UNCA Students say NO to Coal!!!!

“UNCA celebrated Fossil Fools Day as the first day of our week of sustainable and environmentally focused events, Greenfest 2009. We borrowed a gigantic inflatable coal plant from Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, took over the quad for the day, and irritated the heck out of the poor secretaries of Gov. Bev Perdue and Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers. They received calls from close to 30 people. Within four calls, Pedue’s secretary asked us to drop the script and just say that we are against the Cliffside Coal Plant. One caller asked if he could speak with Jimmy (Jim Rogers), and, after being denied, asked if Jimmy would call him back after lunch. We didn’t get a callback but the call-in was fun. We won’t know what kind of response we got for a while but we introduced a lot of students on our campus to the idea of communicating with local politicians and business people, and we got onto the local TV news station. Hopefully we will see more people at our next ASHE meeting because of it.” By: Rhys Baker from UNC Asheville’s environmental group, Active Students for a Healthy Environment (A.S.H.E.).

The lobbying of students against the Cliffside expansion comes at a time when member groups of the stop cliffside coalition have completed reports that not only has Duke tried to buy our state government ( see Duke political contributions report) but has successfully gotten Gov. Perdue’s office on their side. All this in the face of another report recently released that proves with basic efficiency measures not only can we prevent Cliffside from being expanded, but we can shut down 6-8 existing coal plants in NC!!!!!!

Students at UNCA are being joined in these efforts by persons from across NC in their anti-coal & anti-cliffside efforts by not buying the lies of a corrupted corporate/political relationship and by hosting events on more than 6 campuses in NC to demand real solutions! Find out more about recent reports listed at ncwarn.org including the NC SAVE$ Energy bill recently introduced<- a real solution to Dukes “Save a Watt” fiasco of an efficiency plan.

Clean Energy NOW!!!