At the Swampland blog, Joe Klein praised Sen. McCain’s foreign policy speech today as “a quantum leap toward sanity and away from the prevailing idiocy of the Bush Administration,” singling out the passage below:

There is such a thing as international good citizenship. We need to be good stewards of our planet and join with other nations to help preserve our common home. The risks of global warming have no borders. We and the other nations of the world must get serious about substantially reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years or we will hand off a much-diminished world to our grandchildren. We need a successor to the Kyoto Treaty, a cap-and-trade system that delivers the necessary environmental impact in an economically responsible manner. We Americans must lead by example and encourage the participation of the rest of the world, including most importantly, the developing economic powerhouses of China and India.

Klein evidently did not hear Bush when he addressed the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference three weeks ago:

[L]isten, let me start first by telling you that America has got to change its habits. . . But we’re dependent upon oil, and so as our economy grows, it’s going to create more demand for oil — same with China, same with India, same with other growing countries. . . I’ve come today to tell you that America is the kind of country that when they see a problem, we address it head-on. I’ve set a great goal for our country, and that is to reduce our dependence on oil by investing in technologies that will produce abundant supplies of clean and renewable energy, and at the same time show the world that we’re good stewards of the environment. . . . The United States is serious about confronting climate change, and the strategies I just laid out for you are an integral part of dealing with climate change. Should there be an international agreement? Yes, there should be, and we support it.

In the strict physical sense of a “quantum leap,” Joe Klein is quite accurate. McCain’s words represent a shift of infinitesimal scale from Bush’s own.

Sundance Channel today announced that programs from THE GREEN, the Tuesday night destination devoted entirely to the environment, are now available for download on the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com). Programming from THE GREEN includes the award-winning documentary series “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” and the first episode from season two is available as a free download, beginning March 26 through April 1. Each additional episode will be available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store for $1.99 the day after it airs on Sundance Channel.

Additionally, THE GREEN interstitial series, “EcoBiz,”„¢ exploring financial aspects of environmental innovation, and “The Ecoists,”„¢ featuring active and recognizable environmental activists sharing ideas and information, will be available for free from iTunes Podcast on the Wednesday following its premiere on Sundance Channel.

THE GREEN, Sundance Channel’s programming destination devoted entirely to the environment, offers entertaining sources of information and inspiration about the planet we call home. THE GREEN original programs and interstitial segments provide viewers with ideas and tangible opportunities for all facets of their lives, demonstrating how to work green, play green, eat green, dress green and live green.

“Big Ideas for a Small Planet”

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I know it seems hard to believe sometimes, but this blog is actually titled Climate Progress. I only see two major, quantitative areas of sustained progress — clean energy deployment (especially in Europe) and private sector clean-tech funding.

Those folk at Clean Edge, who wrote the best 2007 book on clean tech, The Clean Tech Revolution, have quantified these gains — and made predictions about the future — in a new report you can read here. Some interesting factoids:

• Clean-energy markets — revenue for solar photovoltaics (PV), wind, biofuels, and fuel cells — grew by 40 percent from $55 billion in 2006 to $77.3 billion in 2007. They project revenues will reach $254.5 billion by 2017. [Yes, lame (if not counterproductive) biofuels are about a third of those numbers, and I personally wouldn't count them as "clean tech." Then again Clean Edge isn't counting energy efficiency.]
• New Energy Finance does a slightly different calculation, showing “New global investments in energy technologies — including venture capital, project finance, public markets, and research and development — have expanded by 60 percent from $92.6 billion in 2006 to $148.4 billion in 2007.”
• “U.S.-based venture capital investments in energy technologies more than quadrupled from $599 million in 2000 to $2.7 billion in 2007…. As a percent of total VC investments, energy tech increased from .6 percent in 2000 to 9.1 percent in 2007. Between 2006 and 2007, venture investments in the U.S. clean-energy sector increased by more than 70 percent.”
• “Last year’s global wind power installations reached a record 20,000 MW, equivalent to 20 large-size 1 GW conventional power plants.”
• “Annual installations [of PV] were just shy of 3 GW worldwide, up nearly 500 percent from just four years earlier

In Europe, renewables have become the dominant form of new power generation — which just shows you what happens when governments become (relatively) serious about global warming:

Europe provides a great example of this transition. Since the beginning of the decade the EU has added 47,000 MW of new wind energy compared to just 9,600 MW of coal and only 1,200 MW of nuclear, according to Platts Power Vision and the European Wind Energy Association. Perhaps even more telling, 2007 saw net capacity additions of 8,505 megawatts of wind, whereas both coal and nuclear saw net capacity reductions of 750 megawatts and 1,023 megawatts, respectively.

Climate Progress, albeit in fits and starts, can be found if you look hard enough.

In October of last year, the administration of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) denied permits for two new coal-fired plants in her state because the greenhouse gases such coal plants would emit constitute a threat to the environment and public health. Last Friday, she also vetoed a legislative attempt to reverse the decision. Opponents of the veto claimed “the decision is costing the state jobs and economic investment” and warned of “higher electric bills for Western Kansas,” where the plants were proposed.

But a landmark report released yesterday by an esteemed financial research firm finds that, in fact, Sebelius has been acting in her state’s best economic interests.

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors finds that Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, the company whose proposal was denied, failed to account for the effects of the likely regulation of carbon dioxide on the cost of coal-fired electricity when it sought to build two 700 MW coal plants in Holcomb, Kansas:

Innovest examined the economics of the transaction and determined that under the most plausible regulatory scenarios the decision to build new coal generating capacity will put Sunflower Electric’s ratepayers – who in this particular case are the actual owners – at significant risk. The report concludes that Sunflower’s management has not adequately addressed the competitive and financial risks associated with climate change in deciding to pursue the expansion of its Holcomb Station power plant.

Sunflower was remiss in not considering that federal legislation that places a price on carbon emissions is extremely likely, considering the bipartisan support and strong international pressure for such action.

The report compares the economics of coal plants versus natural gas plants, which have a considerably smaller carbon footprint, and concludes:

In general, this analysis demonstrate that gas is the more financially sound choice for the construction of baseload generating capacity in all scenarios except 100% free allocation [to power companies] of carbon allowances.

The report also notes that western Kansas has “among the nation’s most abundant wind resources” and that the cost of wind power has plummeted 80% in the last 20 years.

The Center for American Progress plan for a low-carbon economy explains how a carbon-cap system with full auctioning of permits and broad investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency is the right choice.

(HT: David Sassoon at SolveClimate)

Please.

So as Andrew Leonard writes in his “How the World Works” blog, this all began with a column by

Toronto Star energy reporter Tyler Hamilton that itself had summarized the conclusions of a study raising questions about whether it always makes sense to replace incandescent light bulbs with CFLs. The nub of the argument was that in some cases the heat generated by the incandescent light bulbs could be useful.

Tyler is a friend of mine and a great reporter, so I sent him an email explaining why this is not true, which was not written for publication. Then Leonard himself summarized the column on his blog. So, as Leonard explains:

This excited a storm of comment, and even inspired Joseph Romm, author of “Hell and High Water: Global Warming — The Solution and the Politics,” energy expert, blogger extraordinaire, and regular Salon contributor, to pass on a copy of an e-mail he sent directly to Hamilton.

[That Leonard comment is, I believe, the blogging equivalent of make-up sex -- note to parents, that link is PG-13 -- but I digress.]

Anyway, here is my email:

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