Earth Day Eve

Tomorrow is Earth Day. Do you have anything special planned?

I keep thinking back to Garbage -- the Revolution Starts at Home. In the movie, a man whose life is basically ruined by the coal mining surrounding him says "think of this when you turn on your lights". He is surrounded by a wasteland. He hears explosions several times a day, which cause his land to crack. There are cracks hundreds of feet deep that just appear in the middle of his land. Families that live near the mine live with polluted air that makes them and their families sick. There is an elementary school directly in the line of a huge lake of toxic waste created by the mining. The man in this segment refuses to sell his land, but his fight against the corporations seems so futile... it's sickening.

How is your energy produced? Chances are that it's coal. More than half of the energy in the US is from coal-powered power plants, which produce HUGE amounts of greenhouse gases.

We need to reduce our reliance on coal and invest in clean energy such as solar and wind. But that is not enough! We must increase efficiency. Some may say that this will cause a loss of jobs. I disagree -- new jobs will be needed in research and development of efficient technology, and quality of life will be improved for all.

Dynegy, a Texas-based company, has plans for six new coal-powered plants. They have been targeted by the Sierra Club for their pollution. According to Sierra Club:

Taken together, Dynegy’s six planned coal-fired power plants would spew an estimated 44 million tons of global warming pollution into the air each year – making them one of the single largest sources of such pollution in the U.S.


One of the single largest sources.....

So what can we do? I suggest that, in honor of Earth Day, we do two things:
1. Join the protest. Go to the Sierra Club website and sign the petitions. Tell your friends.
2. Turn off the lights you're not using. Every time I turn on the lights now, I think of that man in the movie, surrounded by blown-up mountains. He is living a hell on earth so that I can leave the light on in an empty room? That's just wrong.