Campaign Becomes Ground Zero for National Environmental/Citizens Groups

How green is Chicago?

Thanks to a growing ward-by-ward grassroots campaign for clean energy, the Windy City has attracted the attention of national environmental and citizens organizations to ask that very question.

On Thursday, July 15th at Dvorak Park, Alderman Joe Moore and Dorian Breuer, of the Pilsen Environmental Rights & Reform Organization, will be joined by an unusually broad coalition of fellow aldermen, clean energy and health care activists, and over 50 Chicago organizations, along the Sierra Club‘s Executive Director Michael Brune and Greenpeace National Climate Director Damon Moglen to call on Mayor Daley and the Chicago City Council to adopt the nationally acclaimed Clean Power Coalition energy platform.

Thirteen aldermen have signed onto Moore’s breakthrough Clean Power Ordinance, which calls for reducing pollution at the city’s two notorious coal-fired plants by 90 percent.

With one of the worst asthma rates in the nation, the Fisk Generation Station in Pilsen and Crawford Power Plant in Little Village–where nearly 50,000 tons of toxic pollution have led to atrocious health care rates over the past three years–were built before the invention of the Model T.

The CO emissions from the two plants are equivalent to the pollution of nearly 875,000 cars. Continue reading »