Before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, there was broad concern about the impact that air pollution would have on the athletes. The city’s well-documented problems with ozone and fine particles were not the sort of thing conducive to fast sprint times and/or not having a stroke. So authorities cracked down, greatly reducing vehicle traffic, closing factories, and inducing rain. It worked. They curbed ground-level pollutants and improved cardio-vascular health for residents and athletes alike (and brought down CO2 emissions along the way). A team at the University of Rochester noted a “direct correlation” between reduced pollution and an immediate health impact.

Unfortunately for England, the environment has taken up a new strategy for ruining the Olympics: rain.

“My biggest worry is actually the weather,” said [London 2012 Chief Executive] Paul Deighton, adding that much of the construction was carried out in torrential rain in recent months.

“We’ve got a lot of events that are outside. I think the impact the weather has on people’s mood, how they enjoy the games, is very big.

“So for me, if I have a prayer I could make, it’s every extra day of sunshine just makes for a better experience for everybody here in town.”

Deighton has cause for concern. An unusually static southward shift in the jet stream combined with increased atmospheric moisture has meant one of the rainiest summers in recent memory.

The jet stream, next Tuesday.

The forecast for the next 10 days shows some rain; a forecast of the jet stream suggests it will run south of Britain for the beginning part of the Games. Being on the northern side of the jet stream means, in the words of the BBC, “conditions are cooler and wetter which means we in Britain keep getting hit by rain.”

Not the end of the world, mind you — but an impairment to athletes and fans alike. As Beijing demonstrated, it could be worse.

And, of course, it is. From ThinkProgress:

According to Dr. William S. Silvers of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI), the air quality in London during the 2012 Olympic games — set to start in three days — could cause a “narrowing of the airways” in athletes competing outdoors.

Currently, London has a higher concentration of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere than Beijing, China, had during the last summer Olympic games before the Chinese government banned half of all cars in an effort to reduce pollution. London has spent far less than China did to address air pollution.

London has helpfully set up a website to track air quality. If you’re going to an event, you’ll want to check that first to determine if you’ll need your inhaler. You should probably just bring that umbrella regardless.

The Environmental Protection Agency can’t do anything about humidity. It hasn’t been able to do much about heat, though it’s trying. Then there’s that other scourge of “hazy, hot, and humid” summer days. Haze, the EPA can do something about.

In June, the agency proposed new rules limiting soot pollution, one of which would create a new standard that cuts particulate matter pollution to improve visibility primarily in urban areas.

Which is all well and good while you’re in the city. Haze in rural areas is a whole other issue.

A side-by-side comparison of the view at Shenandoah National Park on clear and hazy days. (Photo by the National Park Service.)

In 2004, USA Today ran an article lamenting the sorry state of visibility in our national parks. Eight years later, things haven’t greatly improved. The New York Times looked at how the EPA’s efforts to curb haze are faring.

An amendment to the Clean Air Act passed 35 years ago was designed to ensure that when visitors get to their destinations, they will be able to see the parks’ vistas.

For the better part of those years, there has been a tug of war between the owners of manufacturing concerns — particularly coal-fired power-plants — and the Environmental Protection Agency over how far the agency can go in requiring plants to cut down on three pollutants linked to haze: fine particles, which blur the air on their own, and sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen, which break down into other smog-producing chemicals with the sun’s help.

The EPA’s mandate was to introduce standards that states would be expected to implement to reduce haze at a broad range of national parks and other scenic sites. They did. And now the states are pushing back, as the Times outlines.

[T]he agency’s proposals to toughen some of the requirements on power plants in the remaining 20 states have created a buzzsaw of opposition in places like Oklahoma, North Dakota and, most recently, Arizona.

Those states are fighting back, arguing that the Obama administration should not be imposing major cleanup costs on electric generating companies when the overall economy is struggling and that the requirements could cause plant closings and eliminate jobs.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are joining the fight. In June, the House oversight committee held a hearing to express outrage at the EPA’s efforts. In the words of committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), “Ultimately, EPA’s proposal will costs billions of dollars for visibility improvements that are undetectable to the human eye.”

Hand-wringing over the economic impact of air regulations is hardly new, nor is it convincing.

The best response to criticism is an image like the one above. While the EPA’s modest recommendations certainly wouldn’t ensure that every day will look like the photo at left, their aim is to prevent every day from looking like the one at right. Shenandoah Park has a live shot allowing potential visitors to gauge visibility before they decide whether to come — a great courtesy, but one that it would be fantastic to make obsolete.

And then we can work on the humidity.

Germany just set a new record in solar energy production, creating 14.7 terawatt-hours of electricity over the first six months of 2012. Solar energy covered between 10 and 50 percent of the country’s peak hour demand on average every day. Nice work, Germany!

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe (and also in Germany):

Demand for coal, the dirtiest fuel for making electricity, grew 3.3 percent last year in Europe while sales of less-polluting natural gas fell 2.1 percent, the steepest drop since 2009, according to a BP Plc report.

Oh man, Europe, what happened? We thought you were cool.

But even with some European Union member nations implementing efforts to increase the cost of carbon pollution, coal is still less expensive than the alternatives. And Europe has its enablers:

Cheaper coal was made possible partly by a 49 percent jump in first-quarter imports from the U.S., Energy Information Administration data show.

The fracking boom in the U.S. has led to a big drop in coal use, meaning that we’re now free to export that coal to Europe.

Ha ha. Um, sorry, guys.

Friends of the Earth took a look at the efficiency of energy production of various types in the United Kingdom. Of all of the thermal energy created by coal power, a solid two-thirds of it is lost in the production process.

Click to embiggen. (Image courtesy of The Guardian.)

Solar production, on the other hand, barely wastes a watt.*

Coal is so cheap that even wasting two-thirds of its energy, adding additional fees, and having to schlep it across the Atlantic Ocean makes it economically worthwhile for European nations. The free market is a tough game to win when your only advantage is being right.

* Update: As Sean Casten notes, our original formulation that solar “doesn’t waste a watt” is giving the technology too much credit.

In another dimension — a wonderful, magical dimension — an announcement about curtailing soot pollution would be hailed as a triumph, an obviously useful decision that’s worth celebrating.

That dimension seems like it would be a nice place to live.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a stricter guideline for particle pollution, small pieces of dust and soot and other combusted matter that are released into the air and then inhaled. Particulate matter is one of six pollutants covered by the EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which serve as a sort of clean air check list. Every five years the standards are reviewed for efficacy in protecting public health; each is supposed to be updated as needed to protect health.

There are two types of particulate matter regulated by the EPA, and two levels at which they’re monitored. Today’s proposal [PDF] would drop the annual amount of allowable fine particle (PM 2.5) pollution from 15 micrograms per cubic meter to 12 or 13 — in the former (better) case, a reduction of 20 percent. The EPA also proposed a new standard that would improve visibility in urban areas, mandating either 28 or 30 deciviews. States would have until 2020 to meet the standards.

So that’s the science. More important are the impacts. Those most susceptible to negative effects of particulate pollution are those with heart and lung disease, older people, children, and those in low-income households. Long-term fine particulate matter exposure results in premature death from heart disease and increased heart attacks and strokes; short-term exposure can trigger similar deadly responses along with impaired breathing. The EPA estimates that a reduction to 12 micrograms/cubic meter would save between $2.3 billion and $5.9 billion in health costs. Annually.

Win-win, right? Well …

We mentioned that these standards are supposed to be updated when needed. That “supposed to be” was intentional. Updates are always contentious because stricter standards mean that polluters need to curtail their polluting, which means installing filters or changing practices. In other words, cost. So polluters fight against updates. They’d rather that the cost of pollution be borne by your lungs than their pocketbooks. When the Clean Air Act was passed, it dictated that the EPA was not to consider the economic impacts of applying NAAQS regulations. The EPA was solely to determine what levels of pollutants were acceptable to public health. An era in which such a noble standard could be applied by the EPA and accepted by the impacted businesses is long gone, if it ever existed.

Earlier this week, knowing that the EPA’s proposal was imminent, the American Petroleum Institute’s director of regulatory and scientific affairs gave this quote to Oil & Gas Journal, which you probably all have a subscription to and read regularly.

Air quality progress under the current standards, control programs, and industrial initiatives has been substantial. According to EPA, between 2000 and 2010, concentrations of PM 2.5 fell by 27%. As a result, more than three fourths of Americans today live in areas where air quality meets today’s standards.

The claim that “the system works already!” is one of the two arguments that are literally always used; the other, that the rules will destroy jobs. These arguments carry political weight, which is why the EPA, a body under the direction of a democratically elected president, has to be judicious in how it updates its policies.

There’s a surefire way to break such a logjam: the courts. When the EPA doesn’t act on updating standards, environmental advocates and others often sue to force them to do so. In this case, that’s exactly what happened. The particulate matter standard was due for review in 2011. When that review didn’t happen, the American Lung Association partnered with other organizations and 11 states to ask the courts to force action. At the end of May, a federal judge did exactly that, resulting in today’s announcement.

Under an edict from the White House, the EPA calculated the anticipated cost of implementing the revised standard. A new standard of 12 micrograms/cubic meter would cost $69 million to implement. And, again, result in $2.3 billion to $5.9 billion in health-cost savings annually at the lower recommended level. Perhaps most remarkably, nearly every county in the country is already on pace to meet the standard by 2020. In fact, only six counties aren’t expected to meet the standard [PDF] — Riverside and San Bernadino counties in California, Santa Cruz County in Arizona, Wayne County in Michigan, Jefferson County in Alabama, and Lincoln County in Montana.

Despite the obvious benefits, low cost, limited impact, and court mandate, settle in for a nice, long debate over this relatively modest change. If you expected that this proposal meet with limited opposition a few short months before House members and the president defend their offices, then I assume you’re visiting from that idealized dimension I mentioned at the outset.

Welcome to America in 2012, visitor from a foreign land. If you figure us out, please let us know what we’re doing.

Last September, we reported that “peak coal” had come to Appalachia. There’s a reason that the industry is relying on destructive practices like mountaintop-removal mining: Coal is harder to come by. Mines have increasingly small seams of coal to extract.

Now it seems that the marketplace is catching up. The AP reports:

The share of U.S. electricity that comes from coal is forecast to fall below 40 percent for the year — the lowest level since the government began collecting this data in 1949. Four years ago, it was 50 percent. By the end of this decade, it is likely to be near 30 percent.

“The peak has passed,” says Jone-Lin Wang, head of Global Power for the energy research firm IHS CERA.

The industry likes to blame regulation and the EPA for its weak position. But, as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson points out, the problem is economic. More difficult extraction raises costs. Natural gas extraction is growing at a ridiculous pace, causing the price of gas to drop. These are trends that won’t reverse any time soon — by which we mean ever. For utilities, there’s not much difficulty in a choice between adjusting to a fuel source that is cheap and will stay cheap or one that is growing more expensive in both unit price and clean-up costs.

“Even without the EPA rules, coal is not really competitive,” Wang says.

For the industry, the economic impact is immediate.

The shift from coal is reverberating across Appalachia, where mining companies are laying off workers and cutting production. Utilities across the country are grappling with how to store growing piles of unused coal. And legal disputes are breaking out as they try to cancel contracts and defer deliveries.

In a bad economy, people being put out of work is never a reason to celebrate. But a transition away from coal, even to a still-not-ideal natural gas-based utility system, is a very good thing.

In a report released yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared exhaust from diesel engines to be a carcinogen [PDF] — the same status as secondhand smoke. In 1989, the fumes were deemed a “probable carcinogen.” The suspected culprit? Particulate matter expelled during diesel fuel combustion. Gasoline exhaust, with a different chemical makeup, remains a possible carcinogen.

As reported by CBS News, the WHO study looked at a population of 12,000 miners over the course of the past 60 years. Those regularly exposed to diesel exhaust had three times the rate of lung cancer deaths as their peers.

This doesn’t mean that people who live in urban areas need to move to farms. The threat is akin to secondhand smoke: If you live in a closed room with a constant smoker, you’re far more at risk than if you simply walk by someone on the street. As the WHO put it:

Large populations are exposed to diesel exhaust in everyday life, whether through their occupation or through the ambient air. People are exposed not only to motor vehicle exhausts but also to exhausts from other diesel engines, including from other modes of transport (e.g. diesel trains and ships) and from power generators.

Diesel exhaust is most dangerous in places where you can’t escape the fumes: in the mines, for example, or in areas where housing is located near a facility that emits a lot diesel fumes. (That could mean an increased risk for people living in communities like West Harlem — see, for example, this Grist profile from back in the day.)

The diesel industry responded exactly as you might predict: by downplaying the findings.

As recently as April 12, 2012, findings of this landmark study sponsored by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the California Air Resources Board (ARB), industry and HEI suggest ‘few biologic effects to diesel exhaust exposure.’

“Few” is not the same as “none.” We’re going to go ahead and take the WHO’s word on this one, thanks.

This is what residents of the Chinese province of Wuhan woke up to yesterday.

At about 2 a.m. local time Monday morning, a dense smog began to cover the province. By early afternoon, it reached its peak density in the land-locked city of Wuhan itself.

People posted numerous photos of the haze on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter. One blogger described her friends in the city darkly joking about being turned into Incredible Hulks.

What makes this smog dangerous isn’t that people will be transformed into giant, furious, off-color mutants, probably. The demonstrable danger is to lungs and bloodstreams.

The air in Wuhan was thick with tiny particles. Safety measurements of airborne particulate matter generally assess two different speck sizes: larger particles of about 10 micrometers (one-ten thousandth of a centimeter) in diameter, known as PM 10 (particulate matter 10), and smaller particles of 2.5 micrometers or smaller, known as PM 2.5. The smaller particles are much more dangerous since, when inhaled, they travel more easily throughout the body.

The United States sets a 24-hour limit on PM 10 pollution of 150 micrograms per cubic meter; for the more troublesome PM 2.5, the limit is 35. In Wuhan yesterday, PM 10 measured 574 and PM 2.5 was at 610.

Image via Weibo.

Early in the day, it wasn’t clear what was causing the choking haze. Rumors spread that a chlorine plant had exploded. The top post on Weibo about the city is still a reference to this rumor. As poorly translated by Google:

today in Wuhan chlorine factory explosion “ please note that closed off the window, at home, put a basin of water, air conditioning exhaust ~ The Air is polluted with sulfuric acid: H2SO4 nitric acid: HNO3 from factories in wuhan

Chinese authorities offer a more likely reason: farmers in rural areas burning straw — activity that had the same effect on the air quality of Shanghai over the weekend. Given the high levels of particulate matter, that explanation is far more likely than a toxic gas leak. Authorities were deliberate in quashing the chlorine plant rumor; at least one report indicates that two men sharing the chlorine plant explosion story were arrested.

There have also been efforts to downplay the situation. China Daily posted photos of Wuhan’s “heavy fog,” a claim challenged by commenters:

If that’s “fog,” why are those women wearing surgical masks? Fog is not brown. This must not be a Wuhan “blue-sky day.”

Fog is small water droplets, it is WET, that is brown and appears dry, I would call it filthy SMOG, I have been to WUHAN.

This morning, the American embassy released a statement suggesting that the pollution was likely to remain a problem (“recent weather conditions have not been good for the dispersion of pollutants”) and reiterating that burning vegetation was likely to blame.

No reports from Wuhan of Hulks. As yet.

[Credit to Abe Sauer for many of the links above.]

You might think that air quality controls are about mitigating the health effects of breathing in pollution. If you’re a staunch Republican, you might think they’re about destroying capitalism. But blogger (and birther) Daren Jonescu knows what air quality controls are really about: Giving white children lung diseases. (And destroying capitalism.)

Jonescu wrote a piece in the ironically named American Thinker laying out the problems with big government trying to legislate our children’s lungs, and he did it by picking apart the language of an Obama administration report about childhood asthma.

Here is a summary of the “justice” issue at stake:

Nearly 26 million Americans are affected by this chronic respiratory disease, including 7 million children, especially minority children and children with family incomes below the poverty level. Asthma rates of African American children are currently at 16 percent, while 16.5 percent of Puerto Rican children suffer from the chronic respiratory disease, more than double the rate of Caucasian children in the United States.

Consider very carefully the wording of this bizarre expression of the problem: seven million American children have asthma, “especially minority children and children with family incomes below the poverty level.” What does “especially minority children” mean in this context? That minority children suffer asthma more severely than white children? That minority children and poor children are of greater concern than white children?

Or, it could even mean that 7 million American children have asthma, especially minority children and children with family incomes below the poverty level! But no, that’s just what they WANT you to think. (Indeed, they’re so clever that they immediately follow up this mysterious claim with DATA, showing that asthma incidence is higher among non-white children than white children. Like you’re going to convince us with FACTS, racists!)

Jonescu’s concern is simple: He sees no reason to believe that the Obama administration doesn’t want to even out asthma rates by giving more asthma to rich white children.

The official press release for this report does not commit itself on the question of whether greater asthmatic-racial “parity” ought to be attained by reducing the incidence of asthma among minorities, increasing the rate among whites, or some combination of the two.

Honestly, I’m kind of surprised Jonescu isn’t demanding higher asthma rates for white kids — like, what do you MEAN African-Americans have twice as much of something as we do??

Anyway, mostly I like to ignore this type of trolling and leave the mocking of voluntarily mentally disabled jackholes on unimportant websites to Wonkette. But Wonkette did an awesome job with this one and I thought you guys would like to know about it. They actually read the entirety of Jonescu’s urine trail of an article and took it apart with much more skill than it was put together. Share and enjoy.

Wisconsin is a proud state, with a unique political legacy. Its track record of progressive independence and long-standing commitment to political comity make today’s recall election an aberration, a rare example of a Wisconsin turned against itself — and a rare national example of political turmoil.

The last recall election of a governor in the United States was California’s in 2003, a campaign I worked on. A friend from those days, Clark Williams, is today in his home state of Wisconsin working to turn out voters to recall Walker. I asked him how the two elections compared. “Night and day,” he responded, noting the “venom” that has polluted any rational conversation about the election. It’s a common refrain: A recent poll found that one in three Wisconsinites had stopped talking about politics with someone because of their disagreement. There are reports of physical altercations between supporters of either side. This is not exactly the ebullient, cheese-loving Wisconsin we picture.

Neither are the decisions being made by the governor the ones many state residents expected. The fuse for the recall was lit with Gov. Walker’s move to cut collective bargaining rights for the state’s public sector unions, but that’s not the only gripe state residents have with the governor.

The environmental community has its own (good) reasons for complaint. The Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters is very engaged in the recall, with lawn signs opposing Walker throughout the state and a robust collection of “Failure Files” online outlining Walker’s anti-environment policies. And I mean robust. They’re worth a perusal.

For those pressed for time, or on the way to the polling booth, here’s an overview we assembled: Scott Walker’s Murky, Polluted Environmental Record.

An open door to the Koch brothers

We’ll start with everyone’s favorite bad guys: the Kansas Kochs, the Emperor Palpatines working the controls of a sprawling fossil-fuel empire. If you’re not familiar with the Koch brothers, welcome to planet Earth.

Within a month of Scott Walker taking the oath of office, the Koch brothers (who’d contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign) opened a new lobbying office across the street from the state capitol, more than doubling their lobbying force in the state from three to seven people.

Walker, despite having never met the brothers at that point, was very willing to hear them out. When a prankster from the site Buffalo Beast phoned Walker, pretending to be David Koch, Walker happily discussed fundraising plans, his war against the unions, and how much he’d enjoy being flown out to California for some recreation.

In February, the real David Koch reiterated the brothers’ commitment to Walker, saying, “We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

Weakening pollution standards

So why would the Kochs care about Wisconsin? Simple. Walker’s willingness to roll back environmental protections that get in the way of the Kochs’ profits.

Take phosphorous. The Kochs own Georgia Pacific paper, the Wisconsin plants of which spent years dumping excess phosphorous into the state’s waterways. In 2010, an appeals court ruled that the public could challenge the permit that allowed the company to do so, while the state’s natural resources board adopted new regulations to cut down on the dumping. Enter Walker. His first budget bill included a passage that would reduce the board’s new limits; a separate announcement put a two-year moratorium on the 2010 phosphorous rules.

Stunting wind power

There’s not a lot of reason to oppose wind power, unless you’re simply making decisions to score political points. Ahem.

Prior to Walker’s taking office, the Wisconsin legislature established setback rules determining how far from nearby homes a wind turbine could be built. Gov. Walker — with the support of the now-infamous American Legislative Exchange Council — championed a bill that made those setbacks much, much larger — a jump from about 450 feet to 1,800 feet. The change prompted at least one wind company to cancel plans to build in the state.

Undoubtedly, Walker’s move made fossil-fuel companies smile wanly over their hot, steaming mugs of evil.

Accepting rail money, but not for high-speed rail

To be fair, Walker campaigned on stopping high-speed rail. The campaign owned NoTrain.com, probably because MeHateTrain.com was taken. But that didn’t stop him from asking for $150 million from the federal government for other rail upgrades given that, you know, rail is important to states. Scoring political points by opposing hippie green rail is a good thing, apparently, but that doesn’t mean you have to oppose rail. Or … something?

Facilitating fracking across the country

Wisconsin may not be over the famed Marcellus Shale formation, but that doesn’t mean that Scott Walker can’t get some of that filthy fracking lucre.

Instead, Wisconsin sits atop the remnants of an ancient ocean, the sandstone from which is ideal for fracking. In July of 2011, there were between 22 and 36 sand facilities approved or operating in Wisconsin. Seven months later, there were over 60 mines and 45 processing facilities. Residents who had petitioned the natural resources board to limit the amount of silica allowed in the air around the mines found the board’s Walker-appointed head unresponsive to their concerns. Which was as Walker intended; he explained his choice to head the board as wanting “someone with a chamber-of-commerce mentality.” He got it.

Deregulating open-pit mining

What happens if Walker remains in office? That’s to be determined. But he’s already outlined one planned change: deregulating open-pit mining. Open-pit mines create an enormous amount of waste and pollution and are generally tightly controlled by the areas in which they’re present.

As noted above, these issues are just the tip of the melting iceberg — and for the residents of Wisconsin, just one aspect of why Walker faces such stiff opposition. Clark Williams, my friend in the state, says that no matter the reason people oppose Walker, “the narrative remains the same: recall the governor to end the civil war and restore the Wisconsin Way” — that is, working together for the good of the state.

Including, presumably, breathable air, drinkable water, and a state not pockmarked with unregulated mines.

Tallying the predictions of energy industry executives is an interesting exercise. Like any dominant business sector, the energy industry’s predictive powers are limited by one key damper: a blindness to change that might undermine their dominance.

But we have an opportunity to look through their tinted shades. Each year, the consulting firm Black & Veatch asks utility executives for their predictions on how the field will evolve. Highlights from the survey:

• The percentage of respondents who think coal has a future in our energy supply dropped from 81.5 to 60 percent over the last year.
• But utility prices will keep going up, because government.
• The execs see economic opportunity in renewable energy and technologies, even predicting that 7 percent of the country’s electricity in 2025 will go to electric vehicles.
• Utility companies aren’t rolling out smart-grid programs — despite the advantages — because customers aren’t well informed about them.
• The industry is worried about water availability for its cooling systems. See: Texas. Where the water went is, of course, anyone’s guess. Probably the sun’s rotation or something, maybe.

That first data point is remarkable. These are executives of companies who stand astride the business world, sitting atop a massive pyramid of success. People in such positions usually only recognize the path they took to the top — and they usually pooh-pooh other pyramids being built around them as insubstantial, doomed to fail. After all, the landscape is littered with abandoned, miniature pyramids.

The pyramids these executives are sitting on are black with coal — so their recognition that coal’s era has ended indicates acceptance that their dominance may also be ending. That’s a difficult moment for an established business. Here, it’s enmeshed with the increased faith in renewable energy: If utility companies think they can turn a profit from renewables, they’ll be more willing to accept that the profits earned with coal are evaporating. But they still blame the pesky, know-it-all government and its regulations for utility price increases. Which is partly warranted: Coal has been artificially cheap for a long time; new pollution standards that make coal pay for its health effects are just one effort to fix that problem. Government (aiming to save 11,000 lives a year) is pushing these companies from behind; renewable opportunities are pulling them forward.

Two other things to note: First, the water problem is a big one — and is largely due to climate change that the power plants themselves contributed to, of course. The New York Times notes that, in addition to making water scarce, global warming will warm existing bodies of water used to cool power plants — meaning they’ll be less efficient in power production. Second: Too bad consumers aren’t educated about smart grids and meters. If only the utility companies were in regular communication with them and could provide some material to address that! But they aren’t, I assume.

The world is moving forward. Seems like maybe utility companies are starting to, as well. Pyramids on wheels.