On Jan. 24, Washington University released a new pledge in an effort to help students go green (formally called a “pledge for sustainability.”) Designed to encourage students and staff to consider their environmentally harmful decisions and make changes accordingly, the pledge calls for participants to reduce their carbon footprints. We commend this pledge, as we would any effort to promote responsible sustainability and reduce waste.

We do, however, want to make note of the hypocrisy inherent in this pledge, given Washington University’s continued affiliation with Peabody Energy and Arch Coal.

Gregory Boyce and Steven F. Leer are the CEOs of Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, respectively, and both serve on Washington University’s Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees is arguably the most influential force on the University: The trustees appoint the Chancellor, review and approve annual budgets and major capital expenditures, make final decisions on awards of tenure and degrees and on new degree programs, oversee the management of the endowment, and oversee and participate in development programs. In short, the trustees are responsible for overseeing almost every policy aspect of Washington University and thus are the steering force behind the operations of the administration, faculty and staff.

Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world, has long been highlighted as a major environmental offender. Peabody actively opposed the Clean Air Act in 1970 and acid rain provisions in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, as well as current efforts to strengthen mercury provisions. Many major executives of Peabody Energy head up the National Coal Council, which called for more than doubling U.S. coal consumption by 2025 in a recent report.

Last year, Peabody spent a total of $5 million lobbying Congress and other government agencies in an effort to block prospective climate legislation.

Arch Coal, the second-largest provider of coal in the U.S. behind Peabody, has been called into question for its practice of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, which reduces the height of mountaintops, removes all vegetation and contaminates mountain streams with mining waste. This contamination leads to flooding, erosion and an unsafe water supply, which in turn leads to the depopulation and disintegration of mining communities.

The “Peabody Plan” for eliminating energy inequality, released last fall, asks that at least half of the next generation be fueled by coal. It calls for replacing traditional coal plants with supercritical and ultra-supercritical plants, which are more efficient and carbon capture ready, and mandates that at least 100 major projects around the world capture, store or use carbon dioxide from coal-based plants within 20 years. It edicts the deployment of significant coal-to-gas, coal-to-chemicals and coal-to-liquids projects around the world over the next 10 years and heralds more efficient coal utilization technologies as the key to reducing the environmental impact of human energy use.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), however, estimates that if current petroleum usage is replaced by coal-to-liquids projects with no change in carbon technologies, greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 119 percent. If carbon capture and storage technologies are employed, the EPA predicts that greenhouse gas emissions will still increase by 4 percent. It would seem, based on these numbers, that the Peabody Plan’s primary objective is continued coal profits—not sustainability.

Washington University’s endorsement of strategies similar to those promoted by Peabody became clear in 2009, when Peabody, Arch Coal and Ameren UE, whose former CEO is also on the Board of Trustees, contributed a total of $12 million to help found the Washington University Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The Consortium seeks to advance research on carbon recapture and sequestration technology—in short, finding new and more efficient ways to use energy obtained from coal.

When asked about Washington University’s connection to Peabody and Arch Coal in an interview with Student Life in the fall of 2009, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said, “This is big business and we need all the help we can get. The carbon providers—by the opinions of others—maybe they’re the bad guys, but there’s no other game in town.” He continued, “We can’t take something off the table until we come to grips with our ability to meet the power demands that we require.”

We ask that Wrighton cease shying away from the dangers of the continued use of coal and the problems posed by the “Peabody Plan,” in particular the goals for coal-to-liquids projects. We find it patronizing that Washington University would ask us to sign a pledge for sustainable actions when its most powerful governing body does not seem to prioritize sustainability.

We also sincerely hope that, in keeping with the spirit of this pledge, students will direct activism at Washington University’s continued investment of resources in research on coal-based technologies—resources that, we feel, would be better directed at research that seeks to discover and implement new energy sources that do not harm our environment.