The most worrisome energy trend in the world, by a wide margin, is rising coal consumption in China:

The figures are pretty stunning: Chinese coal demand has been rising at about 9 percent a year for the last 12 years. By comparison, coal demand in the rest of the world has been rising at about 1 percent annually. China now burns almost half the world's coal.

Cheap coal power has been a boon to China, an engine pulling millions and millions of people out of poverty. But it has also brought nightmarish local pollution problems -- which are not remaining local -- and it of course threatens to tip the climate into chaos, which will do more damage to the Chinese people, over the long term, than the last decade of growth has done good. It is, as China expert James Fallows says, an "environmental emergency" that threatens to stop China from ever catching up to the developed world.

Most projections [PDF] have coal use in China continuing to increase for decades to come. But there are reasons to think those projections overstate demand -- that China's appetite for coal may peak sooner than expected. For one thing, the Chinese government is signaling that the country's coal consumption will peak by 2015, at 4 billion tonnes.

I'll start with the weirdest part of this story: Alaska has a global warming task force that was started by none other than Sarah Palin. You probably remember Sarah Palin; her environmental streak is probably not what you remember best.

It doesn't matter anyway, because the task force doesn't meet anymore. From the Guardian:

The taskforce was established by Sarah Palin during her time as governor, in an effort to protect a state that is acutely vulnerable to climate change.

Alaska, like other Arctic regions, is warming at a much faster rate than the global average. Last summer saw record loss of Arctic sea ice.

However, the rapid-response team has not met since March 2011 and its supervisory body, the Sub-Cabinet on Climate Change, has gone even longer without meeting. …

The state government, in a letter from 1 February, said the sub-cabinet had produced three strategy documents since that February 2010 meeting, but declined to release them.

New York state's tortuous, interminable process of deciding whether or not to approve fracking continues; it slowly lifts one foot out of molasses, considers it for an hour or two, and then places it down again with a squelch one centimeter in front of the other foot. The last microstep we reported on was actually a step backward, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) moved to restart the state's analysis of fracking's health effects.

But now a real step: New York has hired a geologist to conduct a study of the seismological repercussions of fracking. As you may recall, drilling into shale and breaking it apart with high-pressure water has been linked to earthquakes. So the state is looking into that, since the very last thing New York wants is to be any more like California. The man hired for the job, to ensure that New York doesn't crumble into the sea if it allows fracking? A guy who used to work for fracking companies.

From Bloomberg:

Robert Jacobi was picked by the Department of Environmental Conservation for a seismology study as part of its environmental review of the drilling process known as fracking, Lisa King, an agency spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. Jacobi is a University at Buffalo professor and has advised drillers for two decades. …

Jacobi, who has taught at the state university for more than 30 years, has advised various gas drillers since 1994, according to a resume released by the university. He has been a senior geology adviser for Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp., a natural gas drilling company, since last year.

Some may dream of shaking up their routine by getting out on the open highway for a road trip; public transit lovers dream of getting on a train and watching the world speed by. But many a dream train trip has been derailed by a quick reality check of how frickin’ long it takes to get almost anywhere on the train.

Now, though, it’s possible to indulge those fantasies to their fullest with this map of an imaginary U.S. high-speed rail that will take you anywhere you want to go, faster than you ever imagined possible, and without any of the attendant guilt of flying.

Since all anyone is talking about today is the secretary of the interior, let's check in on Bruce Babbitt, who served in that position under President Clinton. What does he think about the state of the world, etc.? Any thoughts on the use of public land for oil exploration versus conserving it for the future, and perhaps any suggestions on how those uses should be balanced, ratio-wise?

From online internet website Politico.com:

Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt pressed President Barack Obama on Tuesday to set aside an acre of public land for conservation for every acre that is leased for oil and gas development. …

Over the past four years, he said, industry has leased more than 6 million acres compared with the 2.6 million acres that have been permanently protected. “In the Obama era, land conservation is again falling behind,” he said. “This lopsided public-land administration in favor of the oil and gas industry shouldn’t continue.”

Alright. Sounds like a plan. A brand new plan, for Obama to look at.

Babbitt made a similar plea to Obama when he spoke at the press club in June 2011 on the 105th anniversary of the [Antiquities Act]. During that speech, he mocked “munchkins” at the White House for backing down from what he dubbed an assault from Republicans over the issue.

Oh. Not new. But at least he dropped the weird Wizard of Oz analogy this time.

"BP" used to stand for "British Petroleum," presumably until Britain got embarrassed. Well, not really -- although British people weren't very happy about people calling the company British Petroleum after its Gulf rig exploded and leaked and killed mammals of various types.

Anyway, here's News About BP and Money and the Government, our new feature about BP and money and the government, part one in a series of one.

BP made a lot of money last year.

Big surprise. Annual profits for the company were $11.6 billion, only six or seven times what the average U.S. household makes (over the course of 33,000 years).

And of course we'll bring back our favorite tool to make this figure hit home:

BP doesn't want to be rude or disrespectful, of course, but it thinks that the amount of money sought by state and local governments over the Deepwater Horizon disaster is a tad steep. From Reuters:

As a human, one of the closest approximations you can have to living like a bird is to look at Google Maps. (Well, one of the closest approximations besides actually leaving the computer and going outside to hang-glide, for instance, but let’s not be ridiculous.) On the terrain view, it's like you're flying high above the land. Except that actually, you are way better off than birds, because you get driving directions and Zagat reviews and little red Google destination markers to show you where you’re going. Birds get none of that. But artist Shuchun Hsiao is working to make the experience a little more equal.

Hsiao hasn’t enabled Zagat reviews for birds, or even Yelp, but he has an ongoing project in which he puts up birdhouses that look like Google Map markers. Like humans, they can now head towards those little red bubbles.

I don't know what's the dumbest part of the Fishlove ad campaign -- the fact that someone thought you could raise awareness about overfishing with glaringly lit photos of naked celebrities snuggling dead sea life, or the fact that the whole thing was co-sponsored by a sushi restaurant. (What's the idea there -- "eat this tuna, Lizzy Jagger might have put her vagina on it”?) But I do know that it gave us this picture of Sir Naked Ben Kingsley looking very serious about a small limp octopus, which is frankly transcendent. So thanks for that, Fishlove.

A line from a New York magazine article from three years ago has stuck with me: "We spend more time talking about what we think we’ll think than what we thought." Or: Speculation prior to an event is nearly limitless; reflection afterward, brief.

And so, with six days until the president's State of the Union address, speculation has begun. What will he say? What should he say? How strong or weak will what he says be? What’s the over/under on number of times Obama says “climate,” and how many times would he have to say it to fix the warming globe?

The Wall Street Journal thinks it will come up.

President Barack Obama in next week's State of the Union speech will lay out a renewed effort to combat climate change that is expected to include using his authority to curb emissions from existing power plants, people who have talked to the administration about its plans said. …

I'm optimistic about this zippy little hand dryer Dyson's about to proudly roll out. It's actually attached to the faucet. So you put your hands under the faucet to wash, and then move them to the side to be greeted by cold air whooshing out at an amazing 430 miles an hour. (Dyson's big innovation with hand dryers is discovering that fast cold air works better than slow warm air, which you may already know based on its AirBlade dryers -- you know, those bottle-opener-looking things frequently seen mounted in restrooms under the paper towels that you use instead.)

In addition to cleverly attaching to the faucet and looking like a tiny windmill, this new dryer has a motor four times faster than other dryers -- it revs up to full power in under a second, which uses a lot less energy. It's so efficient that it can dry 15 people's hands for the cost of a paper towel. The only problem? It costs $1,200, which is as much as like 8,000 paper towels. So it only becomes cost-effective once you've dried your hands 500-plus times.