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I know issues like controlling greenhouse gases can be thick and confusing. But I am also convinced there is a big public demand for journalists to get more aggressive in reporting environmental stories. I want to help you understand one of the leading movements going on to turn pollution reduction into big bucks for businesses.

There is a fascinating story unfolding about how big businesses are joining environmental groups in asking Congress to get off its behind and pass new pollution laws. These are not the hammer-on-the-head kinds of regulations such as a carbon tax. Instead, the coalition -- the United States Climate Action Partnership -- sees economic opportunity in all of this, which I will explain. Just look at the coalition's vision statement: "In our view, the climate change challenge will create more economic opportunities than risks for the U.S. economy."

In 2002, President Bush proposed substantial reductions in power plant emissions by 2018. But environmental groups said the president's plan would actually weaken the nation's Clean Air Act. Congress has mostly stalled legislation to reduce greenhouse emissions, but a Senate committee is working on five bills right now that would create a "cap and trade" plan.

This idea is that there would be an overall cap for greenhouse emissions, and companies could buy and sell credits to emit. Major industries are already operating as though the cap-and-trade plan will happen. The Washington Post says those credits would be worth trillions of dollars within just three years. The idea is that over time, the cap would be lowered and the credits would get more and more valuable. The reason businesses like this approach is because caps and trades create tangible financial rewards for environmental performance. If a company has a permit to pollute, but no longer needs it, it can turn that permit into big financial rewards.

The companies that have joined a coalition asking for the cap-and-trade program are impressive, including General Electric, Alcoa, Dow Chemical, BP America, PepsiCo, Johnson and Johnson, General Motors and Caterpillar. They are joined by the National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The cap-and-trade idea is not new. California is working on a state-level cap-and-trade program. As part of the 1990 Clear Air Act, coal-fired power plants used a similar cap-and-trade program to dramatically reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. It has been called one of the greatest green success stories of the decade.

Here is an MIT study [PDF] of how the program worked so effectively.

Here is the Environmental Protection Agency's cap-and-trade page.

The big trick behind making such a program work is not granting too many credits to businesses at the start of the program. That has undermined the European cap-and-trade notion. Critics say it just gives polluters permission to keep polluting. The San Francisco Chronicle says:

This mistake has severely shaken the European Union Emission Trading Scheme, set up to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, as prices have collapsed from about $38 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2004 to […] $1.40 [in March].

Power plant emissions are a big part of any discussion about greenhouse-gas pollution.

In 2004, an environmental coalition, using EPA statistics, estimated that pollution from power plants causes the premature deaths of 23,600 Americans each year.

The Sierra Club says:

Power plants are a major source of air pollution, with coal-fired power plants spewing 59 percent of total U.S. sulfur dioxide pollution and 18 percent of total nitrous oxides every year. Coal-fired power plants are also the largest polluter of toxic mercury pollution, largest contributor of hazardous air toxics, and release about 50 percent of particle pollution. Additionally, power plants release over 40 percent of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, a prime contributor to global warming.

The Commission for Environmental Cooperation, using EPA data, estimated that 10 percent of the total U.S. facilities emitting sulfur dioxide in 2002 produced 59 percent of the emissions. The lowest-emitting plants, which would equal half of all the country's power plants, produced less than 1 percent. You can see the cleanest are very clean, and the dirtiest are very dirty. (Page 13 of this PDF report.)

The major issues with power plants involve these pollutants. Click on each one for background:

• Sulfur Dioxide
  

• Nitrogen Oxide

• Mercury

• Particulates

Check out this interesting interactive map that zooms you in to every power plant in the country and lists the emissions from each one.

In 2005, the EPA put in place a "Clean Air Interstate Rule," which affects Texas and 27 states east of Texas that the EPA said "contribute to unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone, fine particles or both in downwind states."

You can click here to see what the initiative means to each state.

I wanted to point you toward this online project from VoiceofSanDiego.org, a nonprofit, Internet-based news site. Using training from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the site built a project that helps San Diego residents look by zip code at emissions in that community. SEJ went behind the scenes to find out how this story came together and to help other journalists build similar projects.

It doesn't have to take a G8 agreement to go greener on your own. Just for example, The Fresno (Calif.) Bee explains 10 easy ways to "green" your bathroom.

During this vacation season, it might be worthwhile to remind folks to wash their hands a lot when they visit petting zoos.

Canadian researchers watched visitors at 36 petting zoos and found:

About 70 percent of visitors failed to disinfect their hands before leaving, food and drink were spotted near animals 82 percent of the time, and children were allowed to drink bottles or suck pacifiers in the petting area at more than half of zoos.

Petting zoos are a rich source for E. coli and salmonella.

Last year we took our kids to the Florida State Fair and were struck by how many of those waterless hand disinfectant dispensers there were in the petting zoo exhibit. Our hands were clean enough to perform surgery by the time we left.

This is something that didn't occur to me until I saw this in TechJournal South. The article explains new technology that is designed to protect workers who use tagging guns -- the devices retailers and retail-distribution centers use to attach price tags to clothing. Those tag guns use needles, and workers get stuck all the time.

One study at a retail-distribution center in England [PDF] said nearly one person an hour was stuck by these tagging guns. But the injuries are rarely reported.

States have been watching this problem. California, for example, issued a warning that retailers should handle the guns with care because of the danger that bloodborne illness could spread from worker to worker.

The first place I would look for information on this story would be your state OSHA office or your local garment/apparel workers union.

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.