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.

The protest was organized by members of Green Action who, through comprehensive initiatives that target many elements of the student body, have sought to cultivate broad-based support for their disapproval of the University’s marketing of the term “clean coal” and their concern over the influence of coal executives on the University’s board of trustees.

We are similarly concerned by the fact that promotional materials for the “Energy Future” conference displayed the Washington University in St. Louis logo next to three equally-sized logos of Ameren UE, Arch Coal, Inc. and Peabody Energy, all of whose CEOs are members of the University’s board of trustees. The board of trustees effectively owns our University, and this marketing position demonstrates the pervasive influence of their corporate missions upon the external reputation of our University. We are likewise alarmed by the fact that a conference purporting to discuss our “Energy Future” did not include renewable energy sources.

Moreover, the University is the chair of the International Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization, whose title includes what many consider a slanted term. What is commonly referred to as “clean coal” poses problems that include the environmental hazards of mountaintop removal and the social justice issues posed by the devastation of mine workers’ communities. We believe that references to coal by the University should not be modified by the word “clean,” but instead should use scientific language to refer to carbon capture and sequestration.

A balanced and pragmatic approach by the University would ideally incorporate the use of current technologies as an interim step toward the eventual adoption of renewable resources. While current technology that can help make the most of the currently available fuel sources is necessary to bridge the gap, the lack of attention to a more renewable future is disconcerting. We would like to see at such conferences the benefits and drawbacks of each type of energy available to us both currently and in the future, and we are dismayed to see a lack of balance in this regard.

Last year, Richard Axelbaum—a faculty member and the director the Consortium—informed members of Green Action that there had not been sufficient student pressure to encourage the University to alter its positions on coal. On Wednesday, Student Union Senate passed a resolution in support of the protesters’ activism, and next week, its members will debate the adoption of a resolution regarding the University’s use of the term “clean coal” generally. SU is a vehicle through which we can show the University that these positions, as well as the promotional activity devoted to advancing them, demand reconsideration and that we as students have a voice in the matter.

But SU resolutions effectively do very little. We feel that individual students can combine to make a far greater collective difference with responses like that which we saw from Green Action Monday night. Given the potential for this kind of wide-spread student vocalization, we encourage you to research the challenges of coal utilization for yourselves to determine an intelligent and measured stance on how the University should move forward in projecting our world’s energy future. Moreover, we encourage you to write to Matthew Malten, assistant vice chancellor for campus sustainability and other school officials about your viewpoints. It is also important, in the long run, that we reach outside the Wash. U. community for support to ensure that the University hears the message that its reputation is intertwined with “clean coal” research that may prove hazardous for the future—our planet’s and our own.

Moreover, I find the Chancellor’s justifications for the appointments to be both frightening and lacking in judgment. He heralds coal as a resource that “has proven very important to our advance as a society.” I do not disagree with the facts of this statement, but the argument can easily be used to justify any number of horrors that occurred in the past. It is a research university’s duty to look to the future and plow new ground, and now is the time to explore new fields in energy. Chancellor Wrighton seeks to rest comfortably within the 20th century mindset—one guided solely by profits—that has wreaked human, environmental and cultural havoc. We cannot be moved only by numbers; that path leads to abuse, immorality and evil all in the name of the almighty dollar.

The Student Life article on August 24, 2009 says idealism must be found elsewhere. I vehemently disagree. Idealism is strong among the students and the faculty at this university. This spring, Washington University received a total of $35 million to research advanced biofuels and photosynthesis’s applications for energy. Students and faculty came out against the name of the recently formed Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The administration may be content to work within a flawed system, but I am not. We mustn’t resign ourselves to a system that has proven itself to be outdated, for then we ourselves become flawed. Instead, let us change the system and work for a better tomorrow. The steps must be small and Chancellor Wrighton is correct in saying that efficiency is the best place to begin our efforts, but efficiency should not be paired with technologies that emit CO2. We are paving the way for new sources of energy here at Washington University and all around the world. Idealism is alive and well at Wash. U.; it’s just that our new trustees wish it weren’t.

Peter is a junior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at peter.murrey@gmail.com.

Mike Hirshon | Student Life

When we think about modern universities, there are two traditions that we place in perspective: There is the classic, medieval university, and there is the progressive university of the 20th century. The former is a place where ideas are honed; the latter is a place where they are applied, a place built on the foundations of research and industry. The progressive political movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s was a movement built on the conception that science, industry and big business could optimize human potential—a movement that spanned Max Weber’s bureaucracies as well as Andrew Carnegie’s steel factories.

Fossil fuel played a key role in this optimization: The society, industry and economic structure that we have built would not have been possible without cheap, easily accessible sources of energy. Wrighton acknowledges this notion, saying, “For more than 100 years, we have had to access to abundant sources of fossil fuel at very low costs, and [this] has proven very important to our advance as a society.”

So what happens, then, when this great civilization finds that the very fuels that formed its foundation are toxic substances, carbon formations that are both running out and damaging our atmosphere? This is a question that environmentalists have contended with for a long time, and it has been brought to the forefront of many policy discussions because of the increasingly pressing concerns that it carries. In a University setting, the question is especially relevant: It is large research universities such as ours that will develop the technologies that carry our civilization into an era that does not—and cannot—rely on fossil fuels.

The recent appointments to the board of trustees demonstrate that Wrighton’s administration seeks to work within the system rather than against it. Wrighton contends that the more pressing issue is not alternative energy sources, but fuel efficiency: “The big opportunity here is efficiency improvement. If we could realize the deployment of known technologies—technologies that we know can work—we could significantly diminish the need for enhanced energy production capacity…We should be investing in areas that make advances in efficiency.”

The truth that can be gleaned from speaking with Wrighton is that large research universities and large energy businesses have been inexorably intertwined from the get-go. Because of the sheer magnitude of powering the world—15 terrawatts per day—most relevant research concerns efficiency solutions, solutions that are large in scope. As Wrighton admits, “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.” As population growth continues, the chances of providing large-scale clean energy are slim. While we can provide new forms of energy that are cleaner and more efficient to meet growth, old infrastructures will have to stay in place: “We can’t take something off the table until we come to grips with our ability to meet the power demands that we require.”

The University’s support of these old infrastructures demonstrates a certain business sense, a sense of pragmatism that we identify with 20th-century ideas—economics, production efficiency. As Wrighton says, “You have to balance idealism and pragmatism, rather than forgo the use of energy.” His perspective, and the recent coal-related appointments, demonstrate a University movement away from ivory-tower hypotheticals that might fuel the world in 100 years and toward realities that will fuel the world in 20. Moreover, it demonstrates what our University’s role will be in energy policy: a push to work within the system to make adjustments in fuel efficiency. Idealism will have to be found elsewhere.

Kate is a junior in Arts & Sciences and the senior Forum editor. She can be reached at kate.gaertner@studlife.com.