Texas Gov. Rick Perry seems to be a politician in a hurry, firing off controversial executive orders. One would shorten the permitting process for new power plants powered by polluting pulverized coal from more than a year to six months.

In his haste, the governor might lay waste to the state's air quality while facilitating the construction of a new generation of expensive power plants that cannot meet coming federal curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. Built using yesterday's technology, the plants would pump 120 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of the output of 20 million motor vehicles.

The 19 new plants, 11 to be built by TXU, would aggravate Texas' status as the nation's leading emitter of greenhouse gas. Ten of the proposed plants are clumped in a region south of Dallas, where prevailing summer winds would carry nitrogen oxide discharges linked to respiratory diseases, including asthma, into densely populated urban areas. While the discharges would not directly affect Houston, global warming threatens coastal communities.

"No part of the state is going to suffer more from the impacts of climate change than the Houston-Galveston coastal areas," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, state director of the watchdog group Public Citizen. He cites forecasts of rising sea levels, intense hurricanes and hotter summers.

Supporters of the plant construction argue the plants are needed to supply the energy requirements of an expanding state population and economy. Opponents counter that more efficient use of electrical capacity could satisfy more than 80 percent of the increased demand projected for the coming years. If coal-fueled plants are authorized, they argue, coal gasification technology, which produces power with less carbon emissions than the burning of pulverized coal, should be the technology of choice.

This is not a fight between Democrats and Republicans or business leaders and environmentalists. A new group called Texas Business for Clean Air, led by Dallas real estate executive Trammel Crow and other high-profile Lone Star CEOs, announced its opposition to permitting the coal-burning plants.

A bill introduced in the Legislature with bipartisan support would mandate a six-month moratorium on the permitting of coal plants. Lawsuits have already been filed in federal court to stop the construction of one of the TXU facilities near Waco and force the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to follow strict permitting procedures.

On the federal level, pressure is building in Congress for legislation to enact mandatory reductions in industrial emissions of greenhouse gasses. Presidential hopefuls John McCain, R-Arizona, and Barack Obama, D-Illinois, have endorsed a so-called cap and trade system to allow companies generating less than mandated levels of carbon to sell that capacity to others who are over the cap.

If such a system is mandated, Texas would be caught in the position of having coal-fueled plants requiring expensive purchases of carbon credits or installation of still unproven technologies to capture gas emissions.

Before approving a plant construction binge that would put the state on the wrong side of environmental history, officials from the governor on down should carefully weigh how new coal plants would affect future generations of Texans.