Good news and bad news from our English-speaking cousins:

First the good news: Jim Prentice, Canada’s environment minister, announced last week that his Conservative government will institute a cap-and-trade system for coal-fired power plants, effectively forbidding new coal-plant construction without carbon sequestration and leading to the phase-out of existing plants.

The bad news is that Australia has delayed its cap-and-trade system by a year, until 2011, repor [...]

Since October 2007, Kansas has waged a war over the issue of a new coal-burning power plant for Sunflower Electric. The utility company lobbied aggressively for it, and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius repeatedly vetoed enabling legislation.

Sebelius has now moved on to become secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration. Her successor as governor, Mark Parkinson, instantly reached a compromise with Sunflower to permit the coal plant. The power company agrees to shut dow [...]