Miss California earned her way into the semifinals in preliminary judging including interviews in which she was one of only two among 51 contestants to unequivocally support teaching evolution.

The newly crowned Miss USA, Alyssa Campanella, 21, of LA, said:

I was taught evolution in high school. I do believe in it. I’m a huge science geek…. I like to believe in the big bang theory and, you know, the evolution of humans throughout time.

Here’s the video (followed by a head-exploding video of some of the answers by other contestants):

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Last fall, thousands of youth climate activists called on President Obama to restore solar to the White House, removed 20 years ago by Ronald Reagan. In October, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that “by the end of this spring, there will be solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House.” Today, with less than 24 hours before the summer solstice, Ramamoorthy Ramesh announced that the date of White House solar installation won’t even be publicly decided until September at the earliest, based on the timeline for the DOE’s Rooftop Solar Challenge:

The Energy Department remains on the path to complete the White House solar demonstration project, in keeping with our commitment, and we look forward to sharing more information — including additional details on the timing of this project — after the competitive procurement process is completed.

The Rooftop Solar Challenge, part of the Department of Energy Sunshot Initiative to accelerate the deployment of solar technologies, is designed to encourage local and regional governments to improve market conditions for rooftop solar installations. The Sunshot Initiative program was only announced in April of this year, and the final date for submissions to the rooftop challenge is August 31. There is no date established for when the “competitive procurement process” is to be completed.

Although the work being done by Ramesh, one of the nation’s top solar-power scientists, as the head of the Sunshot Initiative, is crucial, tying the White House demonstration solar installations to this program is a transparent excuse for a broken pledge.

The threat of our polluted climate and the urgency of rebuilding our economy with clean technology should be the Obama administration’s paramount concern. Their deferral of a commitment made to our nation’s youth in the midst of this crisis is a grave disappointment.

The two-week long United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change intercession meeting ended on Friday in Bonn, Germany.  The talks revealed major issues that are hindering the progression of outcomes achieved in Cancun.  The Parties are not in agreement about the future of the Kyoto Protocol, how to operationalize the agreements reached in Cancun, and international climate finance. Parties will attempt to resolve these issues in the lead up to the next major UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa in November.

Here is a news roundup of what happened in Bonn.

Bonn climate talks end with no agreement on key areas

Two weeks of tense global climate talks wrapped up on Friday, with countries insisting they had made progress on technical issues but accepting they were still nowhere near agreement in the three key areas of finance, greenhouse gas emission cuts and the future of the Kyoto protocol.

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David Doniger, in a NRDC cross-post

The Supreme Court today reaffirmed that it is the Environmental Protection Agency’s job to curb dangerous carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act, deciding in Connecticut v. American Electric Power that states cannot bring suit directly against five of the nation’s largest power companies to curb their emissions as a public nuisance.

Power plants are the nation’s biggest climate polluters.  Each year they pump more than two billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air – pollution that is driving dangerous heat waves and smog episodes, rising seas, and stronger storms, floods, and droughts, threatening our health and safety and our homes and communities.

For more than a decade, environmental organizations and leading states have pursued legal strategies to force power plants and other big carbon polluters to clean up.

When the Bush administration denied that EPA had any authority to curb carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, NRDC joined a state-environmental coalition to challenge that misreading of the law.  The Supreme Court rejected the Bush position in a landmark 2007 case called Massachusetts v. EPA, ruling that EPA has the duty to protect us from dangerous carbon pollution under the nation’s 40 year old clean air law.

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