Longview, Washington.

(Editor's Note: This is the second blog in an ongoing series about proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest. Upcoming blogs will examine the potential impact coal export terminals could have on the region's health and environment.)

There are a whole lot of coal companies mining a whole lot of coal in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin. Although U.S. demand for coal is shrinking—thanks in part to Earthjustice’s successful campaign to shutter polluting coal-fired power plants—there are a whole lot of coal-fired power plants in Asia and a whole lot more planned for future construction.

You can probably see where this is going.

Considering the circumstances, it doesn’t take a trained economist to deduce that Powder River Basin mining companies are keen on selling Asia as much coal as possible. The only problem, from industry’s perspective, is how to transport the coal to the continent. Obviously, American coal will sit on a big boat during the last leg of the trip, but it’s the process leading up to the voyage across the Pacific that’s proving to be the sticky wicket.

Devastation following the Kingston coal ash disaster

(Note from Lisa Evans: Last week, we nearly lost the battle for Environmental Protection Agency regulations. However, thanks to the chorus of voices from affected communities and public interest groups across the nation and to the amazing work of our champions in the House and Senate, a provision blocking an EPA coal ash rule was removed from the federal transportation bill.  Here is a wrap-up of the close fight by Josh Galperin, Policy Analyst and Research Attorney for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Josh reminds us that -- contrary to what the coal industry would have us believe -- more (coal ash dumps) cannot equal less (regulation).)

Last week brought a lot of news about coal ash in national media, some good, some bad. On one side we learned of new information from the EPA to add to the growing mountain of evidence about the risks of unregulated coal ash (that’s bad). On the other side we pulled out a narrow victory in Washington, DC by keeping dangerous coal ash language out of the federal Transportation Bill (phew, that’s good!).

There are some straight spines left in the U.S. Senate, which today voted down a resolution from Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) that would have effectively exempted coal-fired power plants—the nation's worst air polluters—from Clean Air Act controls that limit mercury and other toxic emissions. This is a critical victory in the decades-long effort to protect communities from the egregious amounts of health-damaging pollutants that coal plants put in our air.

In contrast, Sen. Inhofe and some of his coaleagues—pardon me, colleagues—have bent over backwards for our nation's most recalcitrant industrial polluters time and again, tone deaf to the fact that coal plant pollution sickens and kills tens of thousands of people every year. In fact, the senator said recently that the Environmental Protection Agency's recently finalized protections against toxic air from coal plants are "not about health." Yet that's exactly what they're about: limits on coal plant air pollution are projected to prevent up to 11,000 deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 childhood asthma attacks every year.

But from the senator's perspective, these benefits are "negligible."

"I find it impossible to relate to the senator's view that such benefits are 'negligible,' and thankfully, a majority of senators appear to as well," said Earthjustice attorney Jim Pew, who has worked for more than a decade to obtain the mercury and air toxic standards for power plants, and who is currently defending them from industry attack on behalf of the NAACP, Sierra Club, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Clean Air Counsel.

(Trip Van Noppen is President of Earthjustice)

It started in 2005, when baby oysters began dying by the billions in Oregon and Washington. At first, the fishermen weren’t worried, hardened by years of dealing with nature’s fickleness. But, when the die-offs continued year after year, seamen and scientists alike started seeking answers.

What they found is that the impacts from carbon pollution that scientists have been warning about for decades are occurring now. It turns out that while the world’s eyes have been trained on the changes to the land, the ocean has been quietly undergoing its own transformation.