It can’t be easy trying to convince Mainers to support a coal gasification plant.

Even with all the jobs, the tax revenue and domestically produced electricity, coal plants are best known here for the Midwestern smokestacks that pollute our air and lakes.

So maybe you can’t blame the developer of a proposed coal and wood gasification plant in Wiscasset for emphasizing the positive. Especially with the project facing a townwide vote Nov. 6.

But, this week, the company turned up the spin cycle, and ended up a little black and blue.

Brace yourselves, greenies. Maine ranks 25th on a new list of America’s greenest states. That’s right, perfectly average.

Forbes magazine just published the rankings, which are based on pro-environment public policies, energy efficiency programs, air quality and other things.

Vermont, Oregon and Washington are numbers one, two and three on the list. No surprises there. Also in the top 10 and comfortably ahead of Maine are Connecticut (6), New Jersey (7), Rhode Island (8) and New York (9).

Ouch.

We Mainers regard ourselves as greener than the average American partly because we enjoy being around so much undeveloped forestland and coastline. But this ranking wasn’t about recreational opportunities and quality of life.

Forbes scored each state in six categories: carbon footprint, air quality, water quality, hazardous waste management, policy initiatives and energy consumption.

You can file an appeal with the folks at Forbes if you like, but Maine is far from the most energy-efficient state. We drive our cars and pickups many more miles than the average American, for example.

There's always next year.

Imagine Casco Bay as an open sewer, feces floating around beaches and piers, odors thick enough to make ferry passengers queasy.

Of course, if you’ve been around Portland long enough, you probably don’t need much imagination. You remember it.

Up until the late 1970s, Casco Bay was the sewage treatment plant for Portland and surrounding communities. Everything flushed down a toilet or sink, washed into a storm drain, or discharged by a factory made its way into the bay.

It was so gross that a national magazine advised boaters to stay away from Portland Harbor.

The pollution wasn’t limited to Casco Bay. The Presumposcot River was so polluted it made people vomit and peeled the paint off nearby homes. Maine’s other industrial rivers, including the Androscoggin, were routinely infused with mercury and other toxins.

And Maine was a relatively clean place. Rivers in other parts of the country caught fire and burned. Lake Erie was pronounced dead.

All that started to change soon after the passage in 1972 of what would become the Clean Water Act. The champion of that law, Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie, argued on the U.S. Senate floor 35 years ago this week to overturn President Nixon’s veto.

“Can we afford clean water? Can we afford rivers and lakes and streams and oceans which continue to make life possible on this planet? Can we afford life itself?” Muskie said. “These questions answer themselves.”

Portland will soon be one of the nation’s hottest hometowns, says the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

It’s not because the local music scene is expected to heat up, however. It’s because Portland will be, literally, one of the cooler places to live in about 40 years, the magazine says.

The Oct. 18 issue is the rock-n-roll digest’s annual “Hot Issue,” a collection of picks that includes hot bands, hot actors and even hot drag act. One list – “Hot Land Grab” – focuses on global warming and names what are predicted to be the six U.S. most liveable cities in 2050. Our fair city is number three.

“Low-lying portions of downtown Portland could get hit by rising sea levels, but most of the city is on higher ground. So when those nor’easters blow through (and get even nastier), it won’t be as vulnerable to storm surges as nearby Boston. Ocean access and offshore breezes will temper heat waves, which will be less brutal here than in more southern and inland cities.”

The others cities? Seattle and the other Portland on the west coast, and Manchester, N.H., Buffalo, N.Y., and Burlington, Vt., in the northeast.

Now, maybe Rolling Stone isn’t the best source for scientific projections, or even real estate advice. (C’mon, they put Kid Rock on the cover of the “Hot Issue.”)

But the idea that Maine would be somewhat of a haven in a warming world isn’t new or totally off the wall. Down to Earth suggested as much in a post last May based on a NASA map of the future climate.

“Maine, according to the map, could become one of the few places in the eastern half of the U.S. where the average summer temperature in 2085 is not expected to exceed 90 degrees.”

It’s tough being a lynx in Maine these days.

And not just because a few hunters seem to be using them for target practice. Traps and motor vehicles also have taken their toll. And illness and starvation are signs that the population also faces a new natural threat that biologists can’t yet explain.

The latest misfortunate feline was found dead along a road in Aroostook County earlier this week. The 25-pound male was shot through the hind legs by someone with a high-powered rifle.

A large herd of Maine’s environmentalists got together Thursday evening over beer and wine for a combination celebration and pep rally. (Or is it a pack of environmentalists? A gaggle?)

It was the annual “Evening for the Environment” sponsored by the Maine League of Conservation Voters and it drew an overflow crowd of activists and policy makers to the penthouse of the University of Southern Maine’s Glickman Library. The group is best known for monitoring the voting records of state legislators.

The celebration part included an Environmental Leadership Award - a tree - for Adam Lee, president of Lee Auto Malls and a vocal advocate for cleaner and more fuel efficient cars.

Here’s Lee being humble about his role in passing Maine’s cleaner car law: “It’s great to be a car dealer.... When you’re car dealer, people have such low expectations.”
On being a Toyota dealer at an environmentalists’ party: “I’ve got to say I’ve never seen so many Priuses in one place. It makes me very happy.”
On why speaking out is good for business: “I believe we need stricter fuel economy standards so Detroit will be forced to save themselves from themselves.”

Bill McKibben, a nationally known writer and organizer, led the rally part. His book “The End of Nature” helped make global warming a mainstream issue in 1989 and he urged the audience to keep spreading “the movement.”

Here’s McKibben on the growing urgency: “The models dramatically understimated how finely balanced the earth was.”
On why not to get depressed about that: “The good news is solutions are a lot closer than we might think.”
On what it will take: “A movement as real and as deep as the civil rights movement a generation ago.”
And, finally, McKibben on the first three things a person can do to fight global warming: “First, organize. Second, organize. And third, organize. And then if you have any energy left, change that lightbulb.”

Are you frustrated with the media’s coverage of global warming? Think objectivity or balance gets in the way? What objectivity, you say?

Prefer the term “global warming?” Or are you of the “climate change” persuasion? Wondering what’s the difference?

The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media went on line last week and offers an inside look at the push and pull going on in the journalism world about how (and how well) media are covering the subject, whatever you want to call it. It seems to me the site will be interesting for people outside that world, too, although I could definitely be biased about that.

Getting rid of old motor oil was a pretty simple matter in the 1950s and ’60s.

If you didn’t want to mess up your own property, you could pay a guy like George West 2 cents a gallon to take it away and dump it in an old gravel pit.

But what might have seemed like a cheap solution really was not. The bill just got deferred for a while. And, as the oil and other chemicals seeped deeper into the ground and the bedrock, it got bigger.

So big, in fact, that starting this week, you and I are being hit up to cover about $30 million of the cost. We’ll pay through a $1 fee effectively added to the cost of every oil change for the next 10 to 20 years.

Solar-powered homes around the state are opening their doors to the public Saturday in an effort to spread the word about alternative energy and cool the planet.

It’s part of the 12th annual National Solar Tour sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society. Thousands of people across the country are expected to tour green homes in their own areas to see how neighbors are using clean energy and reducing fuel bills.

There are dozens of homes and buildings to visit around Maine, including at least 12 in the southern Maine communities between Kennebunkport, South Berwick and Freeport. Tours also will be offered at offices and educational buildings in the Portland area.

The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, Energyworks LLC and the Maine Solar Energy Association are part of the effort and have posted information on open houses around the state.

Americans seem to have come a long way in a short time when it comes to being concerned about global warming. But they're far from panicking.

A national poll conducted in July found that 48 percent of Americans now believe global warming will have dangerous impacts on people within the next 10 years. That’s a 20 percentage point increase from the response to the same question in 2004, according to Yale University, Gallup and the ClearVision Institute.

The poll also found that 62 percent believe that global warming is an urgent threat requiring immediate and drastic action, and 40 percent said a presidential candidate’s position on global warming will be extremely important or very important when deciding on their vote. Global warming hardly came up during the 2004 campaign.

On the other hand, the poll found that people are not particularly worried that global warming will affect them. Half of those polled said they were personally worried only a little, if at all. And, while participants said global warming is a serious threat to plants, animals and other people, only 19 percent said they consider it a very serious threat to themselves and their families.

The telephone survey involved interviews with 1,011 adults, and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. Look here for more.

Mainers can breathe a little easier now that the 2007 ozone season is over.

The state exceeded the federal healthy air standard for ozone eight times between May and October. That's more than in the last three years combined and more than in any single year since 2002, when Maine had 15 high-ozone days. Maine had two bad-air days last year.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its preliminary end-of-ozone-season data for New England today. The region as whole saw an increase from 16 high-ozone days in 2006 to 26 days in 2007.

Ground-level ozone is a product of air pollution from cars, trucks and industrial smokestacks mixing together on hot, sunny days with little or no wind.

The EPA’s news release takes pains to point out that our air really is cleaner than it used to be and that hot weather was to blame for the increase in ozone this year.

It is true that Maine didn’t come anywhere close to breaking the record of 35 days set in 1988. But the numbers from this year don’t give a lot of confidence that Maine’s air is still getting cleaner rather than dirtier.

While southern New England may have had a hot summer, Maine certainly did not.

The temperature in Portland exceeded 90 degrees on six days this year, while the average is five days a year, according to the National Weather Service. (Interestingly, five of the six 90-degree days occurred in June and September.) The average temperature in Portland was 66.5 degrees Fahrenheit this summer, just slightly above the 66.3 degree long-term average.

Look here to see the historical ozone trend in Maine and New England. Go here to Maine’s ozone Web page.