> News Elsewhere > Northern Chautauqua County

Email: "Polar Bear Plunge by student activists scheduled Saturday"
*To:		<--TO Email REQUIRED!
*From:		<--FROM Email REQUIRED!

The Polar Bear has become a worldwide symbol for the plight to save the environment from climate change due to their loss of habitat, and of rising sea levels. On Saturday, members of the SUNY Fredonia club Campus Climate Challenge will be hurling into the freezing waters of Lake Erie in sight of the Dunkirk coal fired power plant. The student activists involved in Campus Climate Challenge are ending their fall semester with a fun event to raise awareness in the community of the abuses levied on Appalachia by the coal industry. The group has sought permission from Dunkirk City Hall and each participant in the jump will have signed a waiver prior to the event and EMTs from the Dunkirk Fire Department will be at the scene. They are expecting around 20 students from SUNY Fredonia to be participating in the event along with some onlookers. Campus Climate Challenge has been actively lobbying lawmakers over the past year on a multitude of environmental issues. Ending the semester with this event they hope to wrap up their causes with one symbolic act in front of the Dunkirk Coal Fired Power Plant. Nationally coal fired power plants account for over 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions as well negatively effecting local air and water quality all over the country. The extraction process of coal has also levied extremely damage to the Appalachian region. The practice of mountain top removal mining has lain waste thousands of square miles of former mountain ranges in states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The issue has become a large social justice problem as lower-income residents are systematically forced out of their homes for undervalue and the land is literally blown apart. The mining practice and other coal-related industrial activities in the area have led the local economy of the area into further recession by driving down property values due to pollution and environmental destruction as well as cutting jobs as advancement in mining technology requires less people to mine more coal. Locally, Campus Climate Challenge has been fighting the proposed construction of a carbon capture and sequestration plant in Jamestown. The plant would capture the CO2 emissions and force them deep underground in order to avert global warming. The technology is extremely new and unpracticed and presents a large environmental risk for Jamestown and Western New York, earthquakes and damage to underground water sources are all possible negative outcomes of sequestration. SUNY Fredonia Campus Climate Challenge has written letters, made calls, and even lobbied directly to stop the construction of this plant to Congressman Brian Higgins and Senator Chuck Schumer. It has also lobbied for the passage of the climate bill in the House called the American Clean Energy and Security Act which passed last June. The Senate version of the bill entitled the Clean Energy Jobs and American Security Act has been recently introduced and the Campus Climate Challenge plans to lobby just as hard to pass that as well. The Polar Bear Plunge will be just another reminder to the coal industry that Campus Climate Challenge is fighting for a stop to the abuses and that they will have fun while they are doing it.

 

Subscribe to Post-Journal

Share: