Activists to protest coal practices in Washington D.C.

Stolen from Kentucky Kernel


It’s a movement about coal, said NASA climatologist James Hansen.

“Coal is 80 percent of the solution to global warming,” Hansen said. “We cut coal, we’re doing a lot for the climate.”

On Monday, around 4,000 people will join Hansen and other leaders of environmental groups around the country in Washington, D.C., as part of the Capitol Climate Action mass civil disobedience to protest the burning of coal as an energy source.

The group will demonstrate outside of the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant to call for emergency action to stop climate change and stop the burning of coal, said Matt Leonard, a Greenpeace member and one of the coordinators of the movement.

“For decades now, the world’s best scientists have warned about the effects of climate change and legislators have ignored it,” Leonard said. “We are getting together to show the world global warming is real, is happening before our eyes, and is man-caused.”

The Capitol Climate Action group plans to take every entrance of the power plant to shut down business as usual for the day, Leonard said.

“The power plant is a powerful icon because it shows the power coal has over our policies and, literally, over our Congress.”

But transitioning power plants like the one that powers the Capitol building in Washington requires new technology, said U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky. If technology can be employed to burn coal cleanly and efficiently, there is no reason it shouldn’t continue to use coal as a fuel source, Whitfield said in an e-mail to the Kernel, especially because the mineral is a key part of industry in Kentucky.

The West Virginia Federation of Young Republicans also supports pro-coal legislation in states like West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky, the group’s leader said.

“Coal is West Virginia’s future and the future of other states like Kentucky,” said Ashley Stinnett, chairman of the West Virginia Young Republicans. “Our politicians must never work to damage that relationship.”

At the movement on Monday, Hansen said he hopes to show people that the real threat of damage lies in the effects to the global climate. Mountain glaciers providing fresh water to rivers and streams are rapidly receding, Hansen said. Coral reefs are under stress and the subtropics are expanding into the southern U.S. and parts of South America and Africa, he said.

“We’re beginning to have truly noticeable effects of climate change,” Hansen said. “The hard part is for people to realize we have a planet emergency and the term ‘global warming’ is much more than just a political tool.”

Because the effects of climate change are increasing — the global temperatures are increasing almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit each decade — this is the right time to lobby in Washington for the “new administration to deal with this with some priority,” Hansen said.

Organizers of the event want to keep the protests civil and have asked all participants to dress in their Sunday best and undergo nonviolence training before the event on Monday. Their hopes are to model this act of civil disobedience after historical instances like the civil rights movement, Leonard said.

The group will have lawyers on hand in the case arrests are made. A spokesman for the Washington, D.C., police said the department is preparing just as it does for any other protest of this size.

“Arrest isn’t the goal itself, it’s the medium we’re using to show our strong message for climate change,” Leonard said. “But holding down the plant to show our seriousness, arrest is something we’re risking.”
12,000-strong youth movement to converge on Washington

More than 12,000 young people, mostly high school and college students, from around the country are traveling to Washington D.C., Friday to take part in the four-day-long Power Shift 2009. The annual event serves to lobby legislators for climate-friendly bills and immediate environmental action, said Teri Blanton, a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth who will serve on a series of panels during the youth conference.

“It is their future we’re destroying,” Blanton said. “The youth movement is about creating a form of electricity without coal.”

Students from UK, Berea College, Eastern Kentucky University, Murray State University, Transylvania University, the University of Louisville and Western Kentucky University are joining up with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and the Student Environmental Action Coalition to travel to Washington for Power Shift 2009.

“We want to be there to represent Kentucky,” said Emily Gillespie, a senior at Western and president of the Kentucky chapter of the Student Environmental Action Coalition. “A lot of people see Kentucky as underdeveloped because it seems to be owned by coal. We want to show people that we want a new form of energy.”

Gillespie said the student group hopes to help sustain the national student movement toward finding an alternative energy source to coal.

Joe Gallenstein is one of several UK students who plan to attend the Power Shift conference.

“Some people say it’s too late, that global warming is already happening. They’ve given up,” Gallenstein said. “But they don’t know what people are really capable of.”