DECATUR - Megan Radley is leading her fellow students at Millikin University on a green letter-writing campaign.

She wants to hold President-elect Barack Obama and other congressmen responsible for keeping their promises to do more about energy and environmental issues.

Earlier this week, Obama said he would stay on track with his green agenda by looking into climate changes and developing clean-energy technology during his administration.

There is a big environmental movement going on, said Radley, president of the Millikin Environmental Affairs Council. And she believes now is the best time for the students' voices to be heard.

"Each one of us will be writing a letter about supporting sustainable legislation on the environment and how it personally affects me," she said.

The letters also will be sent to state representatives.

One of the student environmental council's biggest concerns is what is going on with carbon emissions. Last year, they lobbied at the statehouse in Springfield for the Illinois Clean Cars Act.

This past summer, the council set up a town hall meeting with state Reps. Bob Flider, D-Mount Zion, and Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth, who spoke about environmental legislation at the state level.

The student environmental council just received a grant to pay for solar panels that will be installed on the roof of one of the buildings on campus in the spring of 2009.

Jeff Tish with the Macon County Community Environmental Council said he was pleased with the Millikin students' achievements and presented them with a certificate last week.

"It's important to take this to the grass roots level as far as conserving energy, whether it's changing over to fluorescent light bulbs to recycling," Tish said. "Resources from earth are finite resources, and we need to explore those avenues of using solar and wind power."

Radley said she liked Obama's ideas to solve some of the environmental and energy problems. "I just hope that he will continue focusing more on environmental issues during his presidency."

TO HELP

Join the environmental letter-writing campaign at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in room 208 of Millikin University's Science Building.

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