Separated by barricades that divided the parking lot of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, dueling demonstrators rallied yesterday afternoon over mountaintop-removal mining practices.

BRUSSELS - Paul McCartney is urging consumers to fight global warming by going vegetarian at least once a week, ahead of an address he will deliver on Thursday to the European Parliament.

There have been times this year when "hope" was thrown around like a dirty word, spoken sarcastically as though the young people who wore it on T-shirts and showcased it on poster in their dorm rooms last year had somehow grown to despise it. Their fickle attention spans and casual attitudes were cited as signs that the generation did not in fact have the intestinal fortitude it would require to execute change, as opposed to just talking about it when it's the cool thing to do.

Here's a story of two presidents, Barack Obama of the United States and Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives.

Both are young and charismatic. Both were elected last fall to replace discredited incumbents. Both have troublesome legislatures (the opposition party controls the chamber in the Maldives).

But on the biggest question the planet faces -- if we'll take action in time to slow down global warming -- they couldn't be more different.

Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and Patuxent Riverkeeper informed Mirant on Thursday that they intend to sue over what they say are violations of the Clean Water Act. They say the energy company has been illegally discharging pollutants into a creek near Mirant's Brandywine landfill.

The ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has continued to retreat rapidly, declining 26 percent since 2000, scientists say in a new report. Yet the authors of the study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity's role in warming the global climate.

Economists have sparred for years over what price tag to put on the societal danger of carbon dioxide emissions. Now the Obama administration is quietly struggling to reach its own conclusion. "This has huge potential. So many decisions the government makes have an influence on greenhouse gas emissions," said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at the New York University School of Law

"They are putting policies in place encouraging this on a grand scale," said Paul Hanrahan, chief executive of AES, an Arlington company that is a partner in this and three other Chinese wind projects.

MASONTOWN, Pa. - For years, residents here complained about the yellow smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired power plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste in their yards. Five states - including New York and New Jersey - sued the plant's owner, Allegheny Energy, claiming the air pollution was causing respiratory diseases and acid rain.

Scientists say a huge part of the Chesapeake region could be below water in a few decades due to rapid global warming. So why not practice up? Just grab a few wetsuits and goggles and rehearse for the aquatic life to come.

Neither greens nor fossil-fuel addicts are happy with it, and there could be better ways of forcing the US to reduce its emissions. So should we just scrap the Waxman-Markey climate bill?

The US may have turned a corner on climate change since Bush left the White House, but the ambition of the US climate bill - passed by the House of Representatives back in June - is estimated to be a mere 2-4 per cent drop in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared to the UN reference year of 1990

Farm industry leaders and their supporters in Congress are trying to derail climate change legislation by insisting that the House-passed bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), will cause ruinous increases in the costs of production for farmers. They claim this threat is so potentially devastating that climate change legislation should be shelved or loaded up with concessions that send more money to their agricultural constituents.

But a new analysis (pdf) by the Environmental Working Group of US Department of Agriculture cost estimates finds that the projected increased costs of production due to the climate bill will be so small ? $0.45 per acre for soybeans, $0.66 per acre for wheat, and $1.19 per acre for corn, for example ? that they amount to well under one half of one percent of current production costs.

The report, Crying Wolf, concludes that a fertilizer spreader or chemical sprayer that is a bit out of adjustment would cost farmers more. Moreover, the added costs pale compared to the federal government's taxpayer-funded, multi-billion-dollar commodity subsidies

Final approval for Cape Wind is stalled, aggravating developers of the Massachusetts offshore wind project and igniting concerns that the latest roadblock -- over American Indian ceremonies -- could jeopardize other ocean-based energy proposals.

Thirty years later, Vepco -- the Virginia Electric and Power Company -- has a new name: Dominion Virginia Power. One thing hasn't changed: The utility, along with other big businesses, uses fat contributions and aggressive schmoozing to manipulate state government as if it were a corporate subsidiary.

The answer, almost certainly, is Marvin Gaye.

One March day in 2008, Ketch Ryan, a long-time environmentalist, sent a message to her neighborhood group e-mail list in the town of Chevy Chase, inviting neighbors to see the modest two-kilowatt solar-panel array she had just installed on her south-facing roof to convert sunlight into household electricity.

"Loads of people came," Ryan said. They asked questions about the process and how to do it themselves. The Common Cents Solar Co-op was born then and there, founded by Ryan and neighbor Kirk Renaud, who runs BioBrite, a light-therapy business in Bethesda

UNIONTOWN, Ala. - Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.

To county leaders, the train's loads, which will total three million cubic yards of coal ash from a massive spill at a power plant in east Tennessee last December, are a tremendous financial windfall. A per-ton "host fee" that the landfill operators pay the county will add more than $3 million to the county's budget of about $4.5 million.

These ideas - called geoengineering - are not just the stuff of fantasists.

In a speech to the Eastern Coal Council Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher vowed to fight for industry on two controversial environmental measures.Boucher, D-9th, said he will work to reinstate issuance of Nationwide 21 permits, which allowed a more streamlined permitting process for surface mining, and will continue to work toward a greenhouse gas bill more favorable to the coal industry and coal-fired utilities.

He said it would be “a horror to our Appalachian regional economy” if the Nationwide 21 permits –  which allow for the dumping of mine waste into streams – are not restored.

A Richmond judge has ruled that one of the permits issued by the State Air Pollution Control Board for a Wise County coal-fired energy plant is null and void, said Cale Jaffe, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The decision came after environmental groups asked the state to look at the permitting process on the plant that already is about 20 percent complete.

At a bend in the Ohio River, a bulky new device is being attached to a 30-year-old coal plant near the small town of New Haven, W.Va.

The device is being housed in a building four stories tall and bigger than a football field. A 150-foot-tall exhaust stack -- so wide that it would take six adults with their arms fully stretched to reach around it -- will reach into the sky. And pipelines will run out of the building and into saline aquifers two miles underground. The entire contraption will start up as early as September.

The purpose: capturing carbon dioxide emissions and stashing them in underground rock formations -- a critical part of the global effort to slow climate change. This is the technique that promoters say will make coal "clean" and critics say is an expensive pipe dream.

(TUKTOYAKTUK, Northwest Territories) — The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.

President Obama and the rest of the Group of 8 leaders decreed last month that the planet's average temperature shall not rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above today's level. But what if Mother Earth didn't get the memo? How do we stay cool in the future? Two options:

Plan A. Keep talking about the weather. This has been the preferred approach for the past two decades in Western Europe, where leaders like to promise one another that they will keep the globe cool by drastically reducing carbon emissions. Then, when their countries' emissions keep rising anyway, they convene to make new promises and swear that they really, really mean it this time.

Plan B. Do something about the weather. Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.

NEW YORK — A report from the consulting firm McKinsey, released last week, outlined the enormous opportunities for reducing energy use in the United States. The country could reap $1.2 trillion in potential savings by 2020, the consultants found, after an initial investment of about $520 billion in measures such as better insulation for buildings and energy-sipping appliances. That is not even counting the transportation sector.

Opportunities to save vast amounts of energy — and money — are hardly exclusive to the United States. Europeans may have smaller houses, smaller cars and almost certainly less gadget lust than Americans (as well as higher energy prices already). But experts say that Europe could also reap substantial rewards from an efficiency push. So could Asia.

The conflict in southern Sudan, which has killed and displaced tens of thousands of people, is partly a result of drought in Darfur.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion of his stimulus package to building a new green-based economy rich in renewable energy and strategies to cut carbon. But despite the price tag, not one green job yet exists. It comes down to a problem of etymology. No one can yet agree on what a green job actually is. The working definition paints a broad stroke: a job that's good for the economy while simultaneously healing the earth. But that leaves lots open to interpretation—natural gas is technically a cleaner fuel than crude oil, but it's still unsustainable—making it difficult, if not impossible, to measure whether eco-based jobs are being created and whether, as the administration has claimed, they're the saviors of a sagging economy.

When Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon 40 years ago, it was a triumph of American scientific skill. It was also the result of the government's willingness to spend over $125 billion, in today's dollars, to take the country to the moon.

Environmentalists asked a Richmond Circuit Court judge yesterday to throw out state-issued permits for a coal-burning power plant in Wise County.

Among other problems, the permits do not adequately control emissions of carbon dioxide and mercury, the environmentalists said during a three-hour hearing.

The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

When considering how he'd vote on the Waxman-Markety bill last month, Charlottesville, Virginia Representative, Tom Perriello, did what any legislator should. He listened to his constituents. Among the thousands of emails, letters, and faxes he received, a handful in particular stood out.

One was written by Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that works with Charlottesville's Hispanic community. Five more from the Albemarle-Charlottesville branch of the NAACP. All urged the freshman congressman to vote against the important climate change bill. All, it turns out, were forgeries.

A white roof has helped cool Jon Waldrep's Sacramento home.

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But there's one activity that's not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.

Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: "that really shocked us," "we had no idea how bad it was," and "reality is well ahead of the climate models." Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away.

Let me deconstruct the phrases above. The "shock" came when the International Polar Year, a global consortium studying the Arctic, froze a small vessel into the sea ice off eastern Siberia in September 2006. Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen had done the same thing a century before, and his Fram, carried by the drifting ice, emerged off eastern Greenland 34 months later. IPY scientists thought their Tara would take 24 to 36 months. But it reached Greenland in just 14 months, stark evidence that the sea ice found a more open, ice-free, and thus faster path westward thanks to Arctic melting.

Sea levels could rise faster along the U.S. East Coast than in any other densely populated part of the world, new research shows, as changes in ice caps and ocean currents push water toward a shoreline inlaid with cities, resort boardwalks and gem-rare habitats.

Three studies this year, including one out last month, have made newly worrisome forecasts about life along the Atlantic over the next century. While the rest of the world might see seven to 23 inches of sea-level rise by 2100, the studies show this region might get that and more -- 17 to 25 inches more -- for a total increase that would submerge a beach chair.

Might.

Scientists say the information comes from computer models, which could be wrong. And the mid-Atlantic region's ample high ground means it will probably never be as vulnerable as Louisiana and Florida.

But some are already sketching a new vision for the East Coast, as a region under siege by the ocean. In the coming decades, they say, it will probably be necessary to spend heavily to defend some waterside places -- and to make hard choices about where to let the sea win.

Nine members of the "Tredegar 12" returned to Richmond today to finish what they began more than a year ago with a protest that blocked the entrance to Dominion Resources headquarters for hours.

The environmental activists walked free from Richmond General District Court after each completing at least 200 hours of community service in the city in the past 12 months.

KNOXVILLE - The Tennessee Valley Authority ignored long-standing safety concerns and could have prevented the Kingston fly ash spill by addressing them, the TVA inspector general wrote in a damning report issued today.

The utility's independent watchdog found TVA management has not accepted responsibility for management decisions leading to the catastrophe. Instead, the report found, they limited the scope of an investigation into the cause of the disaster in an apparent effort to shore up its legal defense in lawsuits

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Using efficiency measures that are already available would slash U.S. energy use and eliminate the need for power plants to meet demand, a study released today by the National Academy of Sciences says.

Upgrading the efficiency of buildings by changing light bulbs, refrigerators, air conditioners and water heaters may offset projected growth in electricity use by 2020, the report authors said. Adding industrial and transportation efficiency measures might cut U.S. Energy Information Administration projections for power use by 15 percent in 2020 and by 30 percent in 2030, according to the report.

A bill by Sens. Lamar Alexander and Benjamin L. Cardin would prevent mountaintop-removal mining, helping to protect such splendors as Tennessee's Smokies. Miners say they will not spend money there due to the measure. (By Steven Bridges -- Associated Press)

The House's approval of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill earlier this month was a remarkable political achievement and an important beginning to the task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But in all the last-minute wheeling and dealing, the House bill acquired two big loopholes that the Senate must close.

The first loophole involves coal-fired power plants. Coal is the world's most abundant fossil fuel - producing more than half the electricity in the United States - and also its dirtiest, with twice the carbon content of natural gas.

"The NAACP will call on our nation's elected leaders to ensure that the response to climate change can take a higher ground than business as usual -- one that ensures that we capture real public benefits from the new energy economy," the document says.

Opponents argue persuasively that Old Dominion Electric Cooperative will spew enough crap into the air annually to kill us all on this side of the James, never mind the poor people of Surry:

118 lbs. mercury.

920 lbs. lead.

3,685 tons sulfur dioxide.

3,085 tons nitrogen oxide.

282 tons sulfuric mist.

Greenpeace activists draped an enormous banner next to the carved stone faces of Mount Rushmore today, calling for more-aggressive action to fight climate change.

The banner showed President Obama's face -- Greenpeace said it was an unfinished portrait, implying that Obama's legacy was in question -- and the words "America honors leaders not politicians: Stop Global Warming."

Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, which is seeking approval for a massive, coal-burning power plant in Surry County, serves fewer than 300,000 homes in Virginia. Those homes need a reliable source of power, but this plant would exact an environmental cost far out of scale to the number of people who would benefit.

• Carbon dioxide: By the company's public projections, the plant would discharge 14.6 million tons a year into the air. To put that in scale, based on EPA numbers, it's equivalent to the annual output of 2.5 million average passenger cars.

COAL IS AT the epicenter of America's tug-of-war between pollution and affordable energy, and nowhere does the conflict play out better than in Virginia. Coal forms the economic backbone of Southwest Virginia, and produces 44 percent of the electricity consumed in Virginia.

But it is a dirty fuel, and even the nation's most advanced coal-fired power plants still contribute mightily to greenhouse gases. Disposing of the resulting coal ash presents a soil and water pollution nightmare.

Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?

If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains -- encompassing about a million acres -- buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas -- while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains -- with their impoverished and alienated population -- are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.

GREENVILLE - At least 700 people turned out Monday, June 29, for a meeting organized by opponents of a $92.8 million plan to inject carbon dioxide from a nearby ethanol plant more than 3,000 feet underground.

"Are we making a statement?" Anne Vehre of Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration asked the standing-room-only crowd at Lighthouse Christian Center, Sebring-Warner Road and U.S. 36.

They're demanding that the Army Corps of Engineers conduct a full-scale environmental impact statement - and most coal plant proponents downplay the impact of a coal-fired plant to avoid an EIS review, according to Wise Energy for Virginia, one of the groups opposing the Cypress Creek plant.

Rep. Rick Boucher, DAbingdon, is nothing if not persistent.

He failed in his effort last year to pass legislation to institute a small fee on electricity generated by coal, oil or natural gas that would fund research and implementation of carbon capture and sequestration technology. But while recently brokering a compromise that helped move massive climate change legislation in Congress, weakening it in the process, he got the proposal inserted into the bill. 

Could climate change be staved off by making the United States look like a scene from "Mamma Mia!"?

That was suggested in a recent talk by Energy Secretary Steven Chu -- although, because he was speaking to Nobel laureates, he did not mention the ABBA musical set in the Greek islands. He said that global warming could be slowed by a low-tech idea that has nothing to do with coal plants or solar panels: white roofs. 

A coalition of environmental groups opposed to Dominion Resources Inc.'s coal-fired power plant in Wise County said they support the utility company's proposal for a wind farm in the county.

Richmond-based Dominion and BP Wind Energy are considering building wind energy projects in Wise and Tazewell counties in Southwest Virginia.

With the Energy and Commerce Committee's work on the bill largely finished, the focus has shifted to two other powerful panels -- the Ways and Means Committee and Agriculture Committee -- that share jurisdiction over the sweeping proposal to establish a national renewable electricity standard and a cap-and-trade program to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

While green consciousness has entered the political and social mainstream in recent years, investors have been slower to follow suit.

Many investors are closely watching green industries as consumers are increasingly dabbling in a growing array of environmentally friendly products and services, from hybrid vehicles to solar panels, geothermal installations and smart grid technology that tracks electrical use. Interest among investors has heated up, but many are still wary of the long-term success of small green startups.

At the annual Mid-Atlantic Venture Association's Capital Connection conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, hundreds of investors and companies from the region shared investment strategies and participated in panel sessions. One seminar focused on the complexity of the energy markets, including renewable energy.

Want a preview of what the political battle over energy will look like in next year's midterm elections? Take a look at Virginia, one of two states with gubernatorial races this year.

Republican Bob McDonnell, billing himself as "a jobs governor," is putting energy at the heart of his campaign to turn purplish Virginia back into a red state (okay, commonwealth.) Over the weekend, he formally accepted the Republican nomination for governor and launched a familiar battle cry

Some say Dendron's new coal-fired plant will help keep energy costs down and create jobs, but will the environment suffer in the process?

By Ben Swenson

Virginia uses more electricity than it generates, and few laymen are more aware of this fact than the residents of Dendron, population 300, on the western edge of the Hampton Roads region. Last December, Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) announced its selection of Dendron as its preferred site for the construction of a $6 billion coal-fired power plant capable of generating 1,500 megawatts of electricity- enough to power 300,000 homes.

With the fight over health care reform absorbing all the bandwidth on Capitol Hill, Democrats fear a major climate change bill may be left on the cutting-room floor this year. 

A handful of key senators on climate change are almost guaranteed to be tied up well into the fall on health care. Democrats from the Midwest and the South are resistant to a cap-and-trade proposal. And few if any Republicans are jumping in to help push a global warming and energy initiative. 

A total of 12 forged letters -- all appearing to come from local groups unhappy with a climate-change bill -- were sent to three congressional offices this summer by a Washington lobbying firm, according to the pro-coal group for which the firm was working.

That is six more fraudulent letters than were previously known to have been sent by the firm, Bonner and Associates. The newly revealed letters were sent to Reps. Chris Carney (D-Pa.) and Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.), according to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the trade group that hired Bonner and Associates.

RICHMOND, April 27 -- Former President Bill Clinton rallied hundreds of Democrats downtown Monday, telling the crowd that his best friend Terry McAuliffe should be elected the next governor of Virginia to get the economy back on track.

"I'm telling you, in all the speeches I have made for other people, I have never campaigned for anybody who was better made for the moment . . . than Terry McAuliffe right now,' Clinton said.

An environmental coalition today will launch the first serious attack on Old Dominion Electric Cooperative's proposed coal-fired power plant in Surry County.

A report, to be released today by the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition, which includes five environmental groups, argues that consumers who receive power from Old Dominion will pay more for electricity from the coal plant than they would with the use of renewable energy and efficiency programs.

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.Dot Earth

"The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood," the coalition said in a scientific "backgrounder" provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that "scientists differ" on the issue.

On the show Rogers advocated a major program to research, develop, and deploy "carbon capture-and-storage" technology to slash greenhouse gas pollution from coal-fired power plants. "We need to rebuild our economy and transition it to a low-carbon economy... But it's gonna take trillions of dollars to do it."

It is the first step to regulating pollution linked to climate change.

Businesses must not sink money into high-carbon infrastructure unless they are willing to lose their investments within a few years, the US lead negotiator on climate change has warned.

In the Obama administration's starkest rebuke yet to industry over global warming, Todd Stern, special envoy for climate change at the state department, said "high-carbon goods and services will become untenable" as the world negotiated a new agreement to cut carbon emissions

The Richmond area is flunking tough new limits on ozone, the main pollutant in smog.

That means the area will likely go back on the federal government's list of smoggy regions when the new list comes out next year, state officials say.

We liberals are our own worst enemies sometimes.  Take climate change.  For over a decade we've been promoting the idea of cap-and-trade as a way of dealing with carbon emissions, partly for technical reasons (unlike a carbon tax, it imposes firm caps) but also - in fact, mostly - for pragmatic and political reasons.  A carbon tax, even if it has some theoretical advantages, is unlikely ever to happen.  We all know why.  Cap-and-trade, because it uses market mechanisms, has a proven track record with acid rain control, and raises money via auctions rather than taxes, has at least a fighting chance.

So now that liberals are in control of Congress and the White House and have an actual chance to pass legislation, what happens?  Everyone starts talking about carbon taxes instead.  Because, you know, in some theoretical economic sense you can argue that they're more efficient.  It's enough to make you scream sometimes.  At least, that's what it did to David Roberts, who must have been reading my mind after digesting Tom Friedman's most recent column:

The Arctic sea ice cover continues to shrink and become thinner, according to satellite measurements and other data released yesterday, providing further evidence that the region is warming more rapidly than scientists had expected.

The data on this winter's ice buildup came on the day that international ministers gathered in Washington to address issues facing Earth's polar regions, which have been disproportionately affected by global warming. At the State Department, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting and the Arctic Council that the Obama administration will press for greater action on climate change and for passage of the Law of the Sea Treaty in order to help regulate expanded human activity in a warmer Arctic, including shipping, fishing and oil exploration

The Tennessee Valley Authority manipulated science methods to downplay water contamination caused by a massive coal ash disaster, according to independent technical experts and critics of the federally funded electrical company.

The TVA is the largest public provider of electricity in the nation, providing power to 670,000 homes and burning through some 14,000 tons of coal per day. On December 22 the authority made headlines when one of its retention ponds collapsed, letting loose an avalanche of coal ash--the toxic residue left over when coal is burned. More than 5 million cubic yards of ashy mud pushed its way through a neighborhood and into Tennessee's Emory River, knocked houses off foundations and blanketed river water with plumes of gray scum that flowed downstream

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) -- Windmills off the East Coast could generate enough electricity to replace most, if not all, the coal-fired power plants in the United States, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday.

The secretary spoke at a public hearing in Atlantic City on how the nation's offshore areas can be tapped to meet America's energy needs

WYTHEVILLE - U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., will host a conference in Wytheville on April 20 to inform local governments, nonprofit organizations, small business owners and others on the opportunities posed for Southwest Virginia in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act recently approved by Congress.

"The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Economic Opportunities for Southwest Virginia" will begin at 9 a.m. at the Wytheville Meeting Center

Highways, housing and a school receiving some $60 million under President Obama's massive economic recovery plan face increased flooding -- or complete submersion -- within the lifetime of his daughters, environmental groups and scientists warned yesterday.

Yesterday was a great day for the people of Appalachia and for all of America. In a bold departure from Bush-era energy policy, the Obama administration suspended a coal company's permit to dump debris from its proposed mountaintop mining operation into a West Virginia valley and stream. In addition, the administration promised to carefully review upward of 200 such permits awaiting approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

With yesterday's action, President Obama has signaled his intention to save this region. His moratorium on these permits will allow the administration to develop a sensible long-term approach to dealing with this catastrophic method of coal extraction

The Environmental Protection Agency sent a proposal to the White House on Friday finding that global warming is endangering the public's health and welfare, according to several sources, a move that could have far-reaching implications for the nation's economy and environment.

The proposal -- which comes in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering EPA to consider whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act -- could lay the groundwork for nationwide measures to limit such emissions. It reverses one of the Bush administration's landmark environmental decisions: In July 2008 then-EPA administrator Stephen Johnson rejected his scientific and technical staff's recommendation and announced the agency would seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming pollution

It is time to abolish mountaintop removal mining, not regulate it. That is the fervent message being spread from community to community, and state to state, now that scores of ANFO explosive-packing mountaintop removal permits stand at the doors of the Army Corps of Engineers, ready to be issued after the recent 4th Circuit Court ruling.

Three million pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil explosives are being detonated daily in Appalachia.

Sea levels are rising almost twice as fast in the Chesapeake region as in most of the world, and waterside communities are spending millions to keep the water from eroding yards, marshes and sandy beaches.

The longstanding disgrace of mountaintop mining is now squarely in President Obama's hands.

A recent court decision has given the green light to as many as 90 mountaintop mining projects in Appalachia's coal-rich hills, which in turn could destroy more than 200 miles of valleys and streams on top of the 1,200 miles that have already been obliterated. The right course for the administration is clear: stop the projects until the underlying regulations are revised so as to end the practice altogether

Pastor Sarah Scherschligt of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Gaithersburg plans to air-dry her clothes during Lent and go without her car for a week. The church is also planting a vegetable garden and will donate the food. (Handout - Courtesy of Sarah Scherschligt)

As smoke rose from the power plant just across Cuckold Creek, one of the first residential windmills in Maryland began providing the Elliott-Robinson home with a greener source of electricity yesterday.

The couple spent $23,000 to put up a personal windmill in their back yard, which will decrease their dependence on the traditional power grid and the power plant whose smokestacks loom over their home in Charles County.

Lights on the famous Citgo sign, Zakim Bridge, Prudential Center, John Hancock Tower, and other local landmarks will "go dark" for one hour this month as Boston joins cities across the world in a climate-change campaign.

More than 1,000 cities in 80 countries are expected to participate in Earth Hour on March 28, from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. World Wildlife Fund, the event's sponsor, is asking individuals, businesses, governments, and organizations to turn off their lights for one hour to make a global statement of concern about climate change and to demonstrate commitment to finding solutions.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Green protesters demanding more money to tackle climate change blocked the main entrance to European Union headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday and Belgian police said they arrested more than 350 of them.

"Save the climate, bail out the planet," chanted the group of Greenpeace activists, who chained themselves to the gates outside the EU Council, where ministers were discussing how much the bloc should contribute to a climate change fund.

Anational green-building program is being revised to put more emphasis on using energy wisely and fighting climate change.

The changes are being made in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, or LEED. It is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, a Washington-based nonprofit group.

Climate scientists meeting in Copenhagen Tuesday warned that sea levels could rise to almost three times that of the official worst-case estimates, threatening hundreds of millions of people.

The landmark 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that sea levels would rise 18 to 59 centimeters - about 7 to 23 inches - by the end of the century. That would be enough to submerge several small island nations, and would inundate low-lying and densely populated deltas in Africa, East Asia, and on the Indian subcontinent

Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can't resist quoting from it. Consider this faux article from June 2005 about America's addiction to Chinese exports:

FENGHUA, China - Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the "sheer amount of [garbage] Americans will buy. Often, when we're assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,' I will say to myself, ‘There's no way that anyone will ever buy these.' ... One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless [garbage]? I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I've made for them," Chen said. "And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible."

Let's today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall - when Mother Nature and the market both said: "No more."

Thousands of young people, many of them emboldened by the 2008 presidential contest, will descend on the Capitol tomorrow to urge the government to take radical action to stem climate change and plant the seeds of a green economy.

Arriving Friday from every state in the union -- as well as every Canadian province and more than a dozen countries -- about 12,000 people, most between 18 and 26 years old, are in the District this weekend for Power Shift '09, a summit aimed at raising environmental awareness and lobbying leaders on green issues.

When you ask Phil Radford, the new executive director of Greenpeace USA, whether he thinks that at 33 he's a little too young for the job, he laughs. "No! I think I should have had it at 25," he says. He is mostly joking, as his predecessor John Passacantando did a pretty good job for his eight years under the hostile eye of George W Bush. He got the organisation out of debt, massively expanded the membership, helped to get climate change into mainstream awareness, managed to beat a Bush attempt to shut them up through the courts, and even saw off an Exxon-funded smear campaign.

The job is famously hairy: it's the sort of position where the experience and political nous that come with age will certainly come in handy. From its very earliest days, Greenpeace has been famous - as you'd expect from a group of people agitating on their ethical beliefs - for arguments and fallings out, with one co-founder after another being ousted, or growing disenchanted. As Passacantando said : "I've been here twice as long as any of my predecessors, and I'm the only one leaving happy."

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said on Wednesday he will soon introduce a climate bill that does something different - it would return at least 90 percent of the money from the sale of emissions permits to every American.

The announcement comes a day after President Barack Obama told Congress he wanted a climate bill to combat global warming and to wean the nation off fossil fuels. As yet, the White House hasn't endorsed any specific plans

ALLIGATORS basking off the English coast; a vast Brazilian desert; the mythical lost cities of Saigon, New Orleans, Venice and Mumbai; and 90 per cent of humanity vanished. Welcome to the world warmed by 4 °C.

Clearly this is a vision of the future that no one wants, but it might happen. Fearing that the best efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions may fail, or that planetary climate feedback mechanisms will accelerate warming, some scientists and economists are considering not only what this world of the future might be like, but how it could sustain a growing human population. They argue that surviving in the kinds of numbers that exist today, or even more, will be possible, but only if we use our uniquely human ingenuity to cooperate as a species to radically reorganise our world.

RICHMOND, Va. - A state law authorizing construction of a power station in southwestern Virginia is unconstitutional because it requires the plant to burn Virginia coal, a lawyer for environmentalists challenging the project told the Virginia Supreme Court on Wednesday.

"Explicit preferences such as this violate the Commerce Clause," attorney Cale Jaffe of the Southern Environmental Law Center said during a half-hour hearing.

Environmentalists go to court this week in an effort to block Dominion Virginia Power's 585-megawatt coal-fired power plant under construction in the state's southwestern corner.

The Virginia Supreme Court is to hear arguments Wednesday in an appeal of the State Corporation Commission's approval of the $1.8 billion project in June

Adam Fier recently sold his home, got rid of his car and pulled his twin 6-year-old girls out of elementary school in Montgomery County. He and his wife packed the family's belongings and moved to New Zealand -- a place they had never visited or seen before, and where they have no family or professional connections. Among the top reasons: global warming.

Halfway around the world, the president of Kiribati, a Pacific nation of low-lying islands, said last week that his country is exploring ways to move all its 100,000 citizens to a new homeland because of fears that a steadily rising ocean will make the islands uninhabitable.

Adam Fier recently sold his home, got rid of his car and pulled his twin 6-year-old girls out of elementary school in Montgomery County. He and his wife packed the family's belongings and moved to New Zealand -- a place they had never visited or seen before, and where they have no family or professional connections. Among the top reasons: global warming.

Halfway around the world, the president of Kiribati, a Pacific nation of low-lying islands, said last week that his country is exploring ways to move all its 100,000 citizens to a new homeland because of fears that a steadily rising ocean will make the islands uninhabitable.

BLUE GRASS, Va. There was something in the smoke, as Ivan Puffenbarger's sugarhouse burned and the volunteer firefighters roared over the mountains trying to save it. In the ash and plastic fumes, there was a smell like molasses dripping on a stove burner.

• The Pancake-Ready Paradise
• Virginia Syrup-Makers Question Their Future

Seven hundred gallons of maple syrup was on fire.

The Obama administration is considering establishing national rules for regulating greenhouse gas emissions for automobiles, according to White House officials, a move backed by both auto manufacturers and some environmentalists.

For weeks, administration officials have been meeting with car companies as well as green groups and representatives from California -- which is awaiting word on whether it will receive a federal waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles -- to try to broker a deal on the issue. On Sunday, Carol M. Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate, said she and others backed the idea of a single standard for cars and trucks.

Customers of Columbia Gas of Virginia learned this month that their rates for natural gas are dropping 11 percent for the next three months to reflect the reduced cost of fuel.

Meanwhile, electricity customers of Dominion Virginia Power last month saw yet another rate increase - on top of the 18 percent hike imposed last summer because of the high cost of fuel.

The Environmental Protection Agency will reopen the possibility of regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, tossing aside a December Bush administration memorandum that declared that the agency would not limit the emissions.

The decision could mark the first step toward placing limits on greenhouse gases emitted by coal plants, an issue that has been hotly contested by the coal industry and environmentalists since April 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide should be considered a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

Glaciers in the European Alps may melt as soon as 2050, some scientists say.

Some of the changes are already taking place. Others are expected to be seen in coming decades.

There are two ways to look at this: Either stay home (which might be less depressing and won't add more airline emissions) or get a move on it and see the hot spots you just can't miss.

Every year, Google Inc. invites a group of global A-listers to its own Davos-style conference to think big thoughts. The event, called Zeitgeist, tends to be as pretentious as its name-captains of industry, finance, and government chattering onstage in front of about 400 of Google's friends and customers about the fate of the internet and the world.

Penguins in peril as food search turns into marathon

Fluctuation in fish stocks caused by climate change forces Magellanic penguins to forage farther afield while their starving mates look after the chicks

Penguins from the largest colony on mainland South America are being forced to swim the equivalent of two marathons farther to find food because of the effects of climate change

At that rate, stands of yellow birch in the U.S., for example, may move well north of the Canadian border by the early 2100s

WASHINGTON - North America's coastlines would be hit especially hard by rising sea levels if the huge West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses and melts in a warming world as some experts fear, scientists said on Thursday.

The loss of that ice sheet alone would inundate some coastal areas, swamping New York, Washington D.C., south Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, with sea levels in some places higher by 21 feet or more than today, the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

Six months after a significant rate increase, Dominion Virginia Power has added another charge to customers' bills.

The electricity company increased its rates by a small amount as of Jan. 1 to finance construction of its new coal plant in Wise County. Dominion added a charge, known as a "rider," of 0.153 cents per kilowatt-hour to customers' monthly bills. For a resident using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month, the change adds $1.53, or 1.4 percent, to the bill.

Reporting from Washington -- California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

In his first interview since taking office last month, the Nobel-prize-winning physicist offered some of the starkest comments yet on how seriously President Obama's cabinet views the threat of climate change, along with a detailed assessment of the administration's plans to combat it.

The Virginia economy is in full-on crisis. Businesses statewide are hurting, state employees are being laid off by the thousands, and the state is cutting core services in the face of a $3 billion budget shortfall. 

A focus on energy can help an ailing economy. It's when we invest in new energy efficiency -- not new energy pollution -- that Virginia's economy will see a boost.

Washington has seen its share of big protests over the years, and most of them center on  the White House,  the Mall or the Capitol. That will change tomorrow, when the first big protest of the Obama era -- and the first mass civil disobedience against global warming in this country -- will take place against the not-very-scenic backdrop of the Capitol Hill Power Plant, a dirty symbol of the dirtiest business on Earth,  the combustion of coal.

In that one plant -- owned and operated by our senators and representatives -- you can see all the filth that comes with coal. There are the particulates it spews into the air and hence the lungs of those Washington residents who enjoy breathing. There are the profits it hands to the coal industry, which  is literally willing to level mountains across West Virginia and Kentucky to increase its fat margins. And most of all there is the invisible carbon dioxide it spews each day into the atmosphere, drying our forests, melting our glaciers and acidifying our oceans.

Global warming concerns took center stage Monday as two organizations held rallies to draw attention to an issue that President Barack Obama has promised to place near the top of his agenda.

A group of young protesters gathered in front of the Capitol to rally on behalf of legislation to reduce carbon emissions, decrease dependence on coal and oil, and speed a national drive toward "clean" energy

The U.S. House of Representatives has abandoned a plan to make its offices "carbon neutral," a sign that Congress is wrestling with a pledge to become more green even as it crafts sweeping legislation on climate change.

The promise that the House would effectively reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero was a centerpiece of the Green the Capitol program in which the new Democratic leadership sought to use Capitol Hill as a kind of a national demonstration project.

Today marks the start of Power Shift '09, a weekend that will bring 10,000 young people to Washington to lobby Congress for action on climate change. Those who attend will hear from speakers such as Sen. Nancy Pelosi, and learn the skills necessary to lobby on Capitol Hill. At the end of the weekend, another group, Capitol Climate Action, will be hosting the largest civil disobedience demonstration for climate change yet at the coal-fired Capitol Power Plant. Endorsed by a myriad of environmental organizations and NASA climate scientist James Hansen, young people in dress clothes will risk arrest to demonstrate at the plant. Both events are a testament to the role that young people will have in changing climate policy. I talked to Jessy Tolkan, the executive director of Power Shift '09 about how she thinks this weekend could change our climate policy forever.

You've led young people for a while now - what's the best way for them to make their voices heard all year round, rather than just this weekend?

 Young people need to flex their political muscle 365 days a year. They need to do that by constantly buzzing in the ears of Congress and political leaders, being visual on their college campuses and communities, and physically building the movement. We need to consolidate our power - by that, I mean making sure that our congressional officials know we are a voting bloc and making sure corporations know that we have tremendous purchasing power. We need to consolidate so we can take on special interests that have kept us out of power for a long time

Here's a talking point in the green jobs debate: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States.

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it's down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades

Greenhouse gas levels currently expected by mid-century will produce devastating long-term droughts and a sea-level rise that will persist for 1,000 years regardless of how well the world curbs future emissions of carbon dioxide, an international team of scientists reported yesterday.

Top climate researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Switzerland and France said their analysis shows that carbon dioxide will remain near peak levels in the atmosphere far longer than other greenhouse gases, which dissipate relatively quickly.

Emperor penguins, whose long treks across Antarctic ice to mate have been immortalised by Hollywood, are heading towards extinction, scientists say.

Based on predictions of sea ice extent from climate change models, the penguins are likely to see their numbers plummet by 95% by 2100.

That corresponds to a decline to just 600 breeding pairs in the world

After more than seven years of investigation and controversy, Cape Wind's proposal to build 130 massive turbines across 25 square miles of Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound now seems all but sure to go ahead, following a favorable environmental assessment.

The final Environmental Impact Statement from the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) found the project posed no serious environmental threat. The 2,800 page final report differed little from a draft report, released almost exactly a year ago, which identified no lasting major adverse impacts on wildlife, navigation, fishing, tourism or recreation.

Accusing the state of failing to control industrial air pollution, environmental groups went to court yesterday to force the Maryland Department of the Environment to set new emission limits for a Baltimore trash incinerator.

The groups also threatened to sue Atlanta-based Mirant for allegedly spewing pollutants from one of its power plants in suburban Washington. The plant has been operating for years without a permit.

To prevent "Orwellian political lists" of law-abiding activists, Maryland lawmakers outlined plans Thursday to prevent the kind of surveillance the Maryland State Police used on dozens who were wrongly described as terrorists in a police database.

Plans for the legislation, which will be introduced next week, were discussed even as further details were made public about the extent of the surveillance

A nonprofit group plans to sue Mirant Corp. for burning dirty oil and failing to control pollution at its power plant in southern Prince George's County.

The Environmental Integrity Project, along with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said Mirant's Chalk Point power plant in Aquasco counted 1,430 violations of the Clean Air Act between Jan. 4, 2006 and Feb. 13, 2008

Cyclones, earthquakes and hurricanes around the world made 2008 one of the worst years for natural disasters so far this decade, the United Nations said Thursday.

At least 235,816 people were killed in 321 different disasters, some of the worst of which took place in Burma and China, according to the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reducti

Not only have average worldwide temperatures been rising for the last 50 years, but also the hottest day of the year has shifted almost two days earlier.

More storm-related flooding, shoreline erosion, habitat loss and saltwater intrusion into potential drinking water supplies are expected in Delaware and other Mid-Atlantic states as the climate warms, according to a report issued Friday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Delaware officials said they plan to use the federal report as a stepping-off point to plan for adaptation as the sea level continues to rise.

Maryland and other Mid-Atlantic states need to do a better job of preparing for sea-level rise if climate change is as intense as scientists think it will be, according to a new federal report.

On the last business day of the Bush Administration on Friday, the federal government issued the report, "Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region."

Coal ash spilled onto Barack Obama's agenda Wednesday when his pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency spoke of possibly regulating the waste from coal-fired power plants.

Lisa Jackson promised at a Senate hearing to immediately assess the hundreds of coal ash disposal sites at power plants across the country in the wake of two spills in Alabama and Tennessee

The country's environment and employment could be given a huge boost by investing in clean, green infrastructure, a report by a state environmental advocacy group suggests.

"Fossil fuels have run our environment and economy into the ground," said J.R. Tolbert, an advocate for Environment Virginia.

The Richmond-based environmental group released a 34-page report Tuesday outlining how much it says pollution could be reduced if energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements were made nationwide. The document says that if all its proposals - which include increasing transit operations, funding the Green Jobs Act and creating a building retrofit program - were implemented within the next decade, annual global warming pollution would be reduced by nearly 10 percent. In terms of oil consumption, the savings would be the equivalent of taking 1 million cars off the road each year, the report states.

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will become chairman of the Democratic National Committee later this month, serving as the top political messenger for Barack Obama's administration even while he finishes his final year in the governor's mansion, several sources said.

Kaine, who emerged as one of Obama's vice presidential finalists this summer, will operate from Richmond in a part-time capacity until January 2010, when he will become the full-time DNC chairman. Kaine is constitutionally barred from running for reelection

ROUND ROCK, Texas -- Computer giant Dell Inc. said this summer that it has become "carbon neutral," the latest step in its quest to be "the greenest technology company on the planet."

What that means, and what it doesn't, may surprise Dell customers and other consumers who have been bombarded with bold environmental promises from major corporations.

In the two years since Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," helped make climate change a marquee issue, companies from Timberland Co., the shoe maker, to News Corp., the owner of The Wall Street Journal, have promised to become "carbon neutral."

Virginia slurry ponds similar to the one that failed in Harriman, Tenn., are inspected regularly by state and federal officials, as well as the companies that own them.

And they are "over-designed" to have the ability to retain 26 inches of rainfall in a 24-hour period, said Mike Abbott, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.

The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The survey -- which was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and issued this month -- expands on the 2007 findings of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change. Looking at factors such as rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic and prolonged drought in the Southwest, the new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100

In one of the first internal struggles of the incoming Obama administration, environmentalists and smart-growth advocates are trying to shift the priorities of the economic stimulus plan that will be introduced in Congress next month away from allocating tens of billions of dollars to highways, bridges and other traditional infrastructure spending to more projects that create "green-collar" jobs.

The debate has centered on two competing principles in the evolving plan: the desire to spend money on what President-elect Barack Obama calls "shovel-ready projects," such as highway and bridge construction, vs. spending on more environmentally conscious projects, such as grids for wind and solar power

KINGSTON, Tenn. - What may be the nation's largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity.

Federal studies have long shown coal ash to contain significant quantities of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems. But with no official word on the dangers of the sludge in Tennessee, displaced residents spent Christmas Eve worried about their health and their property, and wondering what to do.

Federal energy analysts said Wednesday that U.S. demand for oil barely will grow over the coming decades because of efforts to reduce use and invest in renewable power sources, but fossil fuels will continue to make up 80 percent of the nation's energy supplies.

The Energy Information Administration also revised its estimates of carbon pollution downward from a year ago, saying three factors are responsible: higher prices, more energy-efficient technology and business investors wary of spending money on "dirty" fuel development

Ten Northeast states conducted their second auction of carbon dioxide-emissions allowances Wednesday as part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an effort to combat global warming by reducing pollution from the power sector.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Researchers and officials concerned about global warming have focused on oil usage, but scientists on Wednesday said liquefied coal could have a greater affect on global climate change.

Global warming scenarios are based on oil reserves, but those reserves will have less impact on global climate than the extent to which liquefied coal replaces oil and gas, scientists said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Promoting the Future, Van Jones Has No Shortage of Energy

Jones is just one of many people urging the incoming Obama administration to use the economic crisis to push forward a spending program that would kick-start wider renewable energy use and build the infrastructure needed for a more energy-efficient, and more energy-independent, nation. He also wants the next president to ban new coal plants, create a "Clean Energy Corps" for jobs and job training, install new electricity transmission lines, provide incentives to trade in gas guzzlers for hybrid cars, and establish a federal revolving loan fund for energy efficiency measures.

Environmentalists are vowing to block a proposed $6 billion coal-fired power plant in Surry County, saying it would increase air pollution, would contribute to global warming and is not needed.

Advocacy groups including the Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center and Chesapeake Climate Action Network are gearing up for what one activist called "all-out war" in response to plans announced this week by the project sponsor, Old Dominion Electric Cooperative.

Climate change and global warming are rising concerns for the Delaware River Basin, scientists said Friday, especially for lower Delaware River and Delaware Bay coastlines vulnerable to sea level changes and wetland losses.

Officials with the Delaware River Basin Commission and Partnership for the Delaware Estuary listed climate change research as high priorities in their latest report cards for the 3,539-square-mile Delaware River Basin.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine on Thursday told his Commission on Climate Change that he welcomes its recommendation for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that are deeper than what he originally proposed as part of Virginia's plans to combat global warming.

Speaking to the 30-member commission as it debated the details of its final report, due next week, Kaine said he intends to carry out as many of the panel's recommendations "as we reasonably can."

The phrase "clean coal" was repeated by virtually every major presidential candidate this year. Now the battle over what it means is heating up.

A group of environmental organizations concerned about global warming, including one backed by former vice president Al Gore, is launching an advertising campaign this week to counter the coal industry's efforts to promote what it calls "clean coal."

The Worldwatch Institute reports that climate protests are escalating worldwide, as more and more people join movements to block the construction of coal-fired power plants and pressure their governments to mandate greenhouse-gas-emission caps.

Worldwatch writer Ben Block cites recent demonstrations throughout Europe, Australia, and the United States. He quotes a clean-energy youth movement spokeswoman who marvels at the recent increase in participants:

NEW YORK TIMES- President-elect Barack Obama promised Saturday to create the largest public works construction program since the inception of the interstate highway system a half century ago as he seeks to put together a plan to resuscitate the reeling economy.

With jobs evaporating and the recession deepening, Mr. Obama began highlighting elements of the economic recovery program he is trying to fashion with Congressional leaders in hopes of being able to enact it shortly after being sworn in on Jan. 20. His address on Saturday followed the report on Friday indicating that the country lost 533,000 jobs in November alone, bringing the total number of jobs lost over the past year to nearly 2 million.

All Things Considered, December 4, 2008 · An organization headed by former Vice President Al Gore released a television ad Thursday that takes on so-called clean coal technology - a subject that came up in this year's presidential debates. Although the election is over, the back-and-forth continues over the technology - and even the definition of the term "clean coal."

The idea behind the new commercial from the Alliance for Climate Protection is that clean coal is like the emperor's clothes: It doesn't exist. Gore - the winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on raising awareness about climate change - tells NPR's Robert Siegel that clean coal technology is not "anywhere close to being a reality."

President-Elect Barack Obama has pushed for "green technology," "green energy" and "green" jobs.

But what exactly is a "green" job?

Richmond, VA - After a year of public forums, expert testimony, and committee meetings, the Virginia Commission on Climate Change finalized its "Climate Change Action Plan" today. Virginia's environmental community is encouraged that the Commission went beyond the initial goals it was charged with, calling for the state to cut global warming pollution by 25% over the next 12 years and more than 80% by 2050. However, the Commission missed the mark on a few policies that are key to hitting those reductions.

WALL STREET JOURNAL - An unexpected drop in U.S. electricity consumption has utility companies worried that the trend isn't a byproduct of the economic downturn, and could reflect a permanent shift in consumption that will require sweeping change in their industry.

NBC29 - New passenger rail service in central Virginia is not as far off as you may think. The founder of C'ville Rail, Meredith Richards, says the state has promised millions of dollars to a central Virginia rail project, even in the middle of the economic meltdown.

NPR

Governors Tackle Climate Change

Listen Now: http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=97203134&m=97203114

Day to Day, November 19, 2008 · California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is hosting an international climate change summit in Beverly Hills this week. He's partnered with governors from across the country to discuss how cutting emissions can help the economy. Madeleine Brand talks to Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who is co-hosting the summit. Sebelius has focused her attention on expanding wind power to the state of Kansas. She also recently vetoed the expansion of coal plants in her state.

On Tuesday, President-elect Barack Obama made an extraordinary statement to the Governors' Global Climate Summit taking place in Los Angeles.

Environmentalists said that the coal industry was reeling following a ruling on Thursday by the Environmental Appeals Board, an independent body of adjudicators within the Environmental Protection Agency.

The state Public Service Commission on Tuesday unanimously rejected a proposed $1.3 billion 300-megawatt mostly coal-fired power plant proposed by Wisconsin Power & Light at Cassville.

Regional leaders have approved new voluntary standards, touted as among the first of their kind in the country, aimed at radically cutting the entire metro area's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Just a week ago, Barack Obama addressed the nation that had just elected him the 44th President of the United States. When he named America's greatest challenges, "a planet in peril" was a centerpiece. After the Bush administration's eight-year war on our air, oceans, and wildlife, concerned citizens everywhere had justified reason to celebrate, feeling that they too had possibly won a great victory that night.

OSLO (Reuters) - This year is on track to be about the 10th warmest globally since records began in 1850 but gaps in Arctic data mean the world may be slightly underestimating global warming, a leading scientist said on Tuesday.

Pain hides in these green mountains. Diseased hearts and clouded lungs, aching teeth and anxious minds. But for three days a year, more than 800 volunteer doctors, dentists, nurses and other health-care workers come from all over Virginia and beyond to this isolated place inAppalachia to provide free medical care to those who cannot afford it. Sick and hurting people by the hundreds gather and wait for the gates of the Wise County Fairgrounds to swing open -- their presence a testament to the country's health-care crisis.

Oil industry leaders are predicting "dark days" for fossil fuels under President-elect Barack Obama, while environmentalists are celebrating the election as a win for clean energy.

But much will depend on the makeup of Congress. Though a number of enviro-backed congressional candidates got the nod last night, there weren't quite as many pick-ups as greens were hoping for -- and a number of the new congressional Democrats come from traditionally fossil-fuel-friendly states.

The Senate

WASHINGTON (AP) - The world pumped up its pollution of the chief man-made global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists' projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said.

THERE'S NO LACK of parish get-togethers at Williamsburg United Methodist Church this fall. There's a lunch for the "50-plus" crowd and a state-fair youth jaunt, a church barbecue and a middle school retreat.

The state Commission on Climate Change issued its first findings today about how global warming will affect Virginia.

Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide

Then, a funny thing happened. No one really attacked them for saying so.

A report released yesterday by the organization says the state could cut its electricity needs 20 percent by 2025 by implementing energy-efficient programs and technologies.

Gov. O'Malley launches effort to convert MD bus fleet to hybrid-electric

Construction is under way on Dominion Virginia Power's $1.8 billion coal-fired power plant in southwest Virginia.

The nation’s second largest utility provider has been given the go-ahead for the construction of a US$1.8 billion coal and biomass plant in the Appalachian Mountains.

Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell on April 21 led more than a dozen governors from across the country in signing the Governors' Declaration on Climate Change at the 2008 Conference on Climate Change at Yale University.

Dominion Virginia Power boasts that its planned Wise County plant will burn coal cleanly using state-of-the-art technology.

Mercury emissions figures in its air pollution permit application tell a slightly different story. Dominion proposes to release up to 49 pounds of mercury per year, but critics contend its permit application contains an opt-out clause.

For months, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine enjoyed political popularity replicating that of his Democratic predecessor, Mark R. Warner. It seemed that he had fixed a budget crisis and launched the most far-reaching omnibus land-use and transportation plan in decades. As the 2008 presidential election approached, he was even being mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate, just as Warner had once been put on the list of presidential possibilities.

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut, April 18, 2008 (ENS) - Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell today led 20 Democrat and Republican governors from across the country in signing the Governors' Declaration on Climate Change at the 2008 Conference on Climate Change at Yale University.

Which weighs more this election year—the economy, or the environment?

This was supposed to be the year the environment and climate change reached a political tipping point. With the House back in Democratic hands and all three presidential candidates making more-or-less green noises, business-as-usual seemed doomed. But then business-as-usual politics intervened.

ANNAPOLIS, MD - The 2008 Maryland general assembly adjourned at midnight Tuesday. Throughout the session there were ups and downs as legislators worked to vote on bills

If you want to hear music that will lift you up and make you feel like summer's here and will never leave, come to Baltimore's Druid Hill Park on Saturday, April 26.  Baltimore singer/songwriter Caleb Stine and The Brakemen are playing at the Ecofestival.

In early April, Dominion Power hopes to break ground on a new coal-fired power plant in Wise County. Also in early April, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., could cast a key vote to extend tax incentives crucial to sustaining and expanding clean energy industries. While the state seems intent on providing new energy from dirty coal, our senator might be a key vote in support of clean energy.

A compromise bill approved earlier this year would allow two additional Air Pollution Control Board members appointed by the governor to cast votes on a controversial coal-fired power plant proposed for Wise County, Va.

Congressional investigators said yesterday that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson recommended raising automobile fuel economy standards three months ago based on a staff assessment that carbon dioxide emissions threaten the public's health and welfare, but the Bush administration has taken no action.

Thou shalt recycle - and not smoke a doobie.

The Pope has come up with a whole new slew of sins for Catholics and it turns out driving around in that gas-guzzling SUV may land you in the Ninth Circle.

Dominion Virginia Power made two concessions last week in its bid to build a new coal-fired power plant in Wise County.

Press Release - Office of the Governor - Governor Expresses Support for Legislation That Would Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 90% by 2050

Candidates' plans to counter climate change.

Fact: Virginia gets less than 1 percent of its electricity from “green” sources such as the wind or the sun. Fact: Virginia ranks 38th among U.S. states in energy efficiency. Fact: Climate change is real, and fossil fuel substitutes are needed, according to President Bush’s State of the Union address last year. So how would Dominion Virginia Power respond to these facts?

Green groups push climate, Bay cleanup and energy bills

Thick snowfall provided a wintry backdrop as advocates gathered in front of the State House on Thursday to rally for legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and increasing energy efficiency. 

The proposed Wise County plant has come to symbolize growing debates about the importance of a region's economic health verses the actual health of its residents, the power of Dominion in state government and the looming battle over the future of public investment for our energy.

A vegetarian, the Indian economist made a plea for people around the world to tame their carnivorous impulses.

"Please eat less meat -- meat is a very carbon intensive commodity," he said, adding that consuming large quantities was also bad for one's health.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has released its final report on "2008 Global Temperatures." Last year "was the coolest year since 2000." Given 0.05°C "uncertainty in comparing recent years," NASA "can only conclude with confidence that 2008 was somewhere within the range from 7th to 10th warmest year in the record."

The bigger climate news, of course, is that "in the period of instrumental measurements, which extends back to 1880 ... The ten warmest years all occur within the 12-year period 1997-2008." That's why the climate story of the decade is that the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s (see "Very warm 2008 makes this the hottest decade in recorded history by far"). And that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s.

The headline coming out of NASA's report, however, is clearly that they are sticking by their near-term forecast of an imminent record:

NASA climate scientist James E. Hansen has been chosen by his peers to receive the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society (AMS).

Jim Hansen is performing a tremendous job at communicating our science to the public and, more importantly, to policymakers and decision-makers," said Franco Einaudi, director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

WASHINGTON -- Big Coal is on a roll in the nation's capital, winning early rounds this week in what promises to be a long fight over fossil fuels and climate change.

Despite a well-funded ad campaign by environmentalists attacking the industry, and a huge coal-ash spill in Tennessee that has led to calls for more regulation, the industry has received positive assurances this week from President-elect Barack Obama's nominees that the new administration is committed to keeping coal a big part of the nation's energy source.

Coal Train Operated by National Coal Corporation Derails in Scott County, Tennessee

ONEIDA, Tenn. A coal train operated by National Coal Corporation over turned on Friday, January 9, 2009, spilling approximately 1100 tons of coal next to the New River in Scott County, Tennessee. Eight rail cars, which typically hold 120 tons of coal, were involved

LOS ANGELES -- Instead of joining his protester friends on the snowy sidewalk outside the Bureau of Land Management office in Salt Lake City, Tim DeChristopher took a seat inside. In a room milling with oil and gas men who knew one another by sight, he was the unknown in a red parka, registering as a bidder in an auction for the rights to drill on 149,000 acres of federal land. DeChristopher was handed a red paddle bearing the number 70.

Half an hour later, he was raising it.

Half of the world's population could face severe food shortages by the end of the century as rising temperatures take their toll on farmers' crops, scientists have warned.

Harvests of staple food crops such as rice and maize could fall by between 20% and 40% as a result of higher temperatures during the growing season in the tropics and subtropics. Warmer temperatures in the region are also expected to increase the risk of drought, cutting crop losses further, according to a new study

One argument revolves around health and the environment. The other revolves around money. Which is more compelling? 

Though 2007 generally was considered a good year for "green" causes in Annapolis - passing bills to lower car emissions, boost oysters and protect terrapins - environmental lobbyists aren't resting easy.

"I think there is a sense there's a lot of unfinished business," said Brad Heavner, director of the advocacy group Environment Maryland.

Dominion Power Co. appears to have successfully jumped one hurdle in its bid to build a new coal-burning power plant in Wise County.

The U.S. Forest Service and Virginia environmental regulators have given the planned plant a tentative OK. The change of heart came after Dominion promised to do more to quell the release of sulfur dioxide – a pollutant that causes acid rain – from the new facility.

Virginia Dominion Power wants to build a coal-fired power plant in Wise County that the energy giant touts as a "clean coal" operation. But it would become one of the biggest air polluters in the state.

This in a region already choked with poisons spewing from two old coal-fired plants that rival American Electric Power continues to operate in the Southern Appalachians.

Dominion's project might be unstoppable, but it shouldn't be.

A federal judge in California today rebuked the auto industry's attempt to block California and 16 other states from setting tough new limits on global warming pollution from automobiles. Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense.

Virginia Beach Democrat Joe Bouchard, elected to the General Assembly in November, says global warming must be addressed.

Opponents of global warming action frequently claim that the cost of solving global warming will be prohibitively expensive.  However, there is a powerful counter argument rarely considered: how much will it cost us to do nothing about global warming?

Tom Owens, Virginia campus organizer from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, told students it was up to them to stop the power plant and the nod of approval it gives to mountaintop removal mining. "We are young people, and we are the future," he said.

Saturday, Charlottesville hosted a state-wide gathering of more than 150 people.

To build momentum for a plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Maryland, climate activists have launched a "month of action" across the state.

Among the first activities was a town hall meeting in Arnold last week that attracted about 60 people. The meeting was sponsored by a coalition called the Alliance for Global Warming Solutions.

It’s not just polar bears in the Arctic and people who live in Manhattan who have to worry about global warming and sea-level rise.

“There are going to be some serious impacts on Virginia - and we need to start taking action now,” said Josh Tulkin, the deputy director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which is sponsoring the 2007 Virginia Climate Action Conference in Charlottesville on Saturday.

Environmental activists and officials from across Virginia will converge on Charlottesville on Saturday for a climate change conference, seeking to raise awareness about the impact of global warming on the state and build momentum for action at the local level.

The conference, sponsored by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, will feature a host of seminars on increasing usage of renewable energy, promoting “green” buildings and diminishing reliance on fossil fuels, among others.

A $1.6 billion coal-fired power plant proposed for Wise County is touted by the utility company that wants to build it as an eco-friendly "clean coal" model of environmental design. But if built to the company’s specifications, it would be one of the biggest air polluters in Virginia, according to documents filed with the state.