The media just keeps missing — or messing up — the story of the century.

Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues:  global warming and the clean energy transition. If the world doesn’t stop catastrophic climate change — Hell and High Water — then all Presidents, indeed, all of us, will be seen as failures and rightfully so.

How else could future generations judge us if the U.S. and the world stay anywhere near our current emissions path, warm most of the inland United States 10 to 15°F by century’s end, with sea levels 3 to 7 feet higher, rising perhaps an inch or two a year, with the Southwest from Kansas to California a permanent dust bowl, and much of the ocean a hot, acidic dead zone — impacts that could be irreversible for 1,000 years if we don’t reverse emissions soon and sharply.  This will require an unbroken — and indeed escalating — response by our political leadership throughout this century.  The same is true for the very important, but still secondary, issue of avoiding the worst impacts of peak oil.

In that sense, what team Obama has accomplished in its first 100 days is nothing less than an unprecedented reversal of decades of unsustainable national policy forced down the throat of the American public by conservatives.  While I will present a longer list below — and welcome your additions — three game-changing accomplishments stand out:

1. Green Stimulus:  Progressives, Obama keep promise to jumpstart clean energy, economy “” conservatives keep promise to jumpstop the future
2. Sustainable Budget:  The first sustainable budget in U.S. history.
3. Regulatory breakthrough:  EPA finds carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans’ health and welfare requiring regulation

Obama has clearly demonstrated he has a serious chance to be the first President since FDR to remake the country through his positive vision.  Indeed, if Obama is a two-term president, if he achieves even half of what he has set out to, he will likely be remembered as “the green FDR.”

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UPDATE:  Video:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4969902n
Text:  http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/23/60minutes/main4964301.

My quick reaction is 1) woo hoo, showed my book on TV! and 2) boo hoo, cut out all my quotes about the other strategies that can provide all the clean power we need if CCS doesn’t prove practical and affordable [it is CCS or bust for the coal industry, but not for humanity and 3) double boo hoo to Jim Rogers, who runs a utility — he’ll do just fine whether or not CCS ever makes sense and 4) Scott, say it ain’t so — cap-and-trade isn’t a tax!

I’m interested in your reactions to the 60 Minutes story tonight:

The Dilemma Over Coal Generated Power:  Coal Power Plants Supply Power To Millions, But Cutting Carbon Dioxide Could Take A Long Time

I’ve never really had an open thread like this before — nor have I launched a post below the top of the page before.  But I wanted to keep the Obama 100 day, Green FDR story on top.  Consider this a first-of-a-kind demonstration, like clean coal, though I hope it works out better.

Here’s the teaser from 60 Minutes (video here):

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Newt Gingrich is the most unprincipled leader of the conservative movement stagnation. Not because his testimony against the Waxman-Markey bill was filled with some of the biggest lies ever told in Congress, such as “it should be no surprise that I care deeply about and am committed to the protection of our environment” (see “Memo to media: Eco-fraud Gingrich has always opposed clean energy, climate action“).

What else would you expect from a man who has spent much of this decade writing fictional alternative histories of World War II and the Civil War? Gingrich is, quite literally, a professional history rewriter.

Newton Leroy Gingrich is not unprincipled because he’s a liar. He’s unprincipled because he has no principles. Just two years ago, he thought the road to resuscitating his disgraced political career was to pretend to care about climate. As Media Matters (and Rep. Jay Inslee) noted, Gingrich uttered these remarkable words in a 2007 PBS interview:

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