Universities across the country are being pushed towards cleaner energy. The Sierra Club and the Sierra Club Student Coalition have been working towards ridding college campuses of coal through a new ad campaign. Three video ads are online along with printed advertisements that focus on the dirtiness of coal on college campuses. One of the videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md0Fdy0dlq8&feature=player_embedded
tries to reach a young college audience by poking fun at the college lifestyle. All humor aside, there are organizers on the ground in several of the more than 60 campuses with on-site coal plants. This campaign is not just trying to lessen the use of coal but also transition schools to using 100% clean energy.
These advertisements are supposed to urge people and specifically students to sign petitions asking school presidents to shut down on- campus coal plants. Hopefully, if the Sierra Club campaign is successful students will mobilize and take action to move away from dirty coal. Currently more than 11,000 students are making efforts to transition their schools to more sustainable and clean energy. You may have seen students on campus today at the UMC working for this anti-coal campaign. The question of debate is whether this ad campaign will really help motivate students to take action. What do you think? Are these videos effective for college students to want to take action? If you are interested in signing the petition you can do so at http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageServer?pagename=10052009_TooDirtyForCollege_Petition.
17 comments:
I think that this is a great way to involve college students. The ad was perfect. It gets to the point and in a humorous manner. I think this is a great start to having cleaner energy for universities. And hopefully other companies will follow the universities standards. College kids are the perfect target because they are just getting into the real world.
I noticed that their ads did a good job at grabbing college-age eyes. The Sierra Club's mission to try and get all colleges green is a good idea because campuses are breading zones for impressionable people. Perhaps a change on a campus will spur out into the community too.
I think its a great way to educate people about their reliance on coal but where does the proposed better energy come from? You can use solar, buy wind energy from the power company, and reduce your consumption but our current energy infrastructure is still set up for coal. And are they proposing cleaner coal or no coal?
I agree with Devin P. that college students need to be the center of focus when it comes to promoting cleaner energy lifestyles. In a few years, students will be entering the real world and collectively campaigning to end coal dependability. It starts here. Students who are influenced to use renewable resources will encourage others to adapt their lifestyles as well.
I think removing coal fire power plants is necessary, in general. I've been doing a lot of research lately on dirty coal and mercury pollution. Not only can humans be caused by mercury in the atmosphere, but the mercury lands in our waterways to be absorbed by fish and the things fish eat - which then eventually, humans eat. More and more the question - "would you eat mercury?" is becoming equivallent to the question "would you eat fish?"
not only can humans be HARMED*
I have noticed the campaign for no coal recently a lot on campus. It is a good idea to move away from non-renewables that pollute a lot. Boulder is a leader for green campuses. I think more campuses should have better environmental standards. College is the time where people learn how to live on their own and having sustainable, environmentally friendly campuses is a way to increase awareness and involvement for the future.
I think this is a great idea and college campus's are the best place to start. If we get used other sources of energy and ways to modify a facility for it than this will easily follow college students as they graduate to go on to other places.
I hope that college campuses can transition to clean energy, BUT, with budget crises in education throughout the nation, AND with clean energy costing more than dirty, I'd say we'll have a tough time convincing any school to cut football funding in order to reduce their footprint. We're in desperate need of a carbon tax.
I think another part of creating a 'green campus' is how efficient it is. I tend to think about the landscaping of our campus and how much water, fertilizer, and energy inputs it takes to maintain a beautiful landscape. Even in CU or other campuses transition to green energy, I feel there are a lot of wasteful outputs of energy.
I'm researching environmental education, and a survey form the Wildlife Federation found that while sustianability is become more popular on campus, environmenal education to help students understand their connection with the earth and earth systems is on the decline since 2001
I like the coal ads and I think that they could be effective, especially at traditionally active campuses like Boulder. This is digressing a bit from the topic, but I have noticed a lot of compostable corn products on campus. For example, Dal Ward uses corn based cups for Gatorade in the weight room and the business school uses corn based plates and silverware. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't corn one of the worst resources because of the synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and natural gas that's used to produce it? That just kind of bothered me because I thought CU was a pretty "green" campus.
In parallel with this clean coal problem, there are several things that CU Boulder is doing to improve its environmental quality. I heard on the news that it is a possibility that they will have a timer on dorm showers that only allow 5 minute showers. I feel that this is a bit extreme to reduce water usage. I think encouraging students is much more important to improve the campus, rather than forcing them.
I agree with the issue Rex brought up. Clean campuses are an excellent idea, but with public colleges raising tuition yearly and states cutting education from their budget all of these changes had better be cost-effective, or no-cost. A lot of stuff CU does (encourage energy saving/recycling) is low cost and should continue. But something big like switching completely to wind energy may not be affordable for most colleges in the foreseeable future.
I am all for cleaner energy on campuses but I didnt care for the ads. I would have liked to have seen something more educational. I like that they were going for a humorous type of ad, but it was a little too much for me and took away from it. I agree with Victoria as well. It may not be cost effective for a lot of universities to make huge changes, but the smaller ones are a great step in the right direction.
I don't think shutting down on campus coal power-plants will solve anything other then making the school pay more for electricity from an outside coal power-plant. If the electricity can be generated using green alternatives, great, but if not its a waste of money. additionally, the weakened economy will hinder the use of new energy sources because they are often more expensive.
I think this is a great idea, and I really hope it works. I hate the ad campaigns that try to tell you there's such a thing as clean coal.
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