Editorial: Carbon Crimes

In the January/February issue of World Watch, writer Susan Moran (“Rush to Coal”) detailed the frenzied efforts of U.S. utilities to build more than 150 “new” pulverized-coal power plants before the imposition of increasingly likely federal statutory limits on carbon emissions. I say “new,” because the technology is 80 years old and is hardly more advanced than a log fire.Moran’s piece, as befits a professional, was matter-of-fact. Here, I want to try to express the outrage her story provokes.