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About CoalSwarm
First, the bad news. Global warming is already underway, and because its effects tend to lag by decades behind the steady increase in greenhouse gases that drive the process, we are already in worse danger than most people realize. According to climate scientists, the level of greenhouse gases has already passed the danger level of 350 parts per million. Unless fossil fuel emissions are drastically reduced, humanity faces a growing risk of dangerous global warming, as human sources are amplified by natural feedback loops.
Now the good news. There is a straightforward way to address the problem: phase out coal, which contains far more global warming potential than oil and gas combined. In fact, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Space Institute, has said that ending emissions from coal "is 80% of the solution to the climate crisis."
Is phasing out coal a realistic goal? Absolutely. One source alone--concentrating solar power (CSP)--is being built around the world and can be designed with on-site thermal storage to provide baseload power. A 100-mile by 100-mile area devoted to CSP plants could supply all U.S power needs.
Citizens are mobilizing. In the United States, over 180 groups are now working on coal issues. Most of these are locally based organizations whose effectiveness is often overlooked. The mission of coalSwarm is to assist this movement by building shared resources.
Our CoalSwarm wiki, created in collaboration with the Center for Media and Democracy, provides a constantly expanding body of information that everyone in the movement can utilize and add to.
CoalSwarm is a project of the Earth Island Institute, which was founded by environmental pioneer David Brower as an incubator for innovative projects in ecology and social justice.
CoalSwarm works to support the grassroots movement to stop new coal plants and phase out existing ones. Our main project is the coalSwarm wiki, a collaborative resource on coal issues: http://coalSwarm.org.
