When the Indiana Gasification (IG) plant was proposed for Rockport by the Mitch Daniels administration in November 2006, the price of natural gas was on the rise at around $9 per million BTUs (mmbtu). Suddenly taking coal's hydrocarbons and converting them to usable "syngas" (synthetic gas) seemed to make sense, at least until you got to the details.

That is, presumably, why the legislature passed a law telling the state's gas utilities that they had to negotiate 30-year contracts with IG on a "take-or-pay" basis that forced Indiana ratepayers to use its syngas no matter what the cost.

Then, while negotiations were still taking place, IG trotted before the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) with its proposal. Sadly for them, the utilities soon discovered that even with prices for natural gas on the rise, the required price for syngas was just too high to be competitive with even volatile natural gas, which by early 2008 had risen to $13-plus.

According to the Encarta World English Dictionary, fascism is:

1. a system of government practiced by Benito Mussolini in Italy between 1922 and 1943 that was characterized by dictatorship, centralized control of private enterprise, repression of opposition, and extreme nationalism, and 2. ... any movement, tendency, or ideology that favors dictatorial government, centralized control of private enterprise, repression of all opposition, and extreme nationalism

Lately, I have heard the word "fascism" enter into American dialogue. Thus, I thought it would be interesting to see how 2008 America stacks up, in admittedly my own view. I certainly use the word with caution since a mere mention inflames any discussion of politics or philosophy.

In a meeting of climate change activists recently, I told those assembled that I did not understand why everyone in the room was not outraged at the seeming inaction of policy makers to tackle global warming when the evidence shows that serious response is required

Maybe that is the question that needs to be asked by all.

While Al Gore has served the role of Paul Revere in this revolution, the movement lacks a Patrick Henry. Instead of "give me liberty or give me death," we get muted voices that make it home in time for supper.

That does not mean everyone involved is not deeply committed to our cause. It simply means we lack the necessary will to affect the change our issue demands. Like most policy makers, we are all to tied to a comfort zone that interferes with saving the world.

Several pollution-producing Southwest Indiana counties would fail to comply with a new ozone standard proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The scientific evidence that ground-level ozone is harmful to public health is so overwhelming that even the Bush EPA has proposed a new standard that would improve health protections for millions of Americans if fully implemented and enforced.

Ozone forms when nitrogen oxides and other emissions from power plants, vehicle exhaust and other sources cook together in sunlight, causing a chemical reaction.

Also known as smog, ozone can irritate the respiratory system, reduce lung function and inflame and damage cells that line the lungs. It is particularly harmful to young children, seniors and citizens with lung disease.

On Feb. 6, 2002, I was arrested for carrying a sign and standing well outside the entrance to a fund-raising party in Evansville featuring Dick Cheney. He was in town to raise money for soon-to-be-private citizen John Hostettler, our congressman at the time.

My sign was simple. "Cheney — 19th Century Energy Man" was apparently too provocative for the Evansville Police officer in charge that day who ordered me arrested.

I was first charged with disorderly conduct, but I was certainly not disorderly. I had to spend a couple of hours in jail — until Cheney left town — and then released, being told to return to court the next morning to be arraigned.

Okay, here is the deal. If you just give me the rights to strip mine coal in your "fish and wildlife" preserve, I give you lots more already stripped land.

And by the way, don't worry about the mercury, arsenic, boron and sludge we dumped there. It's perfectly safe.

Thus went the meeting with area sportsmen as Indiana state officials tried to sell the public on a plan offered by Black Beauty Coal Company, more widely known as Peabody Energy, to strip mine around 1,000 acres of hardwood forest in the Glendale Fish and Wildlife Area near Montgomery.

Is this a bad dream? Please wake me up! Is Dr. Strangelove really our president?

But, it is not a dream. George W. Bush has decided that the world needs another nuclear arms race and has done so by going to India and signing an agreement to undermine the five-decade success of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which India has refused to sign.

As a result, India can build increasing numbers of nuclear weapons with U.S. approval and supplies, so it can gain an upper hand on our other "ally" in the region who the Indians love to hate, Pakistan, who also has nuclear weapons.

As the Bush administration pushes nuclear power as an environmentally friendly energy source, Indiana environmentalist John Blair submits these "top ten" reasons to oppose nuclear energy.

1. Every 1,000 megawatt reactor creates enough Plutonium (Pu) to build 40 nuclear bombs, each year. The half life of Pu is 24,000 years, and it takes a minimum of 10 half lives — 240,000 years — for it to decay to a level that is safe.

Man has been on earth some 60,000 years. I cannot help but think that if we were bent on producing such large volumes of Pu that some despot, at some point, perhaps in the not so distant future, would use some of that Pu to initiate some sort of nuclear conflagration that would end up destroying the world.

I just learned that one of my best friends purchased a giant 10-cylinder SUV. Because it so large and will be used in her business, she will probably qualify for it all to be paid for by U.S. taxpayers through one of Congress' more ridiculous giveaways to the rich.

On the same evening I heard this news, I took a ride on another friend's new boat that sports not one but two engines (plus a gas powered generator) so that this fiberglass behemoth can be thrust down the Ohio River at nearly 50 miles per hour. The owner also just bought a great big SUV (not quite as large as the other) so he could tow the boat "to the lake on occasion."

A recent call by respected environmental leader Professor James Lovelock to combat global climate change by building nuclear plants may seem logical on the surface.

After all, we don't hear much about nukes these days -- just the occasional story of a forced shutdown or the ongoing story about the controversy surrounding Bush's decision to move forward with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump in Nevada -- opposed, incidentally, by nearly everyone in Nevada.