Justin Rowlatt is traveling the U.S. for the BBC network at the Ethical Man. He's been trying to cut his carbon emissions. Now he's back to "save the world" -- his words, not ours. He asks recently, "Can rural American hold the world to ransom?" 

Rowlatt is in West Virginia where he finds there is much coal mining. It's a place of poor people, but rich in the minerals that established America as an industrial power. Coal is king here and coal rules the state's politics. As a result, Rowlatt reports, the state's two Democratic senators will not vote for the climate change bill now pending in the Senate. The Democrats need those two votes to pass the bill and, as a result, Rowlatt writes, they will have to either cater to West Virginia or water down the bill in some other way that will attract a Republican or two.

"That, in turn, will dilute any deal done at Copenhagen," at the world climate change summit next month, Rowlatt writes. "It may seem extraordinary that a sparsely populated, rural state like West Virginia could hold such sway in international politics, but the logic here on the ground is compelling. 'What would you do if the mines closed?' I asked the miners. They shook their heads: There aren't any good jobs outside of coal here", they told me, 'West Virginia is coal.'"

A nonprofit group in Kentucky has sold nearly $70,000 in carbon credits from forest land owned by seven landowners, the first sale of carbon credits for trees in the state. Some 5,000 acres of woods were included in the sale. The trees on this land were estimated to have stored 14,500 metric tons of carbon during 2007. 

The Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) arranged the sale, according to a story by Andy Mead in the Lexington Herald-Leader. The credits were bought by the W. Alton Jones Foundation (a MACED funder) to offset greenhouse gasses created when the foundation's staff travels. MACED is acting as an "aggregator," pulling together forest land that can then be sold on the carbon credits market. MACED had planned to sell its accumulated carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange, Mead explains, but there is little market for the credits until Congress completes (or not) its climate change bill. If Congress includes a "cap and trade" provision in the pending bill, that should jump-start the market for carbon credits — and give forest owners a chance to make a little money on the side. 

Aggregators like MACED will be most important in the East, where large tracts of forest are owned by private parties. "I saw it as a really great opportunity," said one landowner. "I felt like I was actually being paid for doing the right thing, and often that doesn't happen."

Texas state comptroller said recently that the wind industry in the state had created only 500 to 800 jobs in the state, a fraction of the jobs she says will be lost under the climate bill pending in Congress. "I don't know where the new jobs are going to come from," Ms. Combs says. "They're not going to come from wind." Landing a green job in Texas, she adds, could be akin to finding a "unicorn—a sort of mythical beast."

That comment stirred Greg Wortham, mayor of Sweetwater, Texas. He reports that in 2008 a researcher talked to 20 wind firms in his county (Nolan, in the Texas Panhandle) and  found 1,000 wind energy jobs. For those that don't know the deep Republicanism of the Panhandle, Wortham writes, "And we are not an isolated "greenie" subculture. We are a proud Texas energy community, where 20 percent of the work force is in wind energy, 20 percent is in oil and gas, and 10 percent is in nuclear energy. We are also scheduled for the world's first commercial-scale carbon sequestration coal-fired power plant." 

Then he lists the Texas towns with wind energy firms: Abilene, Pampa, Dumas, Odessa, Sterling City, Roscoe, Snyder, Gainesville, Big Spring, San Angelo, Amarillo, Albany, Robert Lee, Round Rock, Stanton, Vega, Perryton, Corpus Christi, Houston, Freeport, Beaumont, El Paso, Nacogdoches, Dallas, Fort Worth, Coleman, Brownwood, Dickens, Floydada, Blackwell, Trent, Merkel, Nolan. "If there were only 20 jobs in each of those towns, that would exceed the 500 unicorns claimed by the comptroller," Wortham wrote. "Given that Sweetwater has well more than 1,000 wind energy jobs and several others in the list have hundreds of permanent wind energy jobs each, it is with great confidence I can claim that the unicorn is alive and well and growing in Texas."

Greensberg, Kansas, was wiped out by a tornado in May 2007. Eleven people were killed and the town of 900 was flattened. It's since been rebuilt as a model of green technology. A report in the New York Times by Keith Schneider tells of the extraordinary efforts that have transformed the town into a gleaming example of new, energy saving and creating technology. 

The John Deere dealership has the highest green ratings available. “We had the chance to start over,” said Mike Estes, who owns the dealership. “What do you do when you start with a clean slate? You want to build it better. Right?” Right, indeed — not only for the Deere dealership but for the whole town. There's an arts center (above) powered by windmills and a bank of solar photovoltaic panels -- heated and cooled by a geothermal system. The courthouse is being renovated to the highest standards and a new hospital being built on the highway outside of town intends to be the first platinum rated LEED critical-access facility in the nation. The hospital even captures rainwater to use to flush the toilets. 

Will Greensberg survive after the rush of building is complete? The town has also seen the construction of a 10,000 square foot business incubator on Main Street. Funding was provided by Frito-Lay, the federal Department of Agriculture and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio.