Big names are among the top 25: Yosemite, Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier, Great Smoky Mountains, and Rocky Mountain National Park, along with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island National Monuments.

The report highlights 11 different climate-related dangers to the parks, including loss of ice and snow, loss of wildlife, rising seas and stronger coastal storms, and disruption of plant communities.

Glaciers could be gone from Glacier National Park in less than 20 years. Joshua Trees wiped out in Joshua Tree National Park, Saguaro cactuses gone from Saguaro National Park. Entire parks and monuments lost to sea level rise: Everglades, Dry Tortugas, Ellis Island. See some of the majestic places and animals that are threatened by climate change in this slideshow of national parks.

Out timing is better than we could have imagined. Yesterday the Senate introduced a comprehensive clean energy, climate and energy security bill. PBS this week has been airing Ken Burns' documentary series: The National Parks, America's Greatest Idea. And last week a blue-ribbon National Parks Second Century Commission released it's recommendations for guiding our Parks into their next 100 years.

Our report makes it clear we have to act immediately to cut climate-disrupting pollution. The good news is we can start solving this problem and do it in a way good for jobs and the economy.

Recent economic modeling by the University of California found that if we pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation like the bill the House passed in June, by 2020 we will create 918,000 to 1.9 million new jobs, boost GDP between $39 billion and $111 billion, and increase annual household income by $500-$1,200 per year. These economic gains are over and above the growth the U.S. would see in the absence of such a bill.

State-specific fact sheets from our parks report are available for the impacts on  Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

Hundreds of millions of visitors a year travel to America's national parks to experience some of the most spectacular wild places in the United States. We want to see your favorite photos from our national parks. Submit photos taken in America's national parks to NRDC's Onearth magazine.

Would you then have the gall to go into Virginia and spend $140,000 on a TV ad campaign that points the finger of blame at wealthy environmentalists (!?) as the problem when it comes to global warming?  Here's the text of the ad:

"Hey there, I'm Carlton, the wealthy eco-hypocrite. I inherited my money and attended fancy schools. I own three homes and five cars, but always talk with my rich friends about saving the planet. And I want Congress to spend billions on programs in the name of global warming and green energy. Even if it causes massive unemployment, higher energy costs, and digs people like you even deeper into the recession. Who knows, maybe I'll even make money off of it!"

With all due respect to the Ritz cracker–eating Carlton, the real hypocrite here is ad underwriter David Koch, head of Koch Industries, the mega-energy company that bankrolled a right-wing advocacy group known as "Americans for Prosperity."    

Faithful Switchboard readers may recall that as we reported last year:

"The group isn't just funded by an industry CEO, it was planted by one. David Koch, Executive Vice-President of family-founded multi-national conglomerate Koch Industries, is a founder of AFP and a financial supporter through the family-controlled and company-financed Claude R. Lambe Foundation.  Koch Industries, Inc. and its sister company, Koch Holdings, LLC, own a group of companies invested in refineries, chemicals, minerals and so on.

The Koch companies have an atrocious record of sloppy operations. According to the EPA, Koch Industries is responsible for over 300 oil spills in the US and has leaked three million gallons of crude oil into fisheries and drinking waters.  They were fined a record $35 million dollars and an additional $8 million in Minnesota for discharging into streams.  In Texas - a state not usually known for rigid enforcement of environmental laws - the company was held liable for allowing large amounts of carcinogenic benzene to leak from a Texas refinery.

One example of Koch's sloppy operations led to a tragic loss of life. In 1996, a rusty Koch pipeline leaked flammable butane near a Texas residential neighborhood. Warned by the smell of gas, two teenagers drove their truck toward the nearest payphone to call for help, but they never made it.  Sparks from their truck ignited the gas cloud and the two burned alive. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that 'the probable cause of this accident was the failure of Koch to adequately protect its pipeline from corrosion' and the ineffectiveness of Koch's program to educate local residents about how to respond during a pipeline leak." 

If that suggests to you that David Koch isn't about to let a few rules, the truth, compassion for humankind or  other "minor nuisances" get in his way, you've got it right.   The latest AFP ads clearly suggest that global warming science is a scam, which is an extremist, know-nothing position that Americans For Prosperity has always strived to avoid taking before.  For example, AFP campaigners against climate legislation were quoted last summer as follows:

Kalamazoo (MI) Gazette:   "Annie Patanaude, the organization's communications director, said the group does not disagree with the science behind global warming, but that people should look at the policies behind bills such as the Lieberman-Warner bill."

WSBTV - South Bend, Indiana:   "... the Washington, D.C.-based Americans for Prosperity doesn't want to discuss the science behind climate change, communications director Annie Patnaude said. It simply wants people to take a more critical look at policies and regulations being developed to address climate change.  'We're not global warming deniers by any means,' she said prior to a rally at St. Patrick's County Park in South Bend. 'What we think is we need to have a real debate about the issue and that includes a real look at the costs of some of the policies being promoted.'"

So much for looking reasonable!   With the new ads, it appears AFP has decided that the time for pretending to accept the scientific reality of climate change has now passed.  But hypocrisy is still very much in fashion.

NV Energy (the company formerly known as Sierra Pacific Resources) has shelved plans to build a 1,500 megawatt coal-fired power plant -- the controversial Ely Energy Center.  

No coal-fired power plant in America has been more closely watched or harder fought than this one, thanks to Senator Harry Reid's early opposition to the project and the millions spent by the coal industry pushing dirty coal in Nevada. Nearly two years ago, Reid said he would do "everything I can" to stop construction of three major coal-fired power plants in his home state of Nevada, and push for more alternative energy development.

That prompted coal industry execs to vow to "Daschlize" Reid, meaning they would spend as much as needed to get him out of the Senate. Stakes were also high in Nevada because the Ad/Lobbying shop hired to run the industry's fraudulent $40 million national "clean coal" campaign, R&R Partners, is based in Las Vegas. Nevada was also a hotly-contested Presidential election state, and the combined size of the three plants -- 4,000 megawatts -- was unmatched by proposals in any other state.

But like other developers who have canceled or delayed projects in recent months, NV Energy has realized that global warming pollution will soon be federally regulated, and new, dirty coal plants are a bad deal for the bottom line, not to mention utility bills or public health.

NV Energy CEO Michael Yackira acknowledged as much after making the announcement.

"It's about the economic realities of building a coal plant. ... We looked at it and said, 'Now is not the time to take an economic risk for either our rate payers or our shareholders.'"

Of course these risks were obvious to anyone you looked at the proposal. Back in early April 2008, in a report commissioned by NRDC, the Wall Street firm Innovest calculated that "the first phase of Sierra Pacific's planned $5 billion coal-fired Ely facility will increase Sierra's coal capacity by 180 percent and its annual C02 emissions by an estimated 93 percent compared to 2004 emissions levels."  

The Wall Street research firm went on to note:

"'In light of impending carbon regulation, Sierra Pacific's continuing focus on new coal capacity is in direct contrast to leading U.S. utilities that are reducing their carbon risk exposure and capitalizing on the opportunities associated with renewable energy and energy efficiency... The proposed facility presents significant environmental and financial risks that will likely translate into negative financial implications for both shareholders and ratepayers.' 

Industry experts support Innovest's findings. Former Nevada Public Utility Commission (PUC) Commissioner and Nevada State Consumer Advocate Tim Hay said: 'It is no coincidence that electrical rates in Nevada have gone from among the lowest in the nation to some of the very highest today.   Time and time again, Sierra Pacific has relied on shifting risk onto the backs of investors and ratepayers rather than putting in place a sound business strategy.'" 

The demise of the Nevada coal-fired power plant is not exactly being mourned.  In an insightful editorial titled "Good Riddance to Coal," The Las Vegas Sun editorial board writes:

"NV Energy's announcement Monday that it was postponing for at least 10 years its plans to build a coal-fired power plant near Ely was as welcome as it was inevitable. We have opposed the plant, known as the Ely Energy Center, since plans for it were announced in 2006. Nevada should be moving forward with renewable energy, not moving backward with coal, whose ceaseless, voluminous emissions are unhealthy to all forms of life.

'The company will not move forward with construction of the coal plant until the technologies that will capture and store greenhouse gasses are commercially feasible,' a statement on NV Energy's Web site said.

That statement confirms that so-called 'clean coal' does not exist, despite promotions of the concept in national advertising. Although new coal plants emit fewer pollutants than ones built two or three decades ago, they are still dirty. Proof of that is contained in the Ely Energy Center's draft environmental impact statement, which says emissions of greenhouse gases and various unhealthy chemicals and particulates would amount to millions of tons per year."

The Reno Gazette-Journal editorial writers took a somewhat more charitable route to reach the same conclusion:

"Utility executives deserve credit for understanding that their industry is changing and that building a conventional power plant far from the state's urban areas doesn't make good sense for its investors or its customers. 

But opponents of the coal-fired plant, who put a different kind of pressure on the utility, deserve a lot of credit for the decision, too.  When U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced his opposition to any new coal-fired power plants in mid-2007, it became politically difficult for the utility to move ahead with its plans. (Two other coal-fired plants have been proposed for rural Nevada by other, non-Nevada companies.) Reid warned that he would do 'everything I can' to prevent the plants from being constructed. 

The fight against the plant continued last week at a hearing in Reno hosted by the Bureau of Land Management, which would have to approve the project. The opponents rightly welcomed NV Energy's announcement of the cancellation on Monday."

The bottom line is this:  One of the biggest coal-fired power plants proposed for the United States is now dead -- at least for the foreseeable future.  It's one of the biggest signs yet that the future of dirty coal and the future of the United States are now on two increasingly diverging paths.

If President-elect Obama and the new Congress want to see firsthand why dirty coal is not the energy solution for America, they need look no further than the coal-fired power plant proposed for Virginia's nearby Wise County.

Last week, the coalition Wise Energy for Wise County released a major new study showing that:  "... investing in energy efficiency instead of building the Wise County coal plant to meet the same electricity demand would yield hundreds of millions of dollars more annually for the state and create at least 2,600 more jobs than the controversial 585-megawatt coal-fired power plant. The benefits would be even greater if, as anticipated, the federal government enacts controls on global warming emissions."

In bottom-line  terms for consumers, that boils down to this:   "... avoiding construction of the coal plant by investing in efficiency would save the average household in Dominion's service territory between $52 and $91 per year in 2012."

As Alan Gregory's Conservation News noted after reading the report:   "... (you have to) wonder out loud why our society is even thinking of launching another coal-fired power plant."

The mainstream media may not be paying much attention to this study, but it's getting out far and wide among bloggers - even attracting the attention of the likes of Ted Williams Fly, Rod + Reel Online.

Over at the Gristmill, David Roberts writes under the headline "Meddling Environmentalists Try to Save People Money":  "The report goes on to find that efficiency investments would also add far more revenue to the state economy and create thousands more jobs. Got that? Better for the state economy, for ratepayers, and for jobs ... [Remind] me again about how coal is cheap? About how environmental measures hurt the economy? About how utilities are just trying to do what's best for ratepayers?"

Those are exactly the right questions we need to be asking about the Wise County plant and other white elephants like it.

But that analysis ignores the fact that that there are huge market forces at work today that will not vanish overnight in the face of short-term slumps in the available of capital or decreased oil prices.

In fact, Dr. Bill Chameides, the dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, argues in a recent blog that we are actually changing the way we think about energy ... and how to price it:

"The bottom line is that the apparent competitive advantage of fossil fuels is to some extent a reflection of a distortion in the marketplace rather that a true price differential. To remove that distortion, the environmental and health-care costs of using fossil fuels must be internalized into the price for the energy generated from these fuels ...  Once that is done - and I am not alone in thinking that it will happen -- renewable energy may look to be a good bet to investors even with falling fossil fuel costs.

In fact, as my colleague Pete Altman blogged earlier this week, there is every reason to believe that the new green economy will flourish even as the "old" economy continues to stumble.

For added evidence, read the California-focused study by David Roland-Holst, an economist at the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at the UC Berkeley, to see that there are huge energy efficiencies that can be made that will mean hundreds of thousands of net new jobs when extended nationwide.

The good news is that those efficiencies and new jobs could be achieved in other states - regardless of how weakly the old economy may be doing.