There’s a good chance you do. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, twenty of the top 25 mercury-emitting coal plants are located within 50-100 miles of some of the America’s biggest cities.

There are 600 coal plants in the U.S. These 25 coal plants emit roughly 30% of total mercury pollution in the U.S. electricity sector.

So do these plants at least provide an equally high amount of energy? No. According to EDF, while these plants represent one third of mercury emissions, they only provide about 8% of electricity generation.

The harm from coal, if it were actually added to the cost of their power, would make these plants uneconomic, as Climate Progress detailed in February (see Life-cycle study: Accounting for total harm from coal would add “close to 17.8¢/kWh of electricity generated”).

Here’s a list of the worst offenders:

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Like the rest of the nation — and the entire planet — the state of Kansas is suffering in our carbon-polluted climate. Most of Kansas is in moderate to severe drought. Southwestern Kansas has Dust Bowl conditions, crippling its wheat crop. On Gov. Sam Brownback’s request, the federal government declared a drought emergency for about half the state in May. Now Brownback is again asking the federal government to provide taxpayer money to help his state’s farmers in more of the state:

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to declare a drought disaster in an additional 25 counties. Brownback made his request Friday, his second to the USDA in seven weeks. The federal agency declared a disaster in 21 counties last month.

Kansas Drought Conditions, June 7, 2011

Unfortunately, Brownback is not taking action to reduce the fossil pollution that is turning Kansas into a dust bowl. Although Brownback said in 2007 that “we need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere,” he has since embraced radical conspiracy theories about climate scientists. Brownback called Obama’s climate plan “one of the worst ideas to come along in a long time.”

As governor, Brownback’s primary action regarding his state’s energy future has been to make 11,000 square miles of Flint Hills tallgrass prairie off-limits to wind farms while promoting the Holcomb coal plant.

Brownback’s gubernatorial campaign was heavily supported by Kansas-based Koch Industries, the Kansas-based pollution conglomerate that directs right-wing global warming denial. Over his career, Brownback has received about $200,000 from the Koch brothers in campaign contributions. While the Kochs have contributed a tiny fraction of their wealth to protecting the Flint Hills prairie from windmills, that unique ecosystem, just like the state’s farmers, has no defense against the global warming pollution Koch Industries produces.

When readers ask me how they can get better at communicating, I always urge them to 1) study rhetoric and 2) follow popular culture.  For the latter, a good place to start is with Alyssa Rosenberg’s blog.

I know that many progressives — including some readers here –  don’t own a TV.  I can fully understand that but firmly believe that if you want to understand and communicate to the populace, there’s no better place to start than with the culture.

For those who don’t think TV is high culture, I would make two points.  First,  I’ve studied Shakespeare for decades — and even published a scholarly article on Hamlet — and the Bard combined highbrow and lowbrow seamlessly.  I  seriously doubt the greatest rhetorician of all time drew a distinction.

Second, I’ve been a TV junkie for nearly 5 decades, and I think it’s safe to say that there is as much high-quality television on now as there ever was.  There just happens to be a lot more crap. You need a way of separating the two — or someone to tell you what you need to know about what you don’t have time for.

And that’s my segue into Alyssa.  She has written this introduction for Climate Progress readers:

I’m Alyssa Rosenberg, your friendly ThinkProgress culture blogger. One of my long-term interests is the role that science fiction plays in helping us come to terms with what we’re doing to ourselves and to the planet, and in playing with ideas we might have to consider as we face a future defined by environmental devastation. I’ve written about the role of scientific arrogance in this summer’s upcoming blockbuster Planet of the Apes, my worries about how Fox’s Terra Nova will handle the creation of a utopian society without overexploiting a new planet’s resources, and how female scientists are depicted in movies ranging from Contact to Thor. Today on my blog, we’re kicking off a book club on Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic exploration of deliberately engineered climate change, Red Mars, on the eve of that novel’s 20th birthday next year. I hope you’ll consider stopping by.

As you can see, she doesn’t just write about TV.

For the record, I thought the Mars trilogy was a masterpiece, unlike, say, Robinson’s novels on climate change.  Anyway, friends, Romm-ans, Countrymen, lend her your ears (and eyes).

Related Posts:

• Jack Bauer becomes first-ever carbon-neutral torturer as Rupert Murdoch says “Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats”
• Wall-E is an eco-dystopian gem — an anti-consumption movie (from Disney!)
• How to be as persuasive as Abraham Lincoln, Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare

Our guest blogger is long-time commenter Richard Brenne. He teaches a NASA-sponsored on-line Global Climate Change class and serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication.  Most relevantly for this post, he’s an award-winning screenwriter.  At the end, watch William Shatner’s hilarious dramatic reading of Palin’s tweets.

I’d like to say I sat down with Sarah Palin for an extensive and candid interview on her campaign – I’m sorry, “quiet family vacation” – bus, but like every other media member other than Fox News stooges, of course I didn’t.  So I did the next best thing and went to the public record of all of Palin’s quotes and cobbled together an interview from them.  Everything Palin says here over a few words is an exact quote of hers, coming from CBS, CNN, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other interviews and from Palin’s own Facebook and tweets.  If Palin says that these quotes are taken out of context it will just demonstrate that nothing gets by her eagle University of Idaho Fighting Potato eyes.

Brenne: Thank you for such a unique opportunity to speak with you.  Let’s just start off with a little chit-chat, a little bit of fluff to get to know you.  Will climate change ultimately kill us all off?

Palin: I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.

Brenne: Well right.  I don’t think everything men do is because of climate change.  I think Anthony Weiner’s behavior is an example of that.

Palin: It’s kind of tough to figure out with the shady science right now, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our climate. Are we warming or are we cooling?

Brenne: Warming, thanks for asking.  But if we want to survive as a civilization and species, then more cooling would be a good idea.  Trees are dying for myriad reasons around the globe, so I don’t know if that’s the shady science you’re referring to.  What do you mean by “shady” science exactly?

Palin: This snake-oil science stuff that is based on this global warming, Gore-gate stuff that came down where there was revelation that these scientists, some of these scientists were playing some political games.

Brenne: I consider you an ultimate authority on snake-oil science –

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Public Lands Project, Center for American Progress.

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)

It seems that conservatives and conservation rarely mix any more. It’s become surprising to see one conservative, let alone three, touting the greatness of our national parks. This week, Laura Bush, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, encouraged better protection of oceans by using examples from national parks and presidential proclamations of national monuments as success stories. Then, after criticism for heavily relying on Interior Department employees after deriding them as “faceless bureaucrats” last October, Sarah Palin posted a photographic tribute to the “Men and Women of the National Park Service and Foundations” on the SarahPAC website. To top it all off, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told E&E News that she would use her position on the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee to fight for an improved National Park Service budget:

I chose that as my number one priority because the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service is coming up and I think it’s important that we make sure our national parks are presented on their centennial to the public in a way that not only makes people proud of our national parks but also recognizes the importance of continuing to protect and utilize those national parks in the way they were intended.

But even as these conservatives express their patriotism by standing up for national parks, it is important to remember that they haven’t always been protected. The Grand Canyon, before it was a national park, was heavily mined public domain that was controlled by the railroad and timber industries, and it took nearly 20 years for it to be protected. Today, many more places that need conservation are in limbo just like the Grand Canyon was in the 1880s.

Lummis and other conservatives are celebrating the 100th anniversary of our national parks by returning to robber-baron ways. Lummis is a long-time proponent of opening up lands to increased drilling and industrial activity of all kinds, co-sponsored the Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act, a bill that would strip existing protections from tens of millions of acres of scenic American treasures, and also prohibit future administrations from ever protecting Wilderness Study Areas or unroaded National Forest areas. And, along with many Western GOP members, she has co-sponsored at least six other bills that would have major impacts on future parks and monuments by preventing use of tools like the Antiquities Act. If Lummis’ efforts in Congress gain headway, she will jeopardize future national parks, perhaps even in her own state.

Our public lands provide our nation with natural resources such as oil and gas, coal and timber, clean air, water, and beauty. Many places on Department of the Interior and Forest Service lands need higher protection so that they will continue to be special places for all Americans. Western representatives like Lummis should think more thoroughly about what impacts their politically motivated actions of today might have on future national parks. Without strong foresight of past leaders, national parks like the Grand Canyon would have never existed in the first place.

The NY Times has published an error-riddled op-ed by Manhattan Institute disinformer Robert Bryce.  The piece makes a decidedly schizophrenic and misleading case against renewable energy in California.  Bryce argues that because large-scale renewable energy projects have some local environmental impact, we should avoid developing them and instead focus on much more dangerous fossil fuels and nuclear.

The former “paper of record” should be embarrassed to run pro-dirty-energy disinformation from someone so widely refuted (see “Debunking Robert Bryce’s power hungry gusher of lies“).  In particular, Bryce actually has the chutzpah to quote economist E. F. Schumacher’s famous line “Small is beautiful” to promote fossil fuels and nuclear power — when Schumacher wanted us to get off of fossil fuels and was strongly anti-nuke!

Doesn’t anybody at the Times use Google for even the simplest fact checking anymore?

Climate Progress contacted Bill McKibben, who wrote the Foreword to a re-release of Schumacher’s 1973 classic, “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.”   We asked him what he thought about Bryce quoting Schumacher this way.  He replied:

I’d say it’s roughly the equivalent of saying “Thoreau would approve of my sprawling Arizona subdivision plan because he lived outside of town himself.”

The full op-ed is worth debunking in detail because Bryce is pushing a bunch of anti-clean-energy talking points that are becoming popular in conservative circles.  Progressives need to know how to debunk them.  We’ll try to cover the key points here with useful charts.

UPDATE:  See the featured comment by Mike Roddy.

THE SOLAR THERMAL MYTH

Bryce says that solar is a poor option because California will need to rely mostly on centralized solar thermal generation (concentrating solar power) to meet its renewable energy targets:

The math is simple: to have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity, California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah, covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan.

This is a red herring. While California has indeed put its support behind a handful of large-scale solar projects, the split between distributed PV and centralized solar plants may be much closer than that. In fact, a recent analysis from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission finds that California will be meeting more than half of its solar targets with distributed PV:

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By CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss, Valeri Vasquez

Yesterday, American Electric Power announced that it would close 21 coal fired electricity units rather than makes investments to reduce their toxic air pollution under the forthcoming EPA reduction requirements.

AEP is threatening to shut down these plants to stoke Congressional opposition to EPA’s efforts to reduce toxic air pollution from coal fired power plants.   So far, several legislators have risen to the bait, including Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV).  Both have again attacked EPA for attempting to protect children and others from cancer causing air pollution.

AEP would prefer to shutter these plants because it claims that the cost of reducing the arsenic, lead, mercury, acid gases and other toxic pollutants are prohibitive.  What AEP did not say is that the cost of cleanup is too much because these units are very old – 50 years old on average.  (See attached spread sheet) One of the units was built during World War II, and the newest one was completed during the Carter Administration.  Most of the other units were built in the 1950’s.

AEP’s announcement is also somewhat misleading because it had already planned to close 5 units at the Phillip Sporn Plant in New Haven, West Virginia. According to Source Watch,

In October 2010, Ohio Power Co. filed an application with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for the approval of a December 2010 closure of the coal-fired Philip Sporn Power Plant unit 5…In September 2009, Appalachian Power filed an integrated resource plan (IRP) in Virginia that projected a 2010 shutdown for Sporn unit 5. The same IRP projected that Sporn units 1-4, with 580 MW of total capacity, would be retired in 2018.

In other words, AEP planned to close this plant five months before EPA proposed toxic air pollution reduction requirements for coal fired utilities.  Yet it has included closing the Sporn units under “AEP’s current plan for compliance with the rules as proposed includes permanently retiring the following coal-fueled power plants.”

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Our guest blogger is Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air.  He co-chaired a hearing on “Air Quality and Children’s Health” on June 8, 2011.  This is a Mom’s Clean Air Force cross-post.

Summer is here, and that means kids outside swimming, playing baseball, and eating bar-b-que on the patio. But in many parts of our country, summer also means smog and exposure to deadly air pollution.

The summer smog season – also known as the ozone season – is a powerful reminder of how important it is to have clean air to breathe.

Millions of our kids ride a bus to school, play on a playground or live in a community that exposes them to high levels of ozone, particle pollution or air toxics – all of which can severely impact children’s health.

Smog-causing air pollution from dirty power plants, automobiles, and other sources is linked to serious health problems like asthma, strokes, heart attacks — and even early deaths. Smog is especially dangerous for our children. Parents who have watched their kids with asthma suffer on high ozone days know this better than anyone. Unfortunately, smog is not all we have to be concerned about when it comes to our children’s health.

In fact, nearly all air pollution is more dangerous to our children than to their parents for three primary reasons:

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A round-up of the top climate and energy news from around the web. Please post other interesting stories in the comments below.

Coal-to-gas shift could be quick and effective, MIT study says

If natural gas is the “bridge” fuel to the low-carbon future, new research says, the United States already has the power plants to start walking that bridge today.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that many states have high-efficiency natural-gas plants that run at a small fraction of their total capacity.

If the states switched from their older coal plants to these newer gas plants, that would cut carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector by a fifth, MIT said. The country’s overall CO2 emissions would fall by 8 percent.

This coal-to-gas switch would have the same impact as a $16-per-ton price on CO2. That would also give the United States a “bridge” to a future carbon policy, one of the researchers said in a speech last month.

Melanie Kenderdine, executive director of the MIT Energy Initiative and a co-author of the report, said this path “should be pursued as the only practical option for near-term, large-scale CO2 emissions reductions.”

Joe Romm:   I don’t know if this is the only practical option, but it it does show that the nation can make deep emissions reductions at low-cost.  That said, you must make this transition quickly and replace existing coal plants with (mostly) existing natural gas plants.  If you don’t shut down the existing coal plants, then much if not most natural gas growth comes at the expense of lower-carbon forms of power, and thus doesn’t act as a bridge fuel (see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change).]

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Reproductive health in the United States is headed in the wrong direction; fertility problems, miscarriages, preterm births, and birth defects are all increasing. [Source:  iStockPhoto.]

Yesterday, TP Green reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce dashed off to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, telling him to “block the regulation of extremely toxic chemicals in consumer plastics”:

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of such chemicals, the chamber letter declares that that EPA “lacks the sound regulatory science needed to meet the statutory threshold for a restriction or ban of the targeted chemicals.”

A wide body of scientific research has linked these chemicals, including phthalates and Bisphenol A (BPA), to declining birth rates, stillbirths, and an increasing number of birth defects. Many of the chemicals under review for increased regulation have already been banned in Europe and Canada.

In fact, studies have shown that these plastic chemicals are directly linked to an alarming rate of male genital birth defects such as hypospadias, a condition in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside, rather than at the end, of the penis. A report by the Center for American Progress’ Reese Rushing details many other risks associated with the chemicals slated for regulation.

Below, Climate Progress reposts a summary of that report:  “Reproductive Roulette: Declining Reproductive Health, Dangerous Chemicals, and a New Way Forward.”

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