The mayor of Dallas wants you to breathe freely

But the governor of Texas doesn't give a damn. The coal industry wants to build seventeen more (there are already eighteen) factories in heavily polluted (thank you, George W.) Texas in the next four years, a project that is getting fast-track treatment from Governor Rick Perry. Dallas mayor Laura Miller has put together a coaltion of eighteen Texas mayors who oppose the building of any new coal plants that do not utilize the integrated gasification combined cycle technique. Using this technique cuts air pollution by 70 to 90%.

As you may have already guessed, using integrated gasification would cost the coal industry more money and would take more time. The industry maintains that it can build coal factories today that reduce the old factories' toxic emissions by 20%, which is nice, but it isn't 70 to 90%. Governor Perry says that a delay of any kind would damage the state's economy, and that Miller and her group wish to "return Texas to the era of the horse and buggy." Perry, of course, wants to return Texas to the era of black lung disease.

The federal government does not regulate the emission of carbon dioxide, and the proposed Texas power plants will emit the equivalent of 19 million automobiles' worth of carbon dioxide annually.