Taking it to the Streets: Big Climate Change Rally Held This Week in Washington

On Monday, a couple thousand demonstrators marched in Washington, urging the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gases. With the Obama administration making big promises to change the way we manage carbon and the pollution we create during the election, many out there now want to hold the U.S. government to their commitments. Chanting "We don't want the world to boil, no coal, no oil!", they started their campaign at a park near the Capitol and marched to the small power plant several blocks away.

Ironically, they targeted the government's own Capitol power plant as a symbol of the problem. The plant still burns coal and accounts for a third of the legislative branch's greenhouse gas emissions. The plant hasn't generated electricity since the fifties, but it still provides steam for heating and chilled water for cooling buildings within the Capitol.

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for converting the plant entirely to natural gas in a letter to the Architect of the Capitol, which oversees the maintenance and operation of the Capitol Complex.

During the rally, the opposition held signs reading: "Our economy runs on coal." The counter-demonstrators argued that coal is affordable and that renewable alternatives to coal-fired power plants won't meet a growing demand for electricity.

These proclamations not only are wrong, but they are dangerous, because they misinform and mislead the general public. Anyone that thinks the issue through and takes a look at the research clearly would understand that dealing with the after effects and by products of a coal-based economy are huge…and catastrophic, as we are now starting to see.