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The Rochester Regional Group
Addressing
climate change is Sierra Club’s number one priority.Addressing climate change is Sierra Club’s number one priority.
Find the 2% Solution: "The world's scientists agree: Global warming is real, here, and happening faster than anyone predicted. But scientists also say we can curb global warming and its consequences -- if we take bold, comprehensive action now that adds up to at least an 80 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2050, or 2 percent a year. "

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By Bette Heger
Chair, Global Warming/Energy Committee
1.
Purdue University has cancelled plans for a new campus coal
plant, making the plant the 150th to be defeated or abandoned since
the beginning of the coal rush in 2001. Thanks in part to the Sierra
Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, in the last two years no new coal
plants have started construction and the industry has announced the
phase out of over 50 plants.
Purdue was the only university in the country planning to
build a new coal plant. At the same time, nearly a dozen other
schools have committed to ending their dependence on campus coal
plants by switching to cleaner sources of energy.
“The way people, businesses,
governments and schools think about energy has shifted. The dirty
coal status-quo is no longer acceptable,” said Mary Anne Hitt,
director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. “It is clear
that clean energy technologies—ones that don’t spew life-threatening
pollution into our air and water—are the way to a prosperous, secure
energy future.”
“The pollution from these coal plants
is making us sick, worsening asthma, stifling childhood development
and cutting short thousands of lives. Phasing out coal is essential
to cleaning up our air and water, and protecting our families,” said
Verena Owen volunteer chair of the Beyond Coal Campaign. “Making the
switch to clean energy, like wind and solar, is good for our health,
but it will also create jobs, which makes it good for our economy
too.”
2. The EPA announced its
decision mid-January to protect mountain communities and the health
of Appalachian citizens by vetoing the largest single mountaintop
removal coal mining permit in Appalachian history, the Spruce No. 1
Mine in West Virginia.
It couldn’t have happened without the grassroots efforts of many
organizational members throughout the region and the country as the
EPA reviewed 50,000 comments from concerned citizens.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is showing a strong commitment
to the law, the science and the principles of environmental justice.
She deserves enormous credit for changing policies to protect
Appalachia’s health, land and water.
(But stay tuned to the current efforts in Congress to
restrict the efforts of the EPA to enforce the Clean Water and Clean
Air Acts.)
1.
Mountaintop Removal (MTR) coal mining is a crime against
America’s environment and people. Every day MTR coal corporations
literally blow the tops off of Appalachia’s mountains: clear-cutting
forests, wiping out natural habitats and poisoning rivers and
drinking water. Not only are these mountains lost forever, but also
the heritage and the health of families across the region are
sacrificed.
Last week, mountaintop removal mining company Alpha Natural
Resources announced that it was purchasing Massey Energy, formerly
the largest and most nefarious mountaintop removal company in
Appalachia. Together, Massey and Alpha are responsible for more than
26 percent of all mountaintop mining in Central Appalachia.
Citibank is responsible for funding this toxic merger despite
their prior commitment to a robust MTR Environmental Due Diligence
Process. For more
information about MTR, visit
www.ilovemountains.org or contact Bette Heger, the Global
Warming/Energy Committee chair, at
2. Read the Democrat and
Chronicle’s February 6th article on Rochester’s Air Quality:
The majority of Kodak’s toxic atmospheric releases to the air
are related to the coal burning Building 321 in Greece.
“The plant is the state’s second-leading emitter of toxic
acid compounds that come from burning coal, and is New York’s single
latest source of sulfur dioxide.”
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Global Warming/Energy Committee Needs You