The great environmental writer and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, is the guest blogger.

We’re sitting here in our temporary offices in lower Manhattan hunched over laptops drowning in images””15,000 photos and thousands of minutes of video have arrived from what turned out to be 5,200 rallies, protests, and demonstrations in 181 countries around the world.

It was, according to any number of journalistic accounts, “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.” But here’s the thing that impresses us. There wasn’t a rock star or a movie star or a charismatic politician in sight.  It was ordinary citizens and scientists coming together around a scientific data point.

The coverage, except for a somewhat sour piece by Andy Revkin in the NYT, was incredible. And it was also massive. We owned the top of Google News for 18 hours, and were all over the front pages of newspapers across the globe. Here’s a link that will give you the tiniest taste.

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When we last left Sen. Graham (R-SC), far-right-wingers were, as predicted, going after him for his breakthrough partnership with John Kerry (D-MA).   Teabaggers were trying to “flush” Graham out of the GOP, calling him “traitor” and “RINO” and “wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy.”  Graham responded, “We’re not going to be the party of angry white guys.”  Now Beck has responded to Graham, as Think Progress explains:

Graham has previously dismissed Beck as an entertainer who is “aligned with cynicism.” “Only in America can you make that much money crying,” Graham said of Beck. When Beck responded by saying Graham’s criticism was the “highest honor” he’s ever received, Graham reiterated his view that Beck “doesn’t represent the Republican Party.”

Thursday, Beck opened his show with a diatribe against Graham.

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The Center for American Progress, alongside the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, has undertaken detailed analysis of the impacts that strong climate and clean-energy legislation could have on the U.S. economy. It looked at a suite of policies designed to curb CO2 emissions by driving investment into clean energy technology, and assessed their impact on employment opportunities, economic growth and people’s incomes. This modeling focused on the combined impacts of two federal government initiatives. 1) The set of clean-energy provisions incorporated within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, initiated by the Obama administration and passed into law by Congress in February, and 2) The recently passed American Clean Energy and Security Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA).

This analysis shows that these two measures operating together can generate roughly $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments in the United States over the next decade.

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