmost point of my epic journey and it did not disappoint. The students of the University of Oregon will be hosting Power Shift West the weekend of November 4-6 and they are working tirelessly to make this the most inspiring event of the season. During my stay I witnessed late evening phone bank sessions, logistical meetings, and some serious on-campus recruitment from the members of the Climate Justice League and OSPIRG. I can’t wait to return in just a few short weeks to witness this empowering event. If you want to see the energy and amazing work of students of the Northwest in person join us for Power Shift West November 4-6 at the University of Oregon.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble at Mizzou

by Mizzou stuent Emma Heidorn and SSC Missouri Organizer Lindsey Berger

What do flashmobs, football and coal have in common? Well, nothing really… unless you were on Lowry Mall yesterday afternoon at Mizzou.

At exactly 12:21pm, nearly 50 students in bright yellow Beyond Coal t-shirts showed off their best touchdown victory dances in front of a giant hand-made football goal post in the heart of campus. At the sound of “Let’s Get Ready to Ruuuumble,” the students and several alumni danced their butts off in the name of clean air.

It's Mizzou's 100^th Homecoming week, so the idea was to raise Coal Free Mizzou's visibility and get people excited about the game by promoting clean air. “Better Air. Better Football. Better Mizzou.” was painted on the banner held in the background of the flashmob along with other posters demanding clean air and clean energy.

 “As a Mizzou athlete, I need clean air to breathe when I’m walking around campus everyday for me to be my best. I do a lot to prepare myself for competitions including training, eating right and getting enough sleep because I know everything that goes into my body affects my performance. If I’m breathing dirty air from a coal-fired plant on campus it affects my lungs, my breathing, my health and my performance.  What’s bad for me as an athlete is bad for everyone at Mizzou, which is why we need to move beyond coal to cleaner, healthier energy sources,” said Alex Rather, a rower for Mizzou and recent addition to the Coal Free Mizzou team. 

217 Students Literally Call to Move UGA Beyond Coal

Cross-posted from UGA SSC

On Wednesday Oct. 5th, members of the UGA Sierra Student Coalition’s (SSC) ‘Beyond Coal’ campaign gathered in the school’s social hotspot, the Tate Student Center, and asked students what may have seemed a daring question: “Will you call our university’s president?”

The goal of this event, deemed a “call-in day”, was to get at least 200 students to telephone the office of the president in order to pressure the administration to set a date to retire the on-campus coal plant and to form a task force to determine a clean alternative source of energy to power UGA facilities. The plant, which helps heat some the campus’ freshman dorms, dining hall kitchens and laboratories, has a contract that will expire within the next few years. This event has been one of many actions that SSC has taken to persuade administration that coal is an outdated source of energy and that a coal plant’s negative effects on its surrounding environment (including the healthy of the student body) are incontrovertible.

The call-in day was a huge success. Whether it was because of their charisma or their eye-catching neon-yellow shirts, Beyond Coal volunteers were able to record a whopping 217 phone calls in just four hours, though members of the SSC estimate that the number is closer to 250.

Dear Coal Plant...

Ever wonder what it would be like to live next to a loud, hulking, steaming coal plant? 

Unfortunately students at Virginia Tech know all too well.  This letter to the editor submitted to the campus newspaper is from Lindsey, a student living in Thomas Hall, who has to keep an air filter in her window just to keep coal dust out of her room.

Dear Coal Plant,

As a resident of Thomas Hall, you are my next door neighbor; however, 
you are not neighborly.

You constantly hum and disrupt my sleep. You make agitating clicking 
noises at the most inconvenient times. You invite workers over at 
5:30am everyday who don’t seem to understand that most people are 
still asleep. You fill the air with pollutants. You force me to block 
your fumes with a filter in my window. You invade my home with coal 
dust and grime, making me clean almost daily. Your coal dust even 
tries to invade my lungs. You don’t even lose a wink of sleep because 
I wake up in the middle of the night and still hear your hum.

Coal Plant, one of us has to leave and it won’t be me.

Sincerely,
Lindsay Carr

Giant Inaler Demonstrates Coal is Making Kids Sick at Indiana Univ

by Lauren Kastner, Coal-Free IU
On Monday students of Coal Free IU demonstrated the “heavy-handed” impact that Indiana University’s on-campus coal plant has on the Bloomington community’s public health. Coal Free IU drew the connection between emissions from the coal plant and the prevalence of asthma and other respiratory illnesses in Indiana by placing an 18-foot inflatable of a hand holding an asthma inhaler in Dunn Meadow, a common-space field in the center of IU’s campus.

The action was part of the nationwide month of 100% Clean: 100 Actions for Clean Energy.

Passersby were asked to sign a petition addressed to IU President McRobbie asking him to make a public commitment to transition IU off of coal to 100% clean and renewable energy.  Participants were also able to personalize a message on a wipe board and take a photo petition with the giant inhaler. The most powerful photo petition we captured yesterday was of an IU professor, Phaedra Pezzullo, and her 13-month-old son, Niko, who has asthma.

What was so striking about the photo was that Niko was holding his own little red inhaler in front of the inflated red inhaler. Here was a little boy who is forced to live with a respiratory illness directly related to the pollution emitted from the IU Central Heating Plant. Niko’s photo petition illustrates the responsibility Indiana University has to its students and community members when deciding its energy future. Niko makes our demand for clean air and clean energy real.

Our successful day of action didn’t stop there. Later in the evening students, most of who had never attended a Coal Free IU event before, gathered in the courtyard of one of IU’s residence halls to hear a presentation of “The True Cost of Coal,” a movable mural by the Beehive Collective.

The mural was used to tell the story of coal’s long history of destruction and displacement in Appalachia and how integral coal is to every material thing we use today. The Beehive Collective’s presentation was especially powerful because as we were gathered around the backlit mural, the IU Central Heating Plant less than a quarter of a mile away emitting all of the harmful substances that we were hearing about.

We hope that the timing of Monday’s day of action will also resonate with the IU Administration and the Board of Trustees because of the critical time that IU is in regarding our energy future. IU is about to release its Integrated Energy Master Plan, which contains the results of a massive amount of data collection from each building on campus and will provide a series of recommendations for steps the University should take for energy conservation and emissions reductions. Depending on what the Board of Trustees adopts, this document could possibly yield a transition off of coal. It is Coal Free IU’s goal to use grassroots actions like the one on Monday to continue pressuring IU to make the responsible shift to 100% clean energy.