Instant CARMA

Three new sources for keeping tabs on coal power have been made available on the Web, one of which is our very own New Coal Plant Tracker, which lists all of the 138 new American coal plants currently on the drawing boards, including info on what type of plant each one is, who owns the project and who's providing the funding, as well as the projected CO2 output for each. You can view the data on Google Maps or download a file to plot the it all in Google Earth. It's part of our campaign to Stop the Coal Rush.

Meanwhile, the Center for Global Development has launched CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action), which takes the global view, charting some 50,000 power plants owned by more than 4,000 companies.

And finally, Appalachian Voices offers visitors a chance to see their personal connection to the rapacious practice of mountaintop removal mining. Type in your zip code and see where your power comes from.

If the picture that emerges from all this seems rather bleak, just remember: Knowledge is power too, people.

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."

Waking Up in Wake Forest

Cool, kids. Majorly!

Scary Outlook

Last week saw the release of The United Nations Environment Programme's Global Environment Outlook. It is a rather monstrous 540 pages (22.5-mb PDF), but the press release alone is frightening enough.

Maybe what is scarier is that I was hard pressed to find much mention of it in any U.S. press. Perhaps, they are still hard at work digesting the full weight of it. There is, however, plenty to read in foreign papers.

The Times (U.K.) science editor, Marc Henderson, writes in his piece: "Though the report's language might sound extreme, with talk of 'humanity's very survival' at risk, the structure of the WEO actually lends itself to conservatism. Its findings deserve to be taken very seriously as a result -- this is not scaremongering to make a point."

When the point's as important as this one, is scaremongering really such a bad thing? OK, point taken that this report is pure, peer-reviewed science -- and scary to boot.

Although the report does highlight and praise some progress, it points to persistent and intractable problems. Can you guess what those might be?

Of Lightbulbs and Leaders

Nice piece in The New York Times by Thomas Friedman, about yellow cabs turning green. We can do our share as individuals to curb carbon emissions and hold off the consequences of global warming, but what we also need to do--beyond changing light bulbs--is to change leaders. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg put it simply:

When it comes to health and safety and environmental issues, government should be setting standards. What you need are leaders who are willing to push for standards that are in society’s long-term interest.

Pollan's Manifesto

Michael Pollan, bestselling author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, has a new book called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Despite having written a full-length book on the subject, Pollan helpfully boils his credo down to just seven words: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Tom Philpott discusses what to eat with Pollan here -- as well as farmers markets, the farm bill, and Cracker Jacks.

Cancer Awareness

Yesterday, on Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed Dr. Devra Davis about her new book, The Secret History of the War on Cancer. Davis is an epidemiologist currently with the University of Pittsburgh. I had a chance to interview her a few years ago after her first book, When Smoke Ran Like Water, was nominated for a National Book Award. For anyone interested, a transcript of that interview and a review I wrote of the book can be found on National Geographic's Green Guide.