Yet more discussion about the future of coal at colleges in Missouri — the latest round is at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where the power plant burns some 130,000 tons of coal a year. Coal Free Mizzou, a student group formed and influenced by the Sierra Club, is pressing the university to look for alternatives, reports The Maneater, the student newspaper.
The anticoal groups are opposed by others, like the College Republicans, who assert that environmentalists haven’t presented viable, affordable alternatives to coal. Bruce Nilles, who directs the Sierra Club’s anticoal campaign, responds that there are several good alternatives, and that the cost of running the coal plant can only go up.
In an editorial, The Maneater says the anticoal forces need to be “more realistic” about alternative power sources. “Sure, coal use is bad,” it says. “Yeah, it’s detrimental to the environment. Everyone who has hasn’t been living under a rock for the past five years knows this. What we don’t know is how to fix our dependency on it.” But the editorial also faults the College Republicans for making the debate a political issue.
“Wanting to be sustainable doesn’t need to be partisan,” the paper says.
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2 Responses to Students at U. of Missouri at Columbia Urge Administrators to Drop Coal
drhypersonic - February 26, 2010 at 4:50 pm
And replace coal with what? Hot air? There is certainly plenty of that around most college and university campuses…
11211250 - March 1, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Mizzou tried to address this issue back in the 80s and sought out alternatives, including generating electricity from trash. However, colleges with older infrastructures are terribly dependent on fossil fuels like coal and oil because most of their campuses operate on steam. To switch an entire campus’ infrastructure to solar or nuclear power (there’s a nuclear power plant relatively close I believe) would be terribly expensive, and impossible to justify or afford in such a weak economy. While there is no such thing as clean coal, improving the current processes to make them cleaner would be something that we should shoot for in the short term.