Prayin' for Rain

Georgia Governor and stalwart global warming skeptic, Sonny Perdue, is looking to the Lord to free his state from the extreme drought currently afflicting it and much of the Southeast. "We have come together, very simply, for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm," he said at a recent rally in which the faithful beseeched the Almighty to, for God's sake, let it rain.

This report in The Independent ("The big thirst: The great American water crisis") looks at the environmental record of the region's leadership, highlighting its monetary ties to the coal-fired behemoth, Southern Company (according to a report in today's Washington Post, "a single Southern Co. plant in Juliette, Ga., emits more [carbon dioxide] annually than Brazil's entire power sector,") its lack of initiative when it comes to conservation measures, and its recalcitrance on the issue of global warming. As the report notes, "Georgia's state assembly recently organised a climate change summit in which three of the four experts invited were global-warming sceptics." The Georgia Sierra Club's Patty Durand tells the paper:

It's very backward here. ...It also has to do with money as almost all the politicians here are funded by big polluting industry. There is little awareness of the environmental impact of industry. In spite of the drought, Georgia now wants to build a new coal-powered plant that will suck away another 25 million extra gallons of water and pour ever more carbon into the atmosphere. They just don't get it.

The situation is especially dire in the mountain village of Orme near Chattanooga, where the water is shut off for 21 hours a day. Says one resident of the normally lush locale: "This drought has turned us into hillbillies."