CNNMoney.com reports on an online chat with GM CEO Rick Waggoner.

General Motors might not be able to hit its target to have its breakthrough electric-powered car the Chevrolet Volt in production by 2010…GM has already started to build advertising campaigns around the Volt, even though in the best-case scenario it is years away from production. It is seen as a way of trying to change public perceptions about the fuel efficiency and environmental responsibility of the U.S. automaker, which is more closely associated with large SUVs or pickup trucks.

Not the way to mark the 100th anniversary of the company. If GM wants to be believed, they need to do more than flap their lips, run hopeful ads and buy dinner for bloggers.

They ought to have used the 100th anniversary to deliver even a few real electric cars, something they actually know how to build. Hell, they could simply sell the few EV1s they still have running around. They could encourage museums and universities with donated, disabled EV1s to rebuild them as electric cars and allow them on the roads. They could make a preliminary, limited run Volt without waiting for “perfect” batteries – say something like the NiMH that worked quite well in the EV1 (and still do in our RAV4 EVs.)

Had GM taken any such actions, some of the continuing disbelief might be dissipated.

– Marc G. Plugs and Cars Blog

This time of year, it’s easy to get caught up in the presidential race and overlook the state elections for the U.S. House and Senate. But that level of scrutiny will come with time, as Republicans are likely to campaign hard to win back the number of seats they lost last November. Or be campaigned against, as Democrat Andrew Rice has set out to do against Senator James Inhofe (R) in Oklahoma. Be sure to catch Grist’s interview with Rice, posted here.

Sen. Inhofe is without a doubt the individual in Congress most detrimental to progress on global warming. He delays and denies – calling global warming a hoax – and relentlessly distracts the legislative process from advancing.

Rice couldn’t have more different priorities on the environment. In his interview, he discusses:

Rice currently serves in the state senate and has introduced bills on alternative fuel for the state’s automobile fleet and the state of energy efficiency in public buildings.

In general, his vision for Oklahoma is a world away from Inhofe’s, and if Oklahomans are interested in saving their climate while creating clean energy jobs, Sen. Inhofe may have a run for his gas and oil money this election.

– Kari M.

Over the next few weeks, ClimateProgress will feature excerpts from Hell and High Water (I will put the link in to the paperback when it is up). The following is from the Introduction:

We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.
– James Hansen, director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, December 2005

The ice sheets seem to be shrinking 100 years ahead of schedule.
– Richard Alley, Penn State climate scientist, 2006

Imagine if inland United States were 10°F hotter, with many states ravaged by mega-droughts and the widespread wildfires that result. At the same time, our coasts were drowning from a 5- to 10-foot increase in sea levels, which were relentlessly climbing 5 to 10 inches a decade or more toward an ultimate sea- level rise of 80 feet.

This “Hell and High Water” scenario is not our certain future, but it is as likely as the bird flu pandemic we are feverishly fighting to fend off. And it could come as soon as the second half of this century, given the many early warning signs of accelerated climate change that scientists have spotted.

Long before then, the temperature of the inland United States will be rising nearly 1°F per decade, enough to cause continual heat waves and searing droughts. At the same time, sea levels will be rising a few inches every decade, with much of our Atlantic and Gulf coasts battered year after year after year by super-hurricanes with savage storm surges.

Let’s call this phase Planetary Purgatory, when the world comes to know that 20-foot sea- level rise is all but inevitable, and we must endure a desperate multi-decade ordeal to correct the mistakes of the past, to keep sea- level rise as low and slow as possible–to avoid the full fury of Hell and High Water. If the politics of inaction and delay that have triumphed in this country continues for another decade, then Planetary Purgatory is the likely future facing our country before midcentury–probably in your own lifetime.

According to a March 2006 Gallup Poll, only about a third of Americans understand that global warming will “pose a serious threat to you or your way of life in your lifetime.” And if you think that global warming will mainly affect other, poorer countries, or that we can delay acting until we have new technologies, you come by your opinions honestly. Many of the most sophisticated policy makers and journalists also just don’t get it–they don’t understand how global warming will ruin America for the next fifty generations if we don’t act quickly.

The widespread confusion about our climate crisis is no accident. For more than a decade, those who deny that climate change is an urgent problem have sought to delay action on global warming by running a brilliant rhetorical campaign and spreading multiple myths that misinform debate. As a result, many people still believe global warming is nothing more than a natural climate cycle that humans cannot influence, or that it might even have positive benefits for this nation. Neither is true. The science is crystal clear: We humans are the primary cause of global warming, and we face a bleak future if we fail to act quickly….

A dirty little secret of climate change is that somebody wants us to pay much higher taxes and higher energy bills. But it’s not the advocates of climate action. It’s the other guys.

Make no mistake: The costs of switching to clean energy and an energy-efficient economy are far less than the costs of doing nothing.

A study released by the University of Maryland last October helps bring the cost issue into clearer focus. It concludes that the economic costs of unabated climate change in the United States will be major and nationwide.

Climate change will damage or stress essential municipal infrastructure such as water treatment and supply; increase the size and intensity of forest fires; increase the frequency and severity of flooding and drought; cause billions of dollars in damages to crops and property; lead to higher insurance rates; and even increase shipping costs in the Great Lakes-St Lawrence seaway because of lower water levels. And that’s just a sampling.

“Climate change will affect every American economically in significant, dramatic ways, and the longer it takes to respond, the greater the damage and the higher the costs,” lead researcher Matthias Ruth told ScienceDaily.

How big are those costs?

Read more