Today, the Obama administration turned away youth climate activists who wanted to return solar panels to the White House. Climate leader Bill McKibben and three students from Maine’s Unity College had driven to Washington D.C. with one of the solar panels that had been installed on the White House by President Jimmy Carter. After President Ronald Reagan took them down when he assumed office in 1980, the panel ended up in Maine, where it has produced power from the sun for thirty more years. Given the chance to “at least make symbolic amends” for not enacting comprehensive climate legislation, Obama officials instead gave the students a pamphlet written in 2009 about the federal government’s greening initiatives and said “the White House roof is not available“:

They explained that there were a variety of reasons that the White House roof is not available for a gesture with very little energy-saving potential and that the Obama administration was doing more to promote renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions than any previous government. The word “stunt” may have come up.

The meeting, held in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, was hosted by Michelle Moore, the Federal Environmental Executive, Amelia Salzman, Associate Director for Policy Outreach at the Council on Environmental Quality, and Greg Nelson, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

It’s absolutely true, as those officials pointed out, that President Obama has launched an ambitious green energy agenda, “including more than $80 billion in the generation of renewable energy sources, expanding manufacturing capacity for clean energy technology, advancing vehicle and fuel technologies, and building a bigger, better, smarter electric grid, all while creating new, sustainable jobs.”

However, this agenda is not, as they claimed, an “unprecedented commitment to renewable energy.” In fact, it’s a reprise of President Carter’s grand 1979 vision of “a long-range strategy to move beyond fossil fuel,” including “the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

This is an administration that fully understands the power of “gestures,” like the White House organic garden and farmer’s market. Their discomfort overwhelms the logistical security challenges of putting people to work installing panels on the White House roof. Surprisingly, they did not trumpet the existing solar power installations on the White House complex quietly added by Clinton holdovers during the Bush administration.

Conservatives have transformed the tax-raising, deficit-ballooning, terrorist-supporting Ronald Reagan into a right-wing demigod, and Jimmy Carter into the pariah of presidents, a feckless one-termer responsible for a sweater-wearing malaise. Hopefully Americans will one day be wise enough to realize that Carter was the patriotic leader with a literally sunny vision of American ingenuity and independence, destroyed by the insane fealty to Saudi Arabian oil and strip-mining of our economy by Reagan’s voodoo economics.

When it comes to past progressive leaders, President Obama has much more in common with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy in terms of the political moment and political skill. But Obama needs to use his unique talents to restore Carter’s interrupted energy legacy of technological supremacy, environmental sustainability, and economic prosperity. Thirty years of fossil folly have burned away precious time and treasure, but it’s still not too late.

The Carter solar panel will remain in Washington D.C. for the 350.org Global Work Party on October 10 (10/10/10).

Anti-science syndrome goes viral within the GOP

They mindlessly deny the science of climate change….
And if they win, humanity loses.

R L Miller is tracking Climate Zombies:  Every Republican candidate for House, Senate, and Governor who claims that global warming is a hoax, doubts the science of climate change, and wants a new Dark Ages for America.

Below are extended excerpts of two posts, with permission, from her Daily Kos diary.  See also Diagnosing a victim of anti-science syndrome (ASS).

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Bees stung by ‘climate change-linked’ early pollination:  Climate change may be causing flowers to open before bees emerge from hibernation leading to declines in pollination, new research suggests

Climate change could be affecting pollination by disrupting the synchronised timing of flower opening and bee emergence from hibernation, suggests new US-based research.

Declining numbers of bees and other pollinators have been causing growing concern in recent years, as scientists fear that decreased pollination could have major impacts on world food supplies.

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Here’s why they are wrong

Last week, I blogged on David Brooks’ counterfactual in which Obama tackled energy before health care.

I broke a cardinal rule of blogging — well, it would be a cardinal rule if blogging had any — in that I made a sweeping statement, but sent folks to my earlier post, “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 1,” for the defense of that statement.  Few people click on links.  That is life on the blogosphere.

That said, I’ve been making the same essential point for a long time now — see my May Salon piece, “Will eco-disasters destroy Obama’s legacy?” and my January 2007 CAP piece, History Won’t Warm to “W”.

I think it’s obvious that failure to tackle climate legislation is a blunder of historic proportions — at least obvious to anyone who has read the recent climate science literature or talked to any significant number of leading climate scientists (see “An illustrated guide to the latest climate science” and “Real adaptation is as politically tough as real mitigation, but much more expensive and not as effective in reducing future misery“).  Sadly, that is not a large fraction of the pundit class or intelligentsia.

Anyone who writes on politics and policy for a general audience, especially someone who opines on global warming, must take the time to educate themselves seriously on this most important of issues beyond “I read an article in the New York Times….” or “This guy I trust on scientific matters tells me….”

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Global financial giant Deutsche Bank has crushed the climate skeptics in a new paper released today, finding that “human-made climate change is already happening and is a serious long term threat.”  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story.

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Today’s guest CAP bloggers are Van Jones and Jorge Madrid.

Defenders of dirty energy like to pretend that having smarter climate policies (and more support for clean energy) would cost Americans jobs. Not only are they wrong, but – according to prominent business leaders this week [and a new study] – their “deny and delay” tactics are now turning out to be the true job killers.

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