Burning coal to make electricity results in about 1-1/2 pounds of CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

Burning gasoline in an internal combustion engine results in about 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon.

So if you drive a car that get 20 miles per gallon for 100 miles (IOW, burning 5 gallons of gasoline), the car emits about as much CO2 as a coal-fired power plant does generating 67 kilowatt hours of electricity.

Which do you think the average American does in less time: use 5 gallons of gasoline or 67 kilowatt-hours of electricity?

"This case gives legal credibility, in effect pronouncing climate change “real”."

No, it doesn't. All it does is say that one jury was convinced.

"at present we are tied to Coal and Oil and Natural Gas for most of our base grid electricity. At present that’s true."

Not for oil. Oil is too expensive to use for electricity generation. In the US less than 3% of electricity comes from oil, and that use is dwindling as other technologies such as wind come on line.

Nuclear is a big player in electricity generation even though the USA hasn't built a new nuke plant in decades.

"if you aren’t willing to make changes in your own lifestyle you’re just a hypocrite and a phony. It isn’t that simple."

Actually, it is. Telling the utilities to stop emitting CO2 but continuing to do so oneself is a classic case of 'do as I say, not as I do'.

"Everyone has difficulty making lifestyle changes."

Of course. But why demand of the utilities what one isn't willing to do for oneself?

There Big Questions, which nobody wants to think about, are:

1) What technologies should replace the coal-fired plants?

2) How much more are YOU willing to pay for electricity in order to make the change?

3) What other changes are you willing to make?

It's easy to point to the big coal-fired plant and how many tons of CO2 it pumps into the atmosphere per year and say it's the bad guy.

What's more challenging is to figure out how many people that plant serves, and how much CO2 per person the plant produces. And then to compare that number to how much CO2 each person produces in the form of fossil-fueled home heating, transportation, food production, cooking, etc.

It sounds as if the only thing you don't like about your current situation is that your current job isn't 'creative' and 'stimulating' enough after 3 months of doing it. Otherwise, life is great.

Here's a clue: Unless you have some really special, rare and in-demand job skills, you will probably have a pretty hard time finding as good a situation in NYC or almost anywhere else in the USA.

What you WILL find is that there are a lot of 23-year-olds with degrees looking for work - any work. You'll find that entry-level jobs with health care, paid vacations and other benefits equal to what you have in EU aren't so common here as there, and that there are lots of folks who want them. (Heck, there are lots of Americans who want ANY job!)

What you really need to do is to give your current job a chance. A lot of employers aren't going to risk important stuff on a brand-new employee until they have a good feel for the person - which takes more than a few months in some cases.

Consider this: If you come back to the USA now, and things don't work out, will you be able to go back to EU? I think not.

But if you stay in EU for a while, and things here change for the better, will you still be able to come back to the USA? I think so.

Those 'crazy' French pay more for residential electricity than we Americans do. And they use less.

They have universal healthcare, so they can't be *that* crazy....

"Everyone understands that in 2009, burning coal is essential to keep our power on."

I don't think they do.

"The point is that the way the coal is mined and burned is incredibly destructive to the local and global environment, at the same time that it's hugely profitable to the energy companies."

Is it really that profitable? How much do the utilities make on their investment? A profit of a billion dollars sounds great until you realize there's a fifty-billion-dollar company making it, so the actual ROI is two percent.

"Take some of those monster profits and use them to mine responsibly and scrub the results of the results of the burning. Invest some of those monster profits into greener technologies."

How much is a monster profit and how much investment is enough?

Better yet - For each person reading this:

- How many kilowatt-hours do you use per day?

- How much do you pay per kilowatt-hour?

- How much MORE are you willing to pay in order to get those kilowatt-hours from greener sources?

- How many FEWER kilowatt-hours are you willing to use?

"While other activists cut electricity on the plant's grounds"

How did they do that? I suspect they had to break in someplace. Funny how the article skims over that bit.

How did the activists get there? If they used fossil-fueled vehicles, they emitted lots of greenhouse gases in the process. If they took electrically powered transit, the electricity to power it came from...guess where?

Did they walk or ride bicycles to the plant?

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The bell-the-cat question is: Where is all the electricity supposed to come from?