Step back on coal-fired plant

There is still time for Village Council to step back and decide not to commit to AMP-Ohio’s coal-fired power plant. There are no good reasons to move ahead now and many good reasons not to do so.

According to the contract, the Village has until March to make a decision on this complex issue and yet Council is rushing forward. Council seems to want to give AMP-Ohio what it wants, and what AMP-Ohio wants is to have municipalities sign on the dotted line by Nov. 1. They want this, AMP-Ohio executives finally admitted after much obfuscation, to convince funders that the company has enough commitments to move ahead with the plant. The funders are, understandably, getting nervous, since across the country, communities are backing away from coal-fired plants as being both environmentally and financially reckless. By signing on to the plant by Nov. 1, Yellow Springs is joining those who will help AMP-Ohio get its coal-fired plant.

But wait. This is exactly the group we don’t want to join.

That’s not all. Because Yellow Springs has a reputation for progressive ideas and innovative thinking, it makes sense that once we sign on, AMP-Ohio will use our decision to convince other wavering communities to do the same.

Some things we don’t know for sure. We don’t know if signing on to the plant would save the Village money or cost more in the long run. We don’t know if “clean,” coal, now mainly a concept, will ever become an economically-feasible reality.

But we know these things: that coal-fired plants are, in this country, the single greatest contributor of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We know that carbon dioxide causes global warming and that global warming threatens our planet.

And we know that what we do matters. Once there was a time when we thought what we did didn’t matter. We were only one person, or one company, or one little town. But those days are gone. In our increasingly fragile environment, we now know that the actions of one person, one company, one small community — they all matter.

We have a proud legacy, in Yellow Springs, of being bold, taking risks, thinking in new ways. We should not stand with those who support AMP-Ohio in its misguided effort to bring one more polluting coal plant into the world. We should stand with those who say, stop, there’s a better way. That’s where we belong.

—Diane Chiddister