For a while, it was a standard-issue Al Gore jeremiad, with calls for everything from installing solar panels in Darfur (seriously) to legal action against "the carbon lobby" for denying global warming (ditto). But then Mr. Gore really got going and told his disciples to head -- literally -- to the barricades to "stop" coal.

Speaking last Wednesday on a celebrity panel in New York, the Nobel Prize Laureate proclaimed: "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration." He added, "clean coal does not exist."

Mr. Gore didn't explain how far he thinks his young acolytes should go in their rage against the coal-burning machines that provide about 50% of U.S. electricity. Sit-ins? Marches against power plants? How about trashing power lines: What could he mean by "civil disobedience"?

As it happens, Mr. Gore's brand of anticoal radicalism is quickly becoming the liberal consensus. The greens loathe coal because of greenhouse gases -- and have succeeded in making new coal plants nearly impossible to build. More than 60 have been canceled in the last year alone. Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius is waging a high-profile campaign against new coal plants in Kansas, and only last week Joe Biden seemed to endorse a coal ban.

Perhaps James Hansen has also paid Mr. Gore a visit at Walden Pond. The NASA scientist and influential global warming swami recently testified on behalf of the "Kingsnorth Six," Greenpeace activists who caused £30,000 of criminal damage at an English coal utility while attempting to shut it down. Mr. Hansen argued they had a "lawful excuse" because of the imminence of climate doom; they were acquitted. Coming from figures who hold the public trust, such rhetoric is wildly irresponsible, not least for the fanaticism and even violence it could incite.

Mr. Gore's blessing is even more bizarre because it defeats the cause that it claims to champion on its own terms. New U.S. coal plants use modern scrubbing technology, which means less traditional air pollution. They're also far more efficient -- that is, they get more energy out of the same amount of coal (i.e., carbon) compared to older models. Often this results in power companies mothballing parts of a more carbon-intensive fleet.

Take a fracas in North Carolina, where Duke Energy is trying to build a new coal-burning plant. The 800-megawatt Cliffside project has proved hugely controversial; Duke CEO Jim Rogers told us that his home had been vandalized. Yet when regulators approved Cliffside, they noted that the state-of-the-art upgrade will actually reduce environmental costs because four aging, less efficient boilers will be shut down. Overall, sulfur dioxide emissions will fall by 80% a year, nitrogen oxide by 50%, and the entire project is carbon neutral while producing more electricity to meet increasing demand.

Mr. Gore seems to think this is a bad trade. Meanwhile, China is set to build 800,000 megawatts of new coal generation over the next eight years. That's 1,000 Cliffsides -- or more than two-and-a-half times the size of America's total installed coal capacity, with none of our environmental guardrails. Even if every U.S. coal plant were razed to the ground tomorrow, it wouldn't make any difference for global CO2 while China expands.

We look forward to seeing Mr. Gore take his "civil disobedience" against coal to, say, Shanxi province. He'd better bring a lot to read.