The skies are looking bluer. Today we announced the 200th coal plant to be retired since the Beyond Coal campaign began working with local communities to shut down old and outdated power plants. Since the current goal of the campaign is to retire half of the nation’s more than 500 coal plants, you can see that we’re making significant headway. That success is the result of a lot of hard work on the part of Sierra Club legal and conservation staff, the support of far-sighted donors and, last but not least, the thousands of ordinary people from every walk and stage of life who’ve worked to kick coal out of their own communities.
But although tallying coal plants retired is a useful gauge of progress, it doesn’t capture the full impact of this campaign. The story doesn’t end once the coal plants are gone. What happens next is at least as important.