I used to look at lights left on and say "somewhere, there's a coal plant burning."

That's still largely true, for America, and it's still true that the intermittent "power crises" of the last few years in California could have been averted by malls turning off their lights at night, BUT. For my little apartment, a light left burning means that somewhere, a picturesque windmill is lazily turning, or a non-destructive, salmon-friendly, side canal (NOT a dammed up river), has a small turbine winding away.

Of course, we hardly use any power here, but according to Pacific Power, we saved the equivalent of ~700 driving miles of automobile pollution (that would have been put out by conventional power plants) in 2007.

We're so eco-friendly around here.