
{"id":9977,"date":"2010-04-15T17:21:21","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T01:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=9977"},"modified":"2010-04-15T17:47:34","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T01:47:34","slug":"cue-the-lux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/04\/15\/cue-the-lux\/","title":{"rendered":"Cue the lux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday on campus, the chancellor, the university\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s energy task force, anti-coal activists and those who have worked in defense of the Appalachians began discussing in earnest the end of the use of coal at the co-generation plant on Cameron Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>It is an idea whose time has come sooner than planned, but it is undeniably the right path.<br \/>\nAs efficient and well-run as the Cameron Avenue plant is, continuing to use coal for fuel at a university whose research is steadily building the case against it runs counter to the mission of UNC.<\/p>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not just talking about the climate-change research being done by Jose A. Rial and others at the Department of Geological Sciences, but the economic, legal and social science research by scholars going back to Howard Odum.<\/p>\n<p>And just Tuesday night at the U.S. Senate forum on campus, any political scientist would have caught that the majority of candidates said we have to move away from coal and other fossil fuels and look to ways we can use this state\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vast resources to leverage a smarter, more-efficient distribution of energy.<\/p>\n<p>Two top contenders, Cal Cunningham and Elaine Marshall, put it succinctly, both saying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there is no such thing as clean coal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>We are still fighting regulatory battles to reduce what Tennessee and the Ohio Valley send us in air pollution, and coal ash contaminants in unlined landfills across the state are a growing concern.<\/p>\n<p>The mining of coal is a dangerous and destructive business. Mountain-top removal of coal is destroying the Appalachians at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n<p>We head into Earth Week \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or whatever you care to call it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with what we know to be right confronting what we know to be.<\/p>\n<p>You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t walk the North campus without noticing the tradition of harmony with nature \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153noble grove\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the title of the current exhibit at Wilson Library. There is something in the gut that says ending coal use is the Carolina thing to do.<\/p>\n<p>The chancellor and many of those who will make this decision are scientists. As such, they are well aware that the plural of anecdote does not equal data. But the data is there, scattered throughout the university, from the school of law to the department of epidemiology. What it tells us, and what those advocating for the end of coal tell us, is that it is time to act.<\/p>\n<p>Converting the plant won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be easy, but it should be quick.<\/p>\n<p>Finding ways to make that kind of leap, to confront the challenges and to lead the way, is what universities are all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We head into Earth Week \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or whatever you care to call it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with what we know to be right confronting what we know to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9977"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10003,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9977\/revisions\/10003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}