Editorial: Clouding the issue

Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2007 | 7:36 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons is aggressively promoting the construction of three coal-fired power plants in Nevada before a climate change advisory committee that he created has the chance to recommend limits on the state's greenhouse gas emissions.

Although it would seem more logical - and environmentally sound - to wait for the new Climate Change Advisory Committee to make its recommendations in June, a story by the Las Vegas Sun on Tuesday says Gibbons is stepping up efforts to get air quality permits for the plants.

Seven Nevada environmental groups petitioned to allow the state Environmental Commission to delay issuing the permits, the Sun reports. But Gibbons wrote a letter to the commission opposing the delay, saying that power developers had spent too much time and money on the proposals to stop now. The commission rejected the petition on Friday, further clearing the way for construction of two coal-fired plants near Ely and one near Mesquite.

Gibbons already considered these plants a done deal. And that is irresponsible - embarrassing, even - when governors of other states, including six members of the Western Climate Initiative, are considering measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A fellow Republican governor, California's Arnold Schwarzenegger, has vowed to make his state "No. 1 in the fight against global warming" and has backed measures to reduce California's carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

No such luck in Gibbons' domain. The governor sent Nevada officials to the Western Climate Initiative meetings with instructions to watch, rather than participate, Sun reporter Phoebe Sweet writes.

At Friday's hearing regarding the petition, coal-plant developers said the technology that allows them to contain carbon emissions isn't available on a commercial scale, the Sun reports.

So, we're supposed to just let them build plants that would belch 31 million tons of toxins into the air until such technology is available? It's ridiculous. But it just goes to show what a farce Gibbons' so-called "environmental record" really is. While the West's other governors are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Nevada's governor exists in a coal-clouded haze.