On Thursday, the Collegiate Times published a letter to the editor entitled “Ad misrepresents coal issue on campus” (CT, Oct. 22). Ironically, this letter is woefully inaccurate and misrepresents both the Sierra Club’s Oct. 20 advertisement in the CT, as well as the issues surrounding our own coal plant here on campus.
Contrary to the author’s claim, the advertisement depicts a typical utility-scale, coal-fired power plant, with both cooling towers and smokestacks clearly in view. The author makes this argument in order to inaccurately imply that coal plants are somehow less than dirty.
Let’s be clear: Coal-fired power plants are massive polluters. All coal plants, including the Virginia Tech cogeneration plant, emit toxic pollution such as mercury, arsenic, sulfur dioxide, as well as global warming-causing gasses such as carbon dioxide. In fact, coal fired power plants are the single largest contributor to global warming in the United States, accounting for over 30 percent of all U.S. CO2 emissions. Global warming threatens to devastate our planet with severe drought, extreme weather and global sea level rise.
Though he seems to overlook the true costs of coal, the author is right about one thing. If polluted water is too dirty for you, coal should be too. That’s because coal pollutes our water supply here in Virginia and around the world. A recent U.S. Geological Survey study tested fish from 291 streams and rivers across the U.S. for mercury contamination, primarily from coal plants. Every fish tested, in every body of water, came up positive. Mercury causes brain damage and other developmental problems in unborn children and infants. Thanks, king coal.
Here in Appalachia, we should know better than anyone that coal is too dirty for campus. Coal mining in the form of mountaintop removal is devastating our Appalachian forests, blowing the tops off our mountains and filling our streams with rubble and waste from coal extraction and processing. To date, the coal industry has destroyed over 500 mountains and filled over 1,200 miles of streams. Here in Virginia, more than 25 percent of the total land area of Wise County has been strip mined for coal.
I don’t speak for the Sierra Club, but I work with fellow students at Beyond Coal at Virginia Tech, and we strongly agree that yes, coal is too dirty for our campus. We don’t want to see our taxes and tuition spent on a power source that pollutes our air and water and jeopardizes our collective future by causing global warming. That’s why we are working to help make Tech a leader on renewable energy and the environment by calling upon our administration and faculty to make getting off coal a top priority.
We know that we can’t just switch off our coal plant tomorrow. The technical challenge is substantial, but who better to lead the world to clean energy than the talented faculty and students of Tech?
Alex Darr
Sophomore
Coalitions coordinator, Beyond Coal at Virginia Tech