You may have seen it on fliers on Wescoe Beach, you may have seen it hovering in thick clouds of smoke above the otherwise pristine prairie or you may have seen it in your working-class father’s face after an economic downturn. No matter how you encounter it, the issue—coal power—is very likely to garner a strong and emotional response. It does not deserve one.

In 2005, Sunflower Electric Power Corp. proposed a vast expansion of the coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, Kan. Since then, there has been a whirlwind of controversy in Topeka, Holcomb and across Kansas surrounding this proposed project. Liberal activists and lawmakers are crying foul (air) while conservatives are saying that the environmental concerns of a dirty power source should be secondary to Kansas’ economy. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has voiced her opposition to the project, but is letting the courts and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment decide whether it is environmentally responsible to build the plants. But no matter how partisan politicians want to make the issue, it is possible to take a rational, fact-based approach to the situation.

The proposed Holcomb expansion would be a state-of-the-art coal-fired power source, generating 1,400 megawatts of electricity, although only about 15 percent of that would stay in Kansas (most of it would go to Colorado’s front range megalopolis, which understandably has higher power consumption than the sparsely-populated plains of Kansas). If approved, it would go online in 2013.

The main problem with a coal power plant are emissions of carbon dioxide, which has been implicated as the largest contributing factor to global warming, and lower, but still toxic, emissions of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and mercury. The latter argument is a red herring—because of new technology and regulations, there would actually be lower mercury emissions at the new expanded plant than there are currently at the smaller plant. But carbon dioxide is a real issue. While the actual emissions of the proposed plant would be fairly low and well within federal regulations (they have to be or else face huge fines from the government), any new carbon dioxide emissions are inherently a bad thing, even in western Kansas, where there are no urban smog traps. Even small coal stations have a negative cumulative effect on global climate change. So how do we move forward with energy production while still keeping the economy and the environment afloat?

What hasn’t been mentioned much in this debate are the alternatives to antiquated coal power. Westar Energy, a company based in Topeka, recently announced a $500 million plan to build three wind farms in Kansas that would produce 500 megawatts of power by 2010. Endorsed by Gov. Sebelius, raising the capital for the project would require a small $2 monthly charge for Westar customers, which includes Lawrence. It is well worth $2 a month to provide clean energy for Kansas. But 500 megawatts is not 1,400. How, then, to provide the other necessary energy needed for a growing national population?

There are two main ways. The first is old fashioned: save energy. Turn your air conditioner down, turn off lights when not using them and ride your bike around town. It’s very simple, and yet few people actually make a concerted effort to reduce their energy consumption. The second way is a taboo term for many people: nuclear power. But this isn’t the 1970s. Nuclear power is getting cheaper and more efficient every day, and the technological advances since Three Mile Island have made nuclear reactors extremely safe and fail-proof. The chances of a nuclear accident are much smaller than the very real possibility that continued unmitigated fossil fuel use will leave disastrous problems for future generations. There is a growing number of entrepreneurial companies buying up unused nuclear plants and getting them back online cheaply. This is an option that has not been widely discussed in America, but should be, as the rest of the world is already on board with nuclear power. For example, 78 percent of France’s energy comes from nuclear reactors, sharply reducing its dependence on that sinister petroleum product­—oil. It is only America that has an irrational fixation against nuclear energy. Unless your grandmother died at Chernobyl, there is very little reason to oppose building new nuclear power plants.

The proposed coal plant in Holcomb is not as bad as the environmental doomsday theorists make it out to be, but still, it is 2007. Building the plant would be a step, albeit a small one, in the wrong direction. And we should be working, at every opportunity we have, to make the world greener, and less black. Let us start with this. Contact your representative and let them know that you support alternative energy sources for Kansas.

Petterson is a Prairie Village junior in English.