Oh, they may still like George Bush and will undoubtedly favor John McCain this November, but if only for matters of survival, they are turning greener.

A year ago, the residents of St. George, about an hour and a half northeast of Las Vegas, raised 10,000 signatures and fought tooth and nail against the Divine Strake explosion at the Nevada Test Site, a precursor to renewed atomic testing.

Now, residents are battling a mega-watt companies that wants to build a coal-fired power plant in their backyard.

The Blackstone Group, which owns Sithe Global and Foundation Coal -- one of the largest coal producers in the nation -- wants to build this monstrosity just over the border.

They talk about mixing up the energy portfolio, which translates into using unused carbon credits.

The Toquop power plant was originally to be a gas-fired facility. Somehow, Blackstone and Sithe got into the picture and changed the scenario.

It was a very profitable little scheme.

Build a power plant with Company A, supply it with coal from Company B. Set it all up in a geographic location where the good and loyal citizens still fly Old Glory down at the courthouse Ścause they like livin' right and bein' free and, BAM! Profits, profits, profits.

Except they weren't counting on those good and kind people to say, "Wait a minute."

Even local government entities, which usually bow to the almighty dollar and have actually allowed the state to accumulate one of the worst environmental records in the nation, are backing out of this one, saying they don't want this pollution in their backyards that once, thank you, was enough with the nuclear testing.

But, and there's always a but, there are some in the state who are so twisted up in this profit thing that not only are they looking to do even more potential environmental damage to this beautiful state, they are in a position to use their political clout, as members of the Utah Legislature, to do so.

Rep. Aaron Titlton, R-Springville, and Rep. Mike Noel, R-Kanab, have gotten together a scheme to bring a nuclear power plant to Utah.

Tilton is the head of Transition Power Development, a company looking for a license to build a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear plants need a lot of water, which is where Noel comes into the picture.

He happens to be executive administrator of the Kane County Water Conservancy District, which signed a $1 million a year deal with Tilton's company to provide water for the plant. How they'd get the water from Kane to Emery county is anybody's guess.

Tilton also, by the way, sponsored a bill to oppose the federal government's proposed Red Rock Wilderness Act, a measure that would create 9.4 million acres of wilderness in Southern Utah and prohibit future energy development in that area.

So we not only have an ethical problem, we have a compounded health problem because the great experiment in nuclear power is not going well.

Heat is the enemy of nuclear reactors. Last summer, several plants in France, Spain and Germany had to go offline because of high temps. Sweden shut down four of its 10 reactors because of a dangerous design flaw that resulted in short-circuiting that caused power outages. The Czechs have had problems with a leaky reactor.

France has also stockpiled more than 80 tons of weapon-grade plutonium, has no high-level radioactive waste repository and liquid discharges from its plants have polluted the waters as far north as the Arctic Circle.

And, the cost of the reactors is growing at exponential rates that show no sign of tapering off.

So, what do we do?

For starters, we switch to gas-fired power plants.

Then, we bite the bullet and get serious with generous incentives for companies that invest in renewable energy.

Either that or we leave it all to the cockroaches who'll be left after we poison ourselves into extinction.