Beyond Coal? Part two
Aaron Wentz
Issue date: 11/17/09 Section: Opinion
Last week the Sierra Club's "Beyond Coal" initiative took on another phase of activity. I attended both the screening of the anti-coal film, "Coal Country" and the 10-minute (you heard it right) protest outside of Twamley. The proclaimed goal of this initiative is to get the coal plant on campus (the source of UND's heat) shut down and to replace it with a geothermal system, thus reducing the coal pollution and making UND cleaner, and of course, "greener" (whatever that means).
The last time I wrote a column about this initiative I outlined some of the problematic features of the Sierra Club's initiative from the perspective of a bystander. This time around I want to highlight some problematic features of the Sierra Club's presence at UND as well as where this approach stands related to actual sustainability and how UND's campus is being used by outsiders as a point of leverage to push "clean energy" initiatives across the country.
My first problem is perhaps the obvious one. This initiative did not start with UND students, at least not the "Beyond Coal" initiative. The Sierra Club sent a paid organizer to UND to try and drum up support for this initiative. Why is this problematic? Because whoever the Sierra Club sends is not accountable to UND, the Greater Grand Forks community, or the state at large- they are accountable only to the Sierra Club. Although I certainly recognize that in the coming decades potential ecological collapse may become a reality and that, at the very least, where we get our energy from will be required (by the simple physics of tapped reserves) to find another source, I'm not convinced that these sorts of initiatives are any sort of solution. Now, I'm not going to argue about feasibility, or timeline projections, since I don't have the background to make those sorts of arguments. To be honest, it doesn't interest me. What interests me, at least at this stage of the game is why this is becoming an issue now, and where was the Sierra Club 20 years ago?
The last time I wrote a column about this initiative I outlined some of the problematic features of the Sierra Club's initiative from the perspective of a bystander. This time around I want to highlight some problematic features of the Sierra Club's presence at UND as well as where this approach stands related to actual sustainability and how UND's campus is being used by outsiders as a point of leverage to push "clean energy" initiatives across the country.
My first problem is perhaps the obvious one. This initiative did not start with UND students, at least not the "Beyond Coal" initiative. The Sierra Club sent a paid organizer to UND to try and drum up support for this initiative. Why is this problematic? Because whoever the Sierra Club sends is not accountable to UND, the Greater Grand Forks community, or the state at large- they are accountable only to the Sierra Club. Although I certainly recognize that in the coming decades potential ecological collapse may become a reality and that, at the very least, where we get our energy from will be required (by the simple physics of tapped reserves) to find another source, I'm not convinced that these sorts of initiatives are any sort of solution. Now, I'm not going to argue about feasibility, or timeline projections, since I don't have the background to make those sorts of arguments. To be honest, it doesn't interest me. What interests me, at least at this stage of the game is why this is becoming an issue now, and where was the Sierra Club 20 years ago?
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