Environmentalists were skeptical that the agreement would go anywhere. They point out that California has a 3-decade-old law that bans the construction of nuclear power plants unless the state can certify that the federal government has come up with a plan for the permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel, which is highly radioactive.

No such facility exists in the country, and plans to open one at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have been put on hold by the Obama administration.

The group anticipates using treated waste water from local municipalities to cool the reactors, Hutson sad.

Nuclear waste could be sent to France for reprocessing into new fuel, he said.

Human exploitation of the Earth's resources has pushed it "to the brink" and the planet has reached a point of crisis that can only be resolved with global action, Prince Charles warned Tuesday.

In a speech to the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, Britain's heir to the throne -- a committed environmentalist -- warned world leaders gathering here that they must agree a "comprehensive" deal on climate change.

"The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis," he said, according to an advance copy of his speech released by his office.

The largest and most important U.N. climate change conference in history opened Monday, with organizers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the last best chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.

At stake is a deal that aims to wean the world away from fossil fuels and other pollutants to greener sources of energy, and to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries every year over decades to help them adapt to climate change.

Scientists say without such an agreement, the Earth will face the consequences of ever-rising temperatures, leading to the extinction of plant and animal species, the flooding of coastal cities, more extreme weather events, drought and the spread of diseases.

Alas, we are taking another step in our attempt to infect all of the cosmos with the human virus. Isn't it enough that we are on the verge of destroying the Earth?

If there were an intergalactic police force, it would be well advised to put yellow crime tape around our planet, much like Michael Moore's action around Wall Street.

Braking the rise in Earth's population would be a major help in the fight against global warming, according to an unprecedented UN report published on Wednesday that draws a link between demographic pressure and climate change.

"Slower population growth... would help build social resilience to climate change's impacts and would contribute to a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in the future," the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) says.

"It really is the first time that a United Nations agency has looked hard at the connections between population and climate change," lead researcher Bob Engelman, vice president for programmes at the green group Worldwatch Institute, told AFP.

"People are at the root of the problem and at the solution of it, and empowerment of women is the key."

The report, the 2009 State of World Population, paints a grim tableau of the peril of climate change and the likely impact on humans, in terms of floods, drought, storms and homelessness.

"Each person in a population will consume food and require housing, and ideally most will take advantage of transportation, which consumes energy, and may use fuel to heat homes and have access to electricity."

"The growth of population can contribute to freshwater scarcity or degradation of cropland, which may in turn exacerbate the impacts of climate change," says the report.

"So too can climate change make it more difficult for governments to alleviate poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals."

Yet the trouble with the chamber's petition, which it filed Tuesday with the EPA, is that it has little basis in precedent or law.

It's true that the EPA sometimes holds hearings before administrative law judges when the legality of its regulations is challenged, but the chamber wants it to hold such a hearing before any regulation has been approved, and the judge to rule not on a law but on the scientific basis for making a law. This has a whiff of a political stunt designed to fail -- and when it does, to give the chamber a pretext for accusing the Obama administration of not giving a fair hearing to scientific arguments that challenge mainstream climate-change theory.

Environmentalists can be dismayingly smug about climate change, sometimes claiming that the science is "settled" and there's nothing left to argue about.

The weight of scientific evidence suggests very strongly that the globe is getting warmer, that greenhouse gases emitted by humans are the cause and that the health and welfare of future generations are under serious threat.

The City Council tonight is expected to approve a $107,758 contract with Bird Busters to install a net directly beneath the Santa Monica Pier where pigeons roost and frequently defecate, creating challenges for City Hall to meet bacterial levels set forth by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

A portion of the revenue from any U.S. system capping carbon emissions must go toward softening the impact of higher energy prices on consumers, a White House official said on Wednesday.

Joseph Aldy, special assistant to the president for energy and the environment, said building a clean energy economy will not be easy.

"There will be those who are going to be vulnerable as we make this transition and ... we need to actually target the allowance value and revenues to those households, communities, and businesses," Aldy said at an Energy Information Administration forum.

Obama's proposal would use most of the revenue generated from the sell of carbon permits for tax breaks, offsetting costs for consumers.

A huge population of rare dolphins threatened by climate change and fishing nets has been discovered in South Asia.

Researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society estimate that nearly 6,000 Irrawaddy dolphins, marine mammals that are related to orcas or killer whales, were found living in freshwater regions of Bangladesh's Sundarbans mangrove forest and adjacent waters of the Bay of Bengal.

There has been hardly any marine mammal research done in this area up to this point.

Each discovery of Irrawaddy dolphins is important because scientists do not know how many remain on the planet.

"This discovery gives us great hope that there is a future for Irrawaddy dolphins," said Brian D. Smith, lead author of a study describing the discovery. "Bangladesh clearly serves as an important sanctuary for Irrawaddy dolphins, and conservation in this region should be a top priority."

In Myanmar's Ayeyarwady River, these dolphins are known for "cooperative fishing" with humans, where the animals voluntarily herd schools of fish toward fishing boats and awaiting nets.

The draft legislation, which will be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in coming weeks along with other panels, marks the latest attempt by Congress to bring the United States into a global effort to curtail emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants.

Many scientists think the growing amounts of pollutants are contributing to extreme weather, melting polar ice and threats to humans, animals and plant species.

"This legislation will create millions of clean energy jobs, put America on the path to energy independence, and cut global warming pollution," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman.

But the proposal circulated on Capitol Hill by Waxman and Representative Edward Markey would establish a new "cap and trade" regime for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other harmful greenhouse gases separately from the Clean Air Act.

Among the proposals aimed at protecting domestic industries are "rebates" to help them compete with overseas companies and up to 2 billion metric tons annually in "offsets" they could claim along with buying permits that push them to emit fewer greenhouse gases.

That’s right.  The powers that be in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia are thinking about banning some large television sets for sale in the Golden State, because of how much energy they use.  It's not like electricity is free in Kalifornia.  We have utility bills (and taxes) to pay already.  If we want to pay for more electricity (or generate more of our own), isn't that our business?

Considering the tax increases we're experiencing in Kalifornia, including the statewide sales tax increase going into effect April 1 (appropriately), I expect sales of these items to drop anyway. Click through to read where I found this on the website for the Orange County Register – there are many interesting comments left by readers.

Private forecaster AccuWeather.com said on Wednesday it expects four tropical storms to strike the U.S. coastline during the 2009 Atlantic season, which begins June 1, compared with eight last year.