A Green Corps student volunteer in Grand Forks, North Dakota working to move the University of North Dakota beyond coal.

Coal is one of the most dangerous and dirty energy sources today, not just because it pollutes people’s communities from mining to burning to disposing of the waste, or because it is the leading contributor to global warming, but because coal is holding us back from bringing about a clean, secure energy future.

We have an opportunity to shape our future-- to create clean energy jobs, breathe clean air, and solve the climate challenge—but we need to act now. University and college campuses need to take the lead and act now to move beyond coal. They can be leaders in researching and implementing new and efficient clean energy technologies, ones that will help us reduce our global warming pollution and make us a leader in sustainability.

To do this, Green Corps organizers on eleven campuses are talking with thousands of students to help them better understand the impacts of coal from cradle to grave and the clean, renewable alternatives that already exist. Ultimately they hope to build student groups strong enough to completely shut down their campus coal power plants and transition to clean, renewable sources of energy.