Wesleyan is known as a center for environmentalism and activism, and a new student coalition led by Wesleyan students and partnering with groups across the region is aiming to rekindle that legacy and affect meaningful change in Connecticut.

Students for a Just and Stable Future (SJSF) is calling on Connecticut policy makers to build on the state’s civic and environmental leadership to move to 100 percent clean electricity in ten years.

Such a bold move is necessary to stake a clear stand against dirty electricity. In doing so, Connecticut will declare itself 100 percent opposed to the harmful health effects that coal mining inflicts on Appalachian communities.  We will declare ourselves 100 percent opposed to contributing to the melting of Himalayan glaciers, which currently threatens communities in Bangladesh that are already vulnerable to flooding.  People around the world already understand that dirty fossil fuels are not our future.

Moving away from dirty electricity is an aggressive goal, but it is a feasible one for the state.  Connecticut is attached to a regional electricity grid, which would allow it to tap into substantial potential renewable energy sites in New England, such as wind power from northern Maine or off of the Cape Cod shore.  Connecticut already has taken some of the most assertive steps of any state against polluting electricity and climate change.  In 2001, Connecticut committed to a long-term goal of reducing emissions to eliminate “any dangerous threat” to the climate.  That commitment was reaffirmed in the Climate Change Act of 2004 and the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008.  The state has already made commitments to cut its reliance on dirty electricity down to 50 percent by 2020.  But Connecticut needs to act more quickly in order to truly fulfill its commitment to eliminating harmful climate effects, and to begin reaping the benefits of a clean energy economy.

To kick off this campaign, students on this campus and across the region will be sleeping outside for the week leading up to Earth Day on April 22 in an effort to take their own stand against dirty energy.  But this campaign is about more than individual action.  We want to demonstrate to state policymakers that clean energy is crucial issue.   Clean energy doesn’t require moving outdoors.  It just requires leadership that will ensure that everyone in Connecticut has access to 100 percent clean electricity.

We want to send a strong signal to policymakers that clean energy is crucial to the state of Connecticut and its residents.  Getting to 100 percent clean electricity doesn’t mean that everyone must move outside as part of the conservation effort.  But with this symbolic gesture, we will show policymakers and our peers that the public is concerned about dirty energy. This is not the end of our push, but the beginning.

It is crucial that this event serves as a strong beginning, and we’re confident it will be, with your help.  Come join us, for an hour, for a night, for the whole week.  Stand with your fellow Wesleyan students and with students throughout the state, as we call on Connecticut leaders to recognize resonant concern among youth in Connecticut, and ask them to honor their commitments and move our state to a clean electricity future.

  • David Lott, ’65

    “Students for a Just and Stable Future (SJSF) is calling on Connecticut policy makers to build on the state’s civic and environmental leadership to move to 100 percent clean electricity in ten years.”

    Inspiring. Nice goal. All for it.

    Please follow up with an article explaining how the necessary amount of electricity will be generated by “clean” resources in 2020.

  • PenobScot

    As someone living in Maine whose life may be turned upside down from the jet engine-like noise and vibration of a nearby wind turbine, I am glad you are not trying to effect meaningful change, but rather only trying to affect it, as in put on an appearance. I was getting worried.

    Do you folks have any idea how you would get to 100% “clean” clean energy? Do you have any idea of all the fossil fuel backup required for wind and the fact that the stop-start nature of the wind creates wholly inefficient and atypically dirty combustion at said backup plants which must precisely match electricity supply to demand?

    Did you know that the 360 miles of ridgelines and mountaintops in Maine marked for these hideous 400′ tall towers will effect cooling equivalent to what only 1% of the Maine woods do naturally via carbon capture and evapotransport?

    See the short Powerpoint presentation at:
    http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/maines-wind-goals-co2-and-the

    Did you know that reforestation with hardwoods and weatherization will reduce carbon infinitely more than the feelgood icon du jour, the wind turbine?

    Did you know that the entire wind industry is built on government subsidies that are 90 times as high (per megawatt) as the subsidies for natural gas?

    Did you know that wind power’s preaching about sustainability is based on perpetual receipt of unsustainable subsidies and that money for this sort of foolishness isn’t going to exist soon?

  • Not in Maine! Not Anywhere!

    These students sound completely retarded. They lack any knowledge concerning the scam that wind turbines are to the taxpayer, as well as the damage done to environment by them. These projects are all under appeal in Maine, and will fail. They are merely tax subsidy piggies.It is an atempt by power elitists to grab government money while it is still available.
    W/O 70 percent subsidization , Wind is dead.!
    Obama knows this finally, ask him about off shore drilling and small nuke technology.
    As far as wind, you are all scientific morons.
    Do the math…A wind mill is ancient technology.The steam engine replaced clipper ships over a hundred years ago for better technology that was reliable, 24/7. But, I guess Wesleyen students are about to learn that their ipods cannot be recharged on time w/o a coal/nuke /gas plant ready online to takeover when the wind dies.
    Go back and do smoe high school math on turbine technology, it is doomed.

  • Queenie Mainer

    Do you boys know the environmental devastation that takes place in Maine when the wind turbines are erected? Do you care? Do you care about the thousands of acres that must be clear cut? Do you care about the blasting off the tops of our beautiful mountains? Do you care about the vast amounts of herbicides used to retard new growth of trees and brush near the turbines and access roads? Do you care about the thousands of migrating birds and bats the rotating blades kill?
    Or will you demand “clean” electricity for CT and say to hell with Maine? Is that your game, chummies? Or will you do your homework and realize you have been hornswaggled by the hype of corporate wind.
    I challenge you to come up with the truth.

  • primalEofVH

    100% “clean” energy in ten tears? apparently the both of you have no idea what you’re writing about. shame on the editors of your school paper for not pointing that out to you.
    the entirety of our societies infrastructure is founded on the belief of inexhaustable cheap energy. we have systems that are designed to harness the remarkable power that is stored in fossil fuels. small amount of substance for a comparatively large amount of energy. we also have a population expectant on this premis for their survival. our current ability to harness renewables pales by comparison. this is unfortunate but very true.
    in the future please do your research before printing such nonesense. if your group SJSF does indeed exist i strongly reccomend the members partake in some serious reflection.
    the goal of working now to create a sustainable future is essential! let us base our conversations and planning on sound and rational thought.

  • Mike DiCenso

    That sounds good but tidal will outpower wind technology and is not solar that which powers all else? What can each of us do to reduce our energy consumption? How much CO2 reduction would there be if coal fired plants were repowered with natural gas(97% made in the USA)? The planet can process some CO2 , would this be enough to regain a balance? What is the effect of jet aircraft flying at high altitudes? I have seen no studies on their contribution to CO2, yet 6000 are in the air at any given time. Windsprawl in Maine will not help and it cannot exist without gov. subsidies. I think the energy traders are concocting their next scheme and we are unfortunately a part of it. Remember Enron and the “Smartest Guys in the Room”?

  • David Lott, ’65

    That’s right, Mike. It’s all a plot by the energy traders. The info for all of your questions is out there. Do some research. (Unlike the students who wrote this article.)

  • Karen Pease

    I applaud the Wesleyan students for being proactive about their future and the future of this planet. I would caution them though, to take a good hard look at the energysources they support. As a native Mainer who lives in a state that already produces more energy that we use, I am not so gung-ho to sacrifice our iconic mountaintops to industrial wind in order to supply power to a more gluttonous market.
    I encourage students to do their homework. There are a number of resources available which will prove that industrial wind turbine developments are actually more detrimental to the environment than they are helpful. Please visit http://www.highlandmts.org for links to many resources showing the actual impact these turbines are having. I agree that we need to move toward more sustainable energy sources, but placing grid scale energy plants in northern Maine is a disaster in the making, on many levels. I invite students to travel to my neck of the woods to learn more about this issue and to experience Maine’s mountain treasures for themselves. Respectfully, Karen Bessey Pease, Lexington Twp, ME roomtomove@tds.net

  • Dean Blake

    WTF RU smoking down there at Wesleyan?! It must be a powerful hallucinogen for you to dream up such a scheme. or Pipe Dream. Ok, let’s say you want the state of CT to go all clean power. In 2005, CT’s consumption was 33,095 million kwh (http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/electricity.cfm/state=CT). A GE 1.5 MW turbines, at 25% capacity factor yields 3.285 million kw. So, for you Wesleyan brainiacs, do the math. To achieve your goal, you will need 10, 075 wind turbines, all as high as the tallest buildings in Hartford. Spaced 1/5 of a mile apart so they don’t interfere with each other’s wind access, I guess we can say the tiny state of CT would be turbines, turbines, everywhere, as far as one can see. Now enjoy your nice little “clean energy” utopia!

  • Friends of Lincoln Lakes

    How dare you look to Northern Maine to and plunder for your assinine proposal to go all “clean” energy? Why are ecosystems in northern Maine expendable so your idealism saves a tiny fraction of a glacier half way around the world? Take a look at what you are saying should be devastated for CT by going to http://www.friendsoflincolnlakes.org. Click on the loon icon and view the slide show. Here you have ridges above 13 beautiful lakes and ponds that may become a sprawling industrial wind site. On three of those ponds are nesting pairs of eagles, including one that is right at the base of a ridge that will have six turbines. Every one of the lakes has loons and osprey fish in the same lakes. The “Rollins Project” of First Wind will blast away more than 7 miles of ridges and permanently clearcut 1200 acres of carbon sequestering hardwood forest. What isn’t graveled over will have herbicides applied to keep down re-growth. All the gravel silt and herbicides will be washed down into these lakes, poisoning the fish and suffocating spawning areas. The area is the edge of the wilderness and has lots of wildlife, which will all leave due to the low frequency infrasound from the turbines. Lastly, hundreds of human beings–citizens with the same rights to peace, quiet, and wellbeing as you–will have their lives ruined by the noise and the low frequency infrasound.

    Maine is much more than Portland, the coast, and Mt. Katahdin. It is a vast area of incredible beauty and natural resources. It is a place where people choose to live because of the quiet, the scenic beauty, and the wildlife. You should come check it out before you condemn it to be a wind turbine industrial park for CT, or any other place.
    By the way, if you take the 40 GE 1.5 MW turbine project in Lincoln Lakes as a typical footprint and use Dean Blake’s calculation of 10,075 turbines, that would mean 252 industrial wind sites the size of Rollins. 252 X 7=1,764 miles of ridelines blasted away, 252 X 1200= 302,400 acres permanently clearcut. Oh, yes, I forgot the 20 miles of new powerlines to connect to the grid, so 252 X 20=5, 040 miles of new powerline. Plus another entire new super transmission line, the 345 killer-volt (the kind that causes childhood leukemia and other health problems) line between northern Maine and CT, 600 miles away.
    PS: I hope you want to see the national debt that will cripple the economy soar to pay for all the construction costs and subsidies involved with your utopian dream. And, you get to pay 50 cents per kwh for unreliable, grid de-stabilizing wind electricity in place of less than 10 cents per kwh for reliable “dirty” electricity.

  • northern Mainer

    ct wants to be clean at the expense of the health of northern Maine wildlife and human life- not so environmental believe me,,,

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