Today we, along with several other people, sent in hard hitting questions to President Simon via twitter to get real answers about a real timeline to shut down the T.B. Simon Coal Fired Power Plant. Thank you to all that used the hashtag #msuenergy today.
#quitcoalmsu let’s the board members know how they feel about dirty energy at MSU. FOLLOW OUR TWITTER FOR LIVE UPDATES FROM THE VOTE AND THE RALLY https://twitter.com/#!/MSUGreenpeace
Phone Banking for the Rally tomorrow. 11-12 at the hannah admin building. Love from Bowling Green State University.
This friday MSU’s Board of Trustees are voting on our energy future. The proposed plan is unambitious and does not even commit to closing the largest on-campus coal plant in the country. Everyday 47,000 students are breathing in toxic pollution from this plant. Everyday, people from the region of Kentucky where our coal is mined are dealing with environmental devastation of the beautiful, once lush mountains that they call home. Everyday, coal ash from the dump where we dispose of it infiltrates ground water supplies with mercury and other heavy metals. Everyday, climate change becomes more threatening to life as we know it on this planet. And what are we doing about it here at MSU? Well our administration set up a committee that took a year to produce nothing but a lazy PR statement that only gets us to 40% renewable energy by 2030. Like I said, it sets no date for closing the largest on campus coal plant in the nation. We’re Spartan Green! Hooray!
Excuse the sarcasm, but in the spirit of last Monday’s banner drop I’m still wishing that this university was truly spartan green. The administration seems to be stuck believing that 40% renewable energy by the year 2030 is enough, despite the warnings from climate scientists that the year when damage from climate change is fast approaching. Here at MSU, our leaders are sitting on there hands when they could be leading a global revolution in clean energy that would make us all healthier not only by reducing the toxins we ingest, but by sustaining the land we live and depend upon.
This is all very depressing news, but fortunately there is a small group of students that see through this façade and we’ve been fighting for over two years to tell the university that it doesn’t have the right to risk lives for energy consumption. MSU Greenpeace is demanding that the university put public health and environmental safety at the forefront of their concerns. We’re demanding that the university live up to it’s self proclaimed reputation of being “Spartan Green” by actually being environmentally conscious and responsible even if it takes work.
This past week, several student groups on campuses across the nation have also risen up against this massive coal plant that pollutes a several hundred mile radius around it. Non-MSU students within that radius and beyond have been driving phone calls and e-mails to the Board of Trustees to tell them that what happens at MSU does not stay at MSU. The coal that we burn has consequences across the country. Likewise, if MSU made a commitment to a timeline for 100% renewable energy, the whole nation would see and follow in our footsteps. It would set off a chain reaction that could make a substantial dent in the nation’s carbon footprint.
So please, if you love me, yourself, this planet, or at all, take a moment and make a phone call that could make history. Have an open, honest dialogue with a board member about why clean energy is important to you, and why MSU should do more as leaders to ensure that a transition to 100% renewable energy happens before it’s too late.
Michigan State University students live in the shadow of the largest on-campus coal plant in the country. Students pay tuition for an education, not to be made sick by dirty energy that pollutes the air and contributes to climate change.
Michigan State University claims to “Be Spartan Green,” a reputation that is soiled by it’s burning over 200,000 tons of coal a year and putting over 47,000 students at risk from coal pollution every day?
On April 13th, the MSU Board of Trustees will vote on a new plan for how the campus will be powered for decades to come. Unfortunately, the plan is flawed, unambitious, and incomplete. It fails to set a retirement date for MSU’s monstrous coal plant, and worse, it fails to map out a transition to 100% clean energy.
Students are standing up and refusing to let Michigan State continue with this greenwashing.
Last Monday, April 2nd, four MSU Greenpeace student activists unfurled a large 20ft x 20ft banner on a parking garage at Michigan State University demanding 100% clean energy like wind, solar, and geothermal. Since then, students from around the country have stepped up to support MSU, making over 1,000 calls to the MSU Board of Trustees demanding they vote NO on MSU’s flawed energy plan and instead to demand 100% clean energy now.
I am inspired by the leadership of students in the environmental (and all) movements. The least I could do to support the MSU students was to call the MSU Board of Trustees myself, urging them to vote “NO” on the proposed energy plan, commit to retire the T.B. Simon coal plant, and create a timeline to transition to 100% clean energy in the next five years (and no natural gas).
MSU has a unique opportunity to lead by transitioning to 100% clean, renewable energy. By seizing this opportunity, MSU can lead the country in clean energy solutions, help rebuild Michigan’s economy, and prepare students for 21st century job opportunities.
Join me – and the students of MSU – and pick up your phones and call the Trustees, and I encourage everyone that can to head to MSU on April 13th. This is not just for MSU, but for every campus fighting dirty energy, and for a true energy revolution in this country.
Thanks for supporting MSU Greenpeace and fighting for 100% clean energy on our nation’s campuses.
Tonight we had a call with students from Bowling Green State University, Grand Valley State University, Northern Texas, University of Mary Washington and several others. Students across the country are pumped up and ready for ANOTHER week of putting pressure on the MSU Board of Trustees.
If you are in solidarity with Michigan State, please take the time to call the board and remember to report back on how it all went.
Make a call today, and Reblog to tell us who you called and how it went!
MSU Board of Trustees Office: (517) 353-4647
Hi, my name is ________ and I’m calling from (your campus or community) to urge Michigan State University’s Board of Trustees [or specific Board member] to vote NO on the proposed energy transition plan. The current plan fails to set a retirement date for the T.B. Simon coal plant and doesn’t have a timeline to transition to 100% clean energy. With the health and well being of 47,000 students at risk every year, MSU needs to show leadership by fixing the flawed plan. Please vote NO on the proposed energy plan, and fix the flawed plan by committing to close the T.B. Simon coal plant as quickly as possible and replace it with 100% clean energy. Thank you!
Additional numbers….
Board Vice Chairperson Melanie Foster: (517) 204-8052
Board Member Dianne Byrum: (517) 333-1606
Board Member Joel Ferguson: (517) 371-2515
Board Member Mitch Lyons: (616) 540-5564
Board Member George Perles: (517) 525-3794
Bowling Green State University has a call-in day of action to support the MSU Quit Coal campaign.
Virginia Tech Stands in Solidarity with MSU
I am in solidarity with students at Michigan State University because I know first hand how harmful on-campus coal plants can be.
When I found out I’d been accepted to Virginia Tech, I was ecstatic. Of all the colleges I had applied to, it was my first choice. When I finally got there, nothing fell short of expectation; interesting people, awesome classes to choose from, fun parties, and an incredibly knowledgeable faculty for whom I had a great deal of respect.
In my freshman year, I met Michelle. She lived on the other side of campus in Thomas Hall, the dorm room next to the coal plant. I never asked her about it, and years of friendship went by without her ever mentioning what it was like living next to a coal plant.
In my senior year, I got involved in the newly founded VT Greenpeace chapter. Up until this point, I never really thought twice about how awful it was to have a coal plant on campus. Our main campaign was against the coal plant, and at some point during all of the inundation of protesting knowledge something in me clicked.
That year I was living downwind of the coal plant, and literally I could see the smokestack from my window, just hundreds of meters away. That very same year I began to get sick. What started out as strep throat between my roommates and I turned into a red speckled rash all over my body lasting for months. I saw numerous doctors and none of them could give me a straight answer but after countless diagnoses it turned out I had a very aggressive case of adult scarlet fever.
It was then I had a long overdue conversation with Michelle asking her about what it was like for her freshman year living in Thomas Hall, and the reaction I got from her definitely shook me up a little. As someone who is hardly ever serious, always making jokes and having a blast, Michelle expressed a deep disdain for that year she lived next to the coal plant. Explaining to me how there was constantly black soot covering her desk and windows and about how everyone she knew in that dorm was always getting sick. There was even someone on her hall who left early her first semester of college because she came down with a ‘random’ case of meningitis.
By no means am I claiming that every single ailment suffered by the Virginia Tech student body is directly caused by the coal plant, but I am certainly saying that there is a relationship. All of these things, including countless stories I was told regarding eczema, ringworm, psoriasis, asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, and emphysema, have led me to believe that this is an incredibly sick and dirty industry that we were unknowingly subject to. There is absolutely no reason I could fathom that would be able to justify this sick and dirty industry.
Students at MSU want the same thing I want- to get an education without risking our health and well being, and without contributing to climate change. On April 13th, I want the MSU Board of Trustees to do what’s right for their students and what’s right for the planet- vote NO on the proposed energy plan.
-Anna
