Huddling in the dark

The "No Coal" campaign showed up in Mesquite on Thursday.

Shouting "What do we want? Clean Air!" more than 100 activists arrived for a hearing conducted by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection on the 750-megawatt Toquop coal-fired electric plant proposed for the outskirts of town.

The $1.5 billion plant would create about 800 short-term construction jobs and then employ about 110 workers after it opens. Sithe Global Power hopes to get a final air compliance permit from the Nevada DEP as well as an OK from the BLM so it can begin construction by March 2009 and power generation by 2013.

Many of the protesters voiced concerns that the plant would generate carbon dioxide emissions, which they fear could contribute to global warming. DEP spokesman Dante Pistone explained carbon dioxide is not a regulated pollutant; his division's sole task is to make sure the plant would produce volumes of actual pollutants that fall within current, stringent legal limits. Indeed, the division judges the plant will be able to operate in compliance with those strict standards, and so has issued a draft air compliance permit.

The Toquop plant and another new plant the same firm is developing on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico will be the cleanest-burning coal generating plants in the country, according to company spokesman Frank Maisano.

Lincoln County Commission Charwoman Ronda Hornbeck praised the project, pointing out it will bring her struggling county -- which came close to insolvency and had to lay off a quarter of its employes, four years ago -- an additional $10 million per year in taxes for roads and schools.

On the other hand, Clark County Commissioners Tom Collins and Bruce Woodbury, whose coffers are already flush, took the opportunity to posture for the who-needs-air-conditioning radicals at no personal or political risk Thursday, winning cheers by speaking against the plant.

Mr. Woodbury worried aloud that the project could threaten the Las Vegas buckwheat, a plant that is not on the federal endangered species list but might be, someday, maybe. But there is no compelling evidence that building a power plant on a couple acres of washboard desert will hurt the survival chances of this poor weed.

The big problem with coal-fired plants in the past was real pollutants -- the sulfur dioxide and other toxic fumes that once turned the skies orange and brown over the great steel towns of the Midwest.

Modern technology allows coal to be burned much more cleanly, allowing a sensible balance between moderately priced energy and environmental cleanliness.

As opposed to the nonsense the Green extreme pumps into the heads of today's schoolchildren, our environment is much, much cleaner than it was 50 or even 100 years ago. There simply is no crisis -- making it fair to ask what the chanting extremists really want.

Will anything satisfy them short of seeing every profitable enterprise in this country bankrupted, all the lights flickering out, until we huddle in the dark listening to the predators call in the night?