Environmental activists seem to be having difficulty explaining why they're waging war on affordable energy and economic development in Georgia.

They haven't explained to the people of southwest Georgia why they blocked construction of a coal-fired power plant there -- a plant that would have brought $2 billion and 125 high-paying jobs to one of the poorest counties in the state.

They haven't explained to homeowners across Georgia why they will be forced to swallow ever-higher energy costs -- because the only energy sources Georgia can now develop will drive monthly power bills through the roof.

AND THEY HAVEN'T explained to businesses, hospitals, churches and schools why they may have to waste months or years getting a clean-air permit the next time they want to build anywhere in Georgia -- while no other state imposes such onerous regulations.

Instead, they prefer to hide behind the poorly reasoned decision of an over-reaching Atlanta judge.

The judge, Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore, started this mess when she bought into the Sierra Club's claim that carbon dioxide emissions -- such as those the plant in Early County would produce -- are currently regulated under the federal Clean Air Act.

ON JUNE 30, Judge Moore threw out the plant's emissions permit for failing to include CO2 limits. She claimed she was only enforcing existing clean-air law.

In actuality, she made the law up as she went.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that CO2 is not now and has never been subject to clean-air regulation. The court directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, not an activist judge in Atlanta, to determine whether and how to regulate it.

But this goes far beyond one new power plant in southwest Georgia. That's because our state's population has grown 60 percent since the last plant was built 20 years ago, and our energy needs are on the rise.

THE SIERRA CLUB'S "solution" to our looming energy crisis is to use Judge Moore's ruling to stop any conventional coal, oil or natural gas plants -- all of which emit CO2 -- from being built in Georgia.

That leaves our state with very few options.

The Georgia Chamber of Commerce has long supported alternative energy sources, but the ones these activists would like you to believe will save the day aren't yet ready for prime time. And whether we like it or not, Georgia's continued population growth will soon outstrip even the 30 percent energy savings they estimate we can achieve.

If we ignore the proven, affordable energy sources available to us today, we will -- without question -- suffer the outages that have plagued other states in just a few short years.

Of course, we could always return to living in caves and burning candles for light. Then again, those also produce CO2.

For that matter, so does just about any building over 100,000 square feet, even those that use natural gas for heat. Those new shopping centers, offices, industrial parks and schools we mentioned earlier? They won't be built any time soon -- maybe not at all, if Judge Moore's ruling stands.

That's why the Georgia Chamber and more than 100 businesses and organizations have asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to overturn her ill-considered edict.

Incredibly, the Sierra Club's attorneys refer to the date of Judge Moore's decision as "the day the lights came on in Georgia."

We hope the appellate court will act before the lights go out.

(The writer is a former mayor of Macon, Ga., and is president and CEO of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.)