source: treehugger.com

While the latest Energy Information Administration numbers show that there is a decrease in coal demand in the U.S., coal is being exported to other parts of the world where demand is going up. This recent trend is a good example of why the issue of global warming must be looked at for the planet as a whole, because what matters is the absolute amount of greenhouse gas from fossil fuel sources that we pump into it. Europe and Asia have shown the most dramatic upward trends in coal usage while the U.S. is the only region going down. The reason for the drop in demand for coal in the United States is due primarily to the availability of cheap gas. So while coal demand growth is slowing, coal’s share of the global energy mix is still rising, and by 2017 coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world’s top energy source. Coal needs to be at the top of the priority list for environmentalists and policymakers right now because it is the most carbon-intensive source of energy and has many other detrimental effects to our health and environment.

Source: Coal use declining in the U.S. (yay!) but going up everywhere else (boo!) by: Michael Graham Richard

Photo Credit: Stephen Maturen

Students are taking a stand against climate change. A group of students from Swarthmore College have asked their school administration to sell the school’s endowment’s holdings in large fossil fuel companies for months, with the school repeatedly saying no. Swarthmore isn’t the only school with proactive students on climate change. In the 1980s, a similar campaign was done where students asked their schools to divest themselves of stocks with companies who did business in South Africa under apartheid. That campaign proved to be highly successful so now students are trying to do the same to help mitigate climate change and carbon emissions.

A few schools have had luck, but these are schools on the smaller scale with smaller endowments as well. Unity College in mail has voted to get out of fossil fuels and Hampshire College in Massachusetts has adopted a broad investment policy that gets rid of fossil fuel stocks. The big issue with this is schools that rely on their large endowment funds. Bill McKibben of 350,org has been traveling the country visiting universities and trying to urge the students to do just this. McKibben has seen great success on getting the students involved in his mission to divest in 200 different energy companies.

Learn more about what the students and Bill McKibben are doing here (NY Times).