Trustees keep ignoring campus sustainability

After the debacle at Wednesday's Board of Trustees meeting concerning what is known as the "Greenthumb fee" - a misleading title, since the money would not have gone to the student organization of same name, but instead to campus-wide sustainability initiatives - I am, to say the least, rather frustrated. But, to keep my argument from seeming trivial, I will set aside my frustration and employ cool-headed logic to argue the same point.

Mining and burning coal take a tremendous toll on Kentucky's citizens and environment. It is an indisputable fact. Knowing this, one can easily see that, since this university relies on a massive pile of coal to meet its energy needs, we will soon need to find renewable and sustainable means of powering our campus.

The energy switch must happen soon, which means that by failing to allocate a mere 50 cents of student fees toward sustainability initiatives, the board has wasted the university's time and money. Furthermore, the Greenthumb fee was the least costly of all those considered, and it is one of the only fees that could have actively worked to save the university money during our budget crisis.

Environmentalism is no longer a hippie pastime - it is a necessary philosophy. This country is in the throes of an energy crisis, and solving this problem is the single greatest research challenge of our time. How can a school that hopes to become a top-20 research institution ignore it? While UK has supported a few small green initiatives, it hasn't done nearly enough.

The administration says sustainability funding should come from the school, not the students; in light of Wednesday's meeting, I say it's time for this institution to be courageous and put its money where its mouth is.

Emily Foerster
Spanish and English senior

KERNEL EDITORIAL: Green-fee rejection lacks justification, students' support

Kernel Editorial Board
Issue date: 4/25/08 Section: Opinions

If there were a good reason for the Board of Trustees' removal of the proposed student fee for sustainability, we don't see it.The board's Student Affairs Committee voted 3-1 Tuesday to eliminate the 50-cent green fee from the final student-fees recommendation. The amended version then passed the Finance Committee and the full board unanimously.But the final proposal won't actually save students any money, since the board also voted to increase the Student Center fee - which was already set to go from $45.75 per semester to $55.50 - by an additional 50 cents.So students will be paying just as much, except $13,000 that would have gone toward promoting sustainability each semester will instead pad the Student Center's fee revenue of more than $1 million per semester.The change would not be so egregious if the student body hadn't already expressed overwhelming support for a sustainability fee. In the 2006 Student Government spring elections, a referendum on the ballot asked students if they would be willing to pay $6 to $8 per semester to support sustainability. It passed with 67 percent support.That was for a fee at least 12 times as expensive as the one proposed. Students clearly are willing to pay to make UK more environmentally friendly - so why is the Board of Trustees standing in the way?What's especially confounding - and disappointing - is SG President Nick Phelps' opposition to the green fee. His duty as a trustee is to stand up for what students want. As one of the rare cases when the student body had actually voted on an issue before the trustees, it should have been no trouble for Phelps to stand behind the green fee.Phelps' justification for his vote is that "there was no clear vision" for the green fee, he said in a Kernel article Wednesday.It's a serious failure of imagination if Phelps can't think of ways $13,000 would be used for sustainability on campus. A few things come to mind: buying more energy from non-coal sources, insulating buildings to reduce power use and expanding the recycling program, for starters. There's little chance the green-fee money would sit around unused.Environmental sustainability is too important for trustees to keep making excuses. The next student-fee package needs to include a green fee - preferably at an amount far more than a twelfth of what students voted for.

Massey Energy set for big expansion

http://www.kentucky.com/103/story/387402.html

from the 4/27/08 Herald-Leader

Massey Energy set for big expansion
PLANS TO OPEN NEW MINE EVERY 17 DAYS THIS YEAR
By Tim Huber
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHARLESTON, W.Va. --Massey Energy Co. expects to open a new coal mine at a rate of one every 17 days this year as it continues an ambitious plan to increase production 25 percent by 2010, a company official said Friday.
Massey is positioning itself to take advantage of soaring demand and prices for Appalachian coal. The expansion is centered on underground coal mines, giving Massey alternatives if a court decision that would make it more difficult and time consuming to get federal permits for surface mines is upheld.
"We have all the permits," Chief Executive Don Blankenship told Wall Street analysts during a conference call Friday. "We have a line of equipment that's set up that takes us beyond these currently announced expansion plans."
Labor is another matter.
Massey needs 300 to 400 additional miners and Blankenship said that will be a challenge. The market for coal miners is already tight in Appalachia and expansion plans by Massey and others are making it tighter. Massey, for instance, recently started giving miners multiyear contracts to reduce poaching by rivals. That has helped cut voluntary turnover to 14.8 percent in the first quarter from 21.4 percent last year, Blankenship said.
Massey produced 39.5 million tons of coal last year. It hopes to increase that total to 41.5 million to 43 million tons this year, 46 to 48 million tons in 2009 and 50 million tons in 2010. By the second quarter, Massey should have enough mines opened, though not necessarily at full production, to hit 46 million tons, Blankenship said.
The latest word on Massey's expansion comes a day after it reported a 28.5 percent earnings increase in the first quarter, when it opened nine mines. Massey earned $41.9 million, or 52 cents per share, on revenue of $644.6 million in the quarter, compared with $32.6 million, or 40 cents per share, on revenue of $607.3 million in first-quarter 2007.
Massey, the nation's fourth-largest coal producer by revenue, operates 19 mining complexes in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky. Its stock rose $3.78, or 7.4 percent, to $55.04 Friday afternoon.
Massey is benefiting from skyrocketing prices for Appalachian coal. Central Appalachian steam coal futures, for instance, recently hit $95.75 a ton -- up 127 percent from last April. Massey has gotten much more -- up to $230 a ton for metallurgical-grade coal used to make coke for steel manufacturing, Blankenship said.
Massey plans to plow a good portion of the extra revenue back into operations rather than return it to shareholders, Blankenship said.
The company expects to spend $310 million on expansion this year, in addition to $240 million for regular maintenance.

Green fee elimination shows UK, Phelps have wrong priorities

from the 4.24.2008 Kentucky Kernel:
by Brittany Zwicker

In spring 2006, in a uniquely progressive referendum on the Student Government ballot, 67 percent of UK students said that they would be willing to pay an extra $6 to $8 per semester in student fees to generate funding for using more renewable energy on our currently coal-dependent campus. Although this referendum was not binding to the university, it showed the overwhelming interest of students in creating a more sustainable campus.

By the next academic year, when it was clear that no changes were going to be made, students of Greenthumb, UK's environmental club, again spoke out to encourage the passing of this fee. President Lee Todd said he did not feel that students should have to pay this fee, but that instead he would create a sustainability coordinator position, appoint a sustainability committee of faculty, staff and students, and create a budget for them to begin implementing environmentally friendly changes on campus.

This would have meant that all of these things would have been in place by August 2007. It didn't happen. Instead, the coordinator has yet to be hired, there is no funding, and the committee only had its first meeting in March 2008. At this pace, all of the ice in Antarctica will have melted before a sustainability coordinator is hired.

In fall 2007, Pat Terrell, vice president for student affairs, created a Student Fee Committee. Representatives of each fee in the student fee package were invited to take part to recommend an increase that was fair to everyone. Members of this committee, led by Tyler Fleck, all agreed that the green fee was vital to this university and that they would sacrifice some increase in their own fees to see that it passed.

The green fee was recommended by the Student Fee committee, then by Terrell and finally by Todd himself. If nothing else, this proves that those who are educated about the impact of the fee and the necessity of our campus to stop falling so far behind our peers in sustainability efforts saw the validity of the fee. The 50-cent fee would ultimately go toward saving millions of dollars in energy costs, freeing that money for other projects.

After all this, for Student Government President Nick Phelps to publicly say about the green fee that "there was no clear vision, and it shouldn't have even made it that far" and to be the swing vote that voted it down in Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday shows his own ignorance and utter disconnect with the students of this university.

Again, Phelps has proven to all of us that he is not committed to our interests and is unwilling to stand up for what the students believe in, the charge he was given when he accepted his position as SG president.

It is difficult to believe that the university takes sustainability seriously at a time like this, or to believe the $13,000 will ever appear. We all know there are budget cuts, economic recessions and people being laid off from the university. Unfortunately, these excuses don't stop pollution from getting worse every year, ice from melting, or coal and gas prices from skyrocketing.

Now is the time for UK to make the small initial sacrifice to invest in a student fee that will affect these things - a fee that will pay for itself, will save UK money and show the disenchanted students on this campus that we mean more to them than a bi-annual check.

UK Rejects Green Fee...again!!

Earth Day posited itself to be a wonderful day for environmental activists at UK and in Lexington. But, as the University of Kentucky has found a way to do time and time again, we were all let down. Because of efforts made by Staff Trustee Russ Williams and Student Trustee/SG President Nick Phelps, the 'green fee' approved by 67% of UK students in 2006 failed to be included in UK's student fees package for the second consecutive year. I will avoid going into the details now and instead post the article from today's KY Kernel in which I am quoted numerous times. If you want to ask questions, feel free to and I will respond in kind.

from the 4.23.08 KY Kernel:

Board approves tuition, replaces renewable energy fee

No Green Fee

Happy (belated) Earth Day!!

As many of you already know, today was the day that the university Board of Trustees voted on the 'green fee' that we have been fighting for the past several years. Because of the efforts of Staff Trustee Russ Williams and Student Trustee/SG President Nick Phelps, the much reduced $0.50 green fee was again removed from the funding package, with that money instead going towards the UK Student Center.

We'll be outside the Classroom Building on Friday from 9am-3pm to protest this action and inform students about the problems associated with UK's (lack of) stance on sustainability. Make it out if you can.

better luck next year?

The Precipice of Greatness (or A Short History of Things I believe to be wrong)

by Taylor Shelton

I believe that we stand on the precipice of greatness. The University of Kentucky, despite all of its typical rhetoric about becoming a ‘top 20’ university, is actually getting somewhere. Our programs are improving and garnering national attention. We are becoming a world-class institution. Lexington, perhaps in spite of the coming of the 2010 World Equestrian Games, is becoming a city filled with culture – both artistically and politically. Lexington is finally starting to see what it takes to be a world-class city. But, it seems as though we have reached a dead end. While in France with my girlfriend a couple years ago, we decided we would take a day and hike to the top of Mount Sainte-Victoire, one of the highest points in southern France. As we got closer to the top, I got nauseous. I got a nosebleed, something quite typical of my childhood. Because of this, I decided to stop and turn around. No way, no how was I going to keep going. I feel like this is what we are doing as a university, as a city, as a state and as a country. We climbed the mountain, but decided to stop before we got to the top. The University of Kentucky decided it would become a top 20 public university, but decided that it was going to neglect all but those fields of academic study that rake in the most profit for Lee Todd and his friends. Lexington set forth to bring a (supposedly) monumental sporting event to the city to solidify its status as world-class. But once we reached the initial goal, we decided to again capitulate to the wishes of the Lexington power-brokers, the development community and conservative politicians, and most specifically, the Webb Brothers. Kentucky finally got rid of one of the worst governors in the state’s history, only to elect one that, thus far, has been nearly as bad. The United States remains the world’s only ‘superpower’, yet we seem to regress on a day-by-day basis. We stand on the precipice of greatness, but we have decided to turn around.

This story, however, is intended to be a bit more specific. Way back in the day (2005, to be exact), University of Kentucky students, specifically those involved with the Greenthumb Environmental Club (of which I will be abdicating leadership of at the end of summer) decided to do something to change the way we think about our natural environment. These students decided that burning 43,000+ tons of coal per year on campus at UK wasn’t such a good idea. So they pushed UK to adopt a student fee to go towards the purchasing of renewable energy on campus. With each student contributing just $6-8 per semester, the university would have more than substantial funds to begin purchasing a large amount of renewable power and slowly, but surely, decreasing the university’s carbon footprint. But, the powers that be at the University of Kentucky chose to stop these students in their tracks. Loopholes and an uninterested student government found a way to keep students from being able to vote on the matter. So what did these students do? They came back the next year and started fighting for the exact same thing. And this time? It passed. In the spring of 2006, 67% of UK students voted in favor of a $6-8 fee to go towards renewable energy purchasing. And all was fine and dandy? Not quite. Come the next spring, the powers that be again decided that they didn’t want renewable energy. So they said that students shouldn’t tax themselves for something the university administration should be doing on its own, and that the university would pick up the slack on sustainability issues in a variety of ways (which are outlined in the April 26, 2007 article in the Kentucky Kernel). But would a university administration like that of President Lee Todd’s ever do anything like this? Of course they wouldn’t.

It has been a year since he made those promises to push UK towards a sustainable future. But if there ever were empty promises, they came from the mouth of Lee Todd, Jr. If UK is any more sustainable now than it was one year ago, it is no thanks to those in positions of power at UK. Instead it is because of the hard work of students, faculty and staff who have chosen to take initiative and do something on their own for the betterment of the whole campus. Without the leadership of Shane Tedder and the work of Greenthumb and other interested and dedicated students, past and present, UK would still exist in a day and age where global warming was seen as myth. Unfortunately, however, it seems that the university administration still lives in that day and age, lacking in the insight and progressive thinking that should be expected of a top 20 public university. Fast forward to the present day and not a whole lot has changed. The university administration is still fighting with students over the implementation of a ‘green fee’ for renewable energy. Even with the suggestion of a $0.75 green fee by an advisory committee established to create a recommended student fee package, Pat Terrell, the Vice President of Student Affairs, chose to lower her personal recommendation to only $0.50, which has also since been recommended by President Lee Todd. Inexplicably, their recommendations also fall $0.50 below the suggested fee total passed by the Student Fees Committee. The battle for sustainability at UK is no longer a battle of sense, but a battle for cents. If passed, this $0.50 fee per student per semester will amount in approximately $27,000; compared to the $324,000-432,000 that would have been available had the university ever chosen to adopt the fee voted on favorably by a large majority of students in 2006.

So now to the point: this coming Tuesday, April 22nd, is Earth Day. It has been thirty-eight years since the first Earth Day, and we at the University of Kentucky still don’t seem to be getting the picture. UK can, however, make an immeasurably large step in the right direction this Earth Day, a step that cannot be measured in the dollars and cents it is undeniably associated with. On the 22nd, the University Board of Trustees will vote on, among other things, whether or not it will implement a ‘green fee’ for sustainability on campus. Currently, it is unclear whether or not the Board will choose to pass this fee, even at a rate greatly reduced from its original intent. One way or another, the University of Kentucky missed its chance to be a trailblazer several years ago. At that point, we could have been revolutionary; joining what was then a very small group of schools taking such substantial steps in reducing their contributions to global warming. But that day has passed. We are far behind the rest of the pack, especially the university’s top 20 ‘benchmark institutions’. We have become the epitome of a ‘follower’, rather than the leader expected of a top 20 institution. And still, somehow, we stand at the precipice of greatness. The passage of this simple fee means a world of difference to the university and to its students, the same students who have fought tirelessly against an unwilling administration for the past four years to make UK more sustainable. We stand at the precipice of greatness, but we, unfortunately enough, aren’t in a position to make the decision to push us towards the future we all deserve. Instead, that power lies in the hands of the University Board of Trustees.

In fact, I don’t find the situation we face with the University of Kentucky to be much different than the situation we face with the city of Lexington. Lexington, like its universities, is becoming renowned for being world-class, or something like it. It was even named the #25 ‘greenest’ city in the United States (don’t ask me how this actually happened, but it did). That, along with Lexington’s bronze distinction as a Bike Friendly Community awarded in 2007, may represent a step in the right direction; it seems to me, however, that such recognitions are worthless if we choose not to back them up. Instead of creating an environment that is truly sustainable, Lexington’s government, at least its figurehead, has hopped on board the CentrePoint train and supported what will perhaps be the biggest boondoggle in Lexington history. So as we stand on the precipice of greatness, our leadership again chooses to turn around and go back to where we came from; they choose not to climb to the top of the mountain, only to go as far as they have to, to be able to say they made a ‘concerted effort’. So as Lexington grows nearer and nearer to the day of reckoning for the CentrePoint development, I hope that we all keep in mind the greater meaning behind approving or disapproving of this project. It represents the potential for steps in one of two different directions: the right direction or the wrong direction. This decision represents the potential for Lexington realizing its only future as a thriving world-class city is as city which is unique and proud of its history, self-containing and sustainable, which caters to its own citizens, not a transient group of equestrian elites in town for what Gurney Norman likes to call ‘the Horse Party’. Lexington needs to be by Lexingtonians and for Lexingtonians. And if anyone in city hall listened to the people they are supposed to be serving, they would realize that CentrePoint is just another in the long list of terrible schemes devised by Lexington’s wealthy, powerful development community which has been given free range on our city for far too long. But it seems like they aren’t listening.

I think the situation of the University of Kentucky and the city of Lexington are simply microcosms of the trends that are happening all around the United States. We stand at the precipice of greatness, on the verge of electing the first black man to the Presidency of the United States. And while Obama’s policies aren’t necessarily the kind of ground-breaking, outside-the-box thinking we desperately need in the White House, he too represents a drastic step forward from any previous Presidential candidate, perhaps inspiring the most hope in Americans since Bobby Kennedy in 1968, well before I was born. But we seem to get caught back up in politics-as-usual, with mud-slinging and bad rhetoric. We seem to forget that the problem is the system, itself. We seem to forget that our supposed ‘democracy’, is in fact simply a tool of the wealthy few. But we (rarely) choose to do anything about it. So stand up and demand better of yourselves, your friends and family, and especially those who hold the power over our daily decisions. It is time that as students, citizens, voters and everyday people that we refuse to relinquish our rights just because Lee Todd says so, Dudley Webb and Jim Newberry say so, Steve Beshear and the Democratic Party say so, or because the billions of dollars being poured into political campaigns by major corporations say so. Because that isn’t greatness, it is anything but. If we, as a university community, a city, a state and a nation, want to ever achieve greatness (whatever that may be), I dare say that it can only be done if government is taken from the hands of the wealthy elites and returned to the hands of the people. The decision to be made now is not one to be made behind closed doors. Instead, the only valid decision to be made is one made by the people who it affects, the students of the university, and the citizens of this great city, state and country.