Tom Friedman has a new column, “Tea Party With a Difference.”  He refers to my “insightful new book” Straight Up.  If you want to buy that book, which has been called the “premiere book on climate change,” click here.

If you want to know more about me or this website, start with “An Introduction to Climate Progress.”  You can get daily email updates on climate science, solutions, and politics by clicking here.  The Climate Progress post he quotes from is “Straight Up: What to look for in the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill.”

Friedman proposes a Green Tea Party of the “radical center” to supersede the current fringe Tea Party that is lurching to the “hard libertarian right”:

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Success or failure for Obama Presidency hangs in the balance

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) abandoned his effort to push a climate and energy bill Saturday, saying he would continue only if Democratic leaders promise to relinquish plans to bring up immigration legislation first.

Graham’s departure likely dooms any chance of passing a climate bill this year. He is the sole Republican working with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a compromise proposal that they had planned to unveil Monday.

This WashPost story is a huge deal.  If the White House loses Graham that would certainly kill any chances of a climate bill this year.

And Obama cannot possibly be a successful president from a historical perspective if he doesn’t have a domestic climate bill, since that would essentially doom the chance for an international climate deal.  Who really is going to care about accomplishments in banking regulations and immigration when they are suffering through Hell and High Water?  At least tens of millions of more Americans will have health care — because they are certainly going to need it (see “Global Warming Is A Medical Emergency”: Hellish heatwaves to harm health of millions).

George Kennan wrote of U.S. behavior in WWI:

History does not forgive us our national mistakes because they are explicable in terms of our domestic politics.”¦  A nation which excuses its own failures by the sacred untouchableness of its own habits can excuse itself into complete disaster.

That would go double or triple for catastrophic climate change.

And yes, I’m now putting this on the White House – Tom Friedman labels the WH move a “travesty” [and just said on Face the Nation, "Right now in Beijing they are high fiving each other because it means America" can't move on clean energy for another few years and they can move ahead.]

From the campaign through Copenhagen until now, comprehensive climate and clean energy jobs legislation was always said to be one of the president’s top three priorities, along with the economy and health care.

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“The fact remains that the overwhelming body of evidence suggests that the alarmists’ fears are grounded in empirical reality.”

“Climate Science In Denial,” reads a Wall Street Journal op-ed headline. “Global warming alarmists have been discredited, but you wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric this Earth Day.”

Actually, the subhead should be revised: “Global warming denialists have been re-discredited, but you wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric in today’s Wall Street Journal.” Far be it from me, a non-scientist, to dispute the scientific expertise of an MIT professor of meteorology, Richard Lindzen, but then again, Lindzen’s selective recitation of the litany of arguments against global warming practically begs a rebuttal.

The Atlantic hasn’t exactly been at the cutting edge of climate science (see “People Who Just Don’t Get Global Warming: Gregg Easterbrook and the Editors of the Atlantic).  So it was doubly nice to see this piece, “Climate Denialists in Denialst,” by Marc Ambinder, their politics editor (and chief political consultant to CBS News).

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Growing global oil demand harms U.S. security and economy

Global oil demand””led by the United States and followed by China, Japan, and India“”will dramatically increase over the next two decades. China has made oil deals around the world over the past few years that can deliver a supply of more than 7.8 billion barrels of oil to the country over the next several years.

The United States must meanwhile prepare for a coming oil price crunch caused by increasing global demand and slowing global production (see Deutsche Bank: Oil to hit $175 a barrel by 2016 and World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery: “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”).

The safest, cheapest, and fastest path to energy security is to implement oil savings measures””outlined below””to reduce dependence on foreign oil and protect our pocketbooks.  CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss, Rebecca Lefton, and Susan Lyon lay out the problem — and the solution — in this repost.

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