It was a bad week to be planning a coal-fired power plant in the United States.

The industry suffered its second blow of the week on Friday with the cancellation of a plant in Michigan. The move by power plant developer LS Power marks the ninth such plant to be dropped in the United States so far this year, according to a count by environmental group the Sierra Club.

The company blamed regulatory uncertainty and the weak economy for the cancellation, which environmentalists cheered because coal-fired power plants are responsible for more than 30 percent of the United States’ global warming emissions.

The Michigan plant cancellation wasn’t the first blow to coal this week, either. On Tuesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency withdrew a permit for a massive coal-fired plant in New Mexico that would have been built on an Indian reservation.

The announcements came within two weeks after the Obama administration opened the way to regulating greenhouse gas emissions by declaring them a danger to human health.

Mandated limits on greenhouse gases, which the U.S. could adopt as early as this year, are certain to deal a further blow to new coal-fired plants. The U.S. Department of Energy’s statistical arm, however, expects coal to provide the largest share of U.S. electric generation for years to come, making up 47 percent of the nation’s power generation in 2030.

What do you think is the future of coal-fired power in the United States?

Photo credit: Reuters/Staff Photographer (Southern Company’s Plant Bowen in Cartersville, Georgia, one of the biggest coal-fired plants in the United States)

Dozens of the world’s top movie, television and music stars showed off their green cred on Saturday night at a Hollywood-style fundraiser honoring the Natural Resource Defense Council’s 20 years in Southern California.

The event at Beverly Hills’ Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel was a who’s who of Hollywood environmentalists, including actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Redford, and Laurie David, a global warming activist and producer of the Al Gore movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” All three are trustees of the NRDC’s Southern California office. In 2003, the group even dedicated its new building to Redford.

It’s no secret that the environment and climate change is a hot cause in Hollywood, and it’s hard to imagine another social issue drawing as much star power to one event. The party also raised a hefty $2 million.

“Mad Men” star Jon Hamm and designer Tom Ford also attended the party, which was hosted by “Seinfeld” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and included a musical performance by Grammy-winning rockers Maroon 5. Actress Rosanna Arquette deejayed the after party.

On stage, Redford recalled why he joined the NRDC in the 1970’s, saying it was “because they had the power to sue.”

Many attendees echoed that refrain throughout the night, with Louis-Dreyfus bluntly stating: “I love lawsuits.”

The evening also included a list of the group’s legal victories in the region, including helping to stop inadequately treated sewage from being dumped into the Santa Monica Bay and testing children for lead poisoning in the 1990s. More recently, NRDC and other environmental groups last year reached a deal with land holder Tejon Ranch to permanently protect 240,000 acres of California land from development.

But the group also suffered a setback in the region last year after the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. navy can conduct sonar training exercises off the southern California coast without restrictions to protect whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the evening was as green as could be, with a vegetarian, locally sourced menu, organic wine, and trees and bushes as decoration. Even the table centerpieces didn’t require watering, instead featuring asparagus and artichokes and tulips planted in stones.

Photocredit: Reuters (Maroon 5 performs at the NRDC’s 20th Anniversary Celebration in Beverly Hills on April 25, 2009)

Should the world celebrate the 200th anniversary today of the birth of English naturalist Charles Darwin by working to limit the number of tourists visiting the Galapagos Islands or Antarctica to protect their spectacular wildlife?

Would that help elephant seals like this one above on the Antarctic Peninsula slumber more peacefully? And would it cause less disruption for marine iguanas, below right, on Santa Cruz island in the Galapagos?

The Galapagos in the Pacific Ocean gave Darwin insights into evolution on his famed voyage around the world aboard The Beagle. Many species — from mockingbirds to tortoises – differ from those on the South American mainland. For a story, click here.

And Antarctica, which wasn’t even discovered when Darwin was born on Feb. 12, 1809, is the world’s last big wilderness.

About 39,000 tourists are likely to visit Antarctica this current summer season, down from a record 46,000 a year ago and interrupting a fast-rising trend in the past couple of decades, according to the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators. For a story, click here. Recession has hit bookings of trips that cost thousands of dollars.

IAATO says the numbers are tiny — enough people to fill a football stadium across a continent bigger than the United States.

But a group of environmentalists, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, wants the numbers capped — it hasn’t proposed an exact figure, but says it shouldn’t be too far above current levels.

Among nightmare scenarios for Antarctica, first sighted in 1820, penguins might get bird flu. Or new seeds unwittingly brought by tourists might thrive and displace lichens and mosses found nowhere else on earth. A big cruise liner might run aground, spilling oil and coating beaches used by seals.

And the unique wildlife is of the Galapagos is similarly under threat from people with both tourism and immigration from the South American mainland. See a BBC report here, for instance, saying that tourism rose to more than 173,000 last year.

The United Nations in 2007 added the Galapagos to its list of world heritage sites in danger.

So should there be caps on visitors? If so, how many?

If not, how do we protect these unique places?

California environmentalists are in tizzy this week, accusing Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of telling their governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, how to do his job.

At issue is a letter Palin sent to Schwarzenegger last month, asking him to veto a bill that would raise shipping container fees to pay for pollution-reduction programs at three major California ports.

The letter, which Palin sent to Schwarzenegger a day before she was announced as John McCain’s running mate, began circling on the Web on Thursday.

In it, Palin argues that the fees would hurt Alaskans, who rely heavily on marine cargo to receive goods.

“Shipping costs have increased significantly with the rising price of fuel and these higher costs are quickly passed on to Alaskans,” Palin wrote. “This tax makes the situation worse.”

Palin also argued that the $30 fee per 20-foot container would “harm California by driving port business away.”

California’s three biggest ports — Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland — are responsible for nearly half of the nation’s imports.

“Gov. Palin needs to visit Southern California and understand that we are the tailpipe of the nation, ” said the bill’s author, California State Senator Alan Lowenthal. “By getting cheap goods from Asia to Alaska, we are subsidizing Alaskans with our health.” 

Environmentalists also countered the letter swiftly, saying the bill was critical to reducing the number of pollution-related deaths in California.

“We’re counting on the governor to stand up for California and not out-of-state interests,” Martin Schlageter, campaign director for California air quality group the Coalition for Clean Air, said of the letter.

The bill has received the approval of the California legislature, but the Governor himself has yet to sign it or comment on his plans.

McCain, whose presidential bid Schwarzenegger has endorsed, toured the Los Angeles port area with the California Governor in February of last year. At the time, he called for a nationwide roll-out of California’s low carbon fuel standard.

What do you serve world leaders for lunch at a U.N. summit trying to solve a crisis caused by soaring food prices?

You clearly want to impress dozens of heads of state but without laying on opulent meals when up to 1 billion people are threatened by hunger.

U.N. organisers of the June 3-5 food summit in Rome are treading a fine line, putting typically Italian ingredients on the menus, such as mozzarella cheese, pasta, spinach, beans, risotto and parmesan. No pizzas, though.

The main exception to traditional Italian ingredients are pineapples, requiring more energy to transport from the tropics. Veal is on the menu twice and beef once — environmentalists say vegetarianism is best for the climate because cows need to eat about 16 kilos of grain or grass to put on a kilo of meat.

So here is Tuesday’s menu:

Vol au vent with maize and mozzarella

Pasta with a cream of pumpkin and prawns

Braised veal slices with cherry tomatoes and basil

Spinach a la romaine

Fruit salad with ice cream

 They have even gone easy on the wine: today it is the Orvieto Classico Poggio Calvelli 2005; not among Italy’s most expensive.

Any better advice? Maybe they should all go vegetarian?