For many years I’ve grown frus­trated and angry watch­ing the wan­ton envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion of the planet. But now I’ve taken a strong, sim­ple action to fight back.

At the top of the list of cul­prits to blame for envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion: coal-burning power plants. Sure, we need the elec­tric­ity. And coal is cheap – but only if you delib­er­ately choose to ignore the soci­etal costs of cre­at­ing the clouds of pol­lu­tion that coal spews into the atmos­phere. And the envi­ron­men­tal costs of strip­ping the tops off of moun­tains to get at the coal underneath.

Coal now accounts for 45% of the power gen­er­a­tion in the US. That’s enough to make coal-burning plants the largest point source of pol­lu­tion in the coun­try, spilling out 40% of the total of all haz­ardous chem­i­cals released into the atmos­phere from all causes.

Some of the major ways that coal pol­lu­tion kills you

Some of the major ways that coal pol­lu­tion kills you are through asthma, heart dis­ease, lung and kid­ney prob­lems. In fact, in an arti­cle in the Annals of the New York Acad­emy of Sci­ences it’s been esti­mated that the air pol­lu­tion from burn­ing coal — apart from its other neg­a­tive con­se­quences — costs the pub­lic in excess of $187 billion.

Coal-fired plants are the largest source of arsenic, hydrochlo­ric acid, mer­cury, and other toxic chem­i­cals that pol­lute your lungs, irri­tate your eyes, and poi­son your brain.

Even if you don’t live down-wind from a coal-fueled power plant, there’s no escape. These toxic chem­i­cals end up in the food you eat too.  There’s not too much an indi­vid­ual, act­ing on his or her own, can do to avoid the exposure.

The health effects of burn­ing coal are dev­as­tat­ing enough. But the prob­lems with coal don’t stop there – ecosys­tems are destroyed, green­house gases heat the planet, and radioac­tive coal ash flies into the atmos­phere – car­ry­ing a more lethal radioac­tive punch than a nuclear power plant.

The dis­tin­guished Nobel-winning econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man has pointed out that the soci­etal costs of the pol­lu­tion from coal burn­ing out­weigh the value of the power that the coal pro­duces. In other words, every coal-fired power plant in the United States is burn­ing dol­lar bills by the bil­lions. In the process of burn­ing the dol­lar bills, a mil­lion here or there winds up in the hands of the wealthy few who own the plant. But the rest of us end up pay­ing the huge costs.

We’ve got to put a stop to this insanity.

For­tu­nately, renew­able energy sources are no longer a dream for the future. Wind power has emerged as a viable choice right now, today. The tech­nol­ogy already exists to build the wind tow­ers (and the stor­age sys­tems and trans­mis­sion lines) to gen­er­ate all the elec­tric­ity our coun­try needs from safe, afford­able, domes­tic wind. And there’s a power com­pany – North Amer­i­can Power — com­mit­ted to switch­ing Amer­ica to gen­er­at­ing 100% of its elec­tric­ity from wind.

In many states, includ­ing New Jer­sey, New York, Con­necti­cut, Penn­syl­va­nia, Mary­land, Ohio, and Illi­nois, you can switch your elec­tric ser­vice to North Amer­i­can Power today.

You might end up pay­ing a slight pre­mium (ten per­cent or so at the most) to pur­chase this clean power instead of the dirty stuff. Depend­ing on your mar­ket, your elec­tric­ity bill may not even go up that much (and it might even go down). Regard­less of the details, the small pre­mium you’ll be pay­ing is well, well worth it.

Right now, only a few per cent of Amer­i­cans opt to pur­chase clean, renew­able power. As a result, util­i­ties have lit­tle incen­tive to invest in new wind power sources. If 10%, 20%, or even 30% or more choose clean power, it would be a national game-changer.

We can’t wait any longer to make the shift to clean sources of electricity.

Start today. Join the move­ment. Make a dif­fer­ence. Switch to North Amer­i­can Power today.