E-Mail This Article to a Friend GREEN REPORT CARD Bay State needs extra help BY DEIRDRE FULTON

It’s a good thing school is almost back in session, ’cause Massachusetts needs to start hittin’ the books.

On Tuesday, a consortium of environmental organizations gave Massachusetts a C-plus — down from last year’s B-minus — on actions taken to mitigate global warming. Local organizations such as Clean Water Action, the Conservation Law Foundation, and MassPIRG called on the Bay State to move more aggressively toward achieving the goals set forth in Governor Mitt Romney’s 2004 Climate Protection Plan. That measure was implemented to fulfill an ambitious emissions-control plan adopted by the six New England states and five Eastern Canadian provinces in 2001.

Now, the environmental community wants results. The report suggests the state must pay more attention to reducing transportation emissions (public-transit ridership is at an all-time low), encouraging renewable-energy innovation, and revamping power-plant regulations. Of the 11 states and provinces that signed on to the plan, only New Hampshire, Vermont, and Nova Scotia scored lower than Massachusetts — which emits the greatest quantity of harmful gases by far.

More vigorous state efforts are necessary because environmental measures on the national level generally move at a glacial pace.

Also on Tuesday, Environmental Action, a national grassroots organization, held a press conference along the Esplanade to push for increased enforcement of the Clean Air Act. The group focused particular attention on mercury emissions, which travel from power-plant smokestacks to lakes and rivers, poisoning fish and posing a particular danger to women of childbearing age.

The technology exists to stem these harmful toxins, according to Environmental Action outreach coordinator Justin Wilson. But a new study issued by the organization on Tuesday shows that the tag team forged by the Bush administration and industry lobbyists (such as Washington, DC’s Edison Electric Institute and Atlanta’s Southern Company, which combined spent more than $22.5 million on lobbying efforts in 2004) is not only weakening the Clean Air Act, but pushing for an alternative that falls far short of the necessary goals.