President Barack Obama is committed to throwing “the whole weight of the presidency” behind serious climate change reform, which he considers an “urgent priority.” In an interview with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and executive editor Eric Bates, Obama addressed the collapse of comprehensive climate legislation in the U.S. Senate and highlighted some of the steps his administration has taken in the absence of Congressional action: new fuel-economy standards and investments in renewable energy and retrofitting buildings, which he believes will lead to a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases from 2005 levels by 2020. When asked if he would “throw the whole weight of the presidency” behind climate policy as he did with health care and financial reform, Obama responded in the affirmative:

Yes. Not only can I foresee it, but I am committed to making sure that we get an energy policy that makes sense for the country and that helps us grow at the same time as it deals with climate change in a serious way.

“I’ve been here two years, guys,” Obama reminded. What is left undone of his campaign commitments — including climate legislation an immigration policy — “well, that’s what the next two years is for, or maybe the next six.” “Bringing about change is hard,” he concluded the interview. “But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Obama recognized that solving the problem of free fossil fuel pollution may require that Congress “do it in chunks, as opposed to some sort of comprehensive omnibus legislation.” Unfortunately, the morass of political reality, darkened by $500 million of spending from coal and oil interests, does not reflect the real world. Our out-of-control climate does not merely have “the potential to have devastating effects on people around the globe,” as Obama argued, but has already destroyed the futures of millions of people, from Pakistan to Russia, from New Orleans to Nashville.

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113°

Los Angeles Bakes as Temperature Breaks All-Time Record
National Weather Service Thermometer Stopped Working

Temperatures hit an all-time high this week across much of Southern California – according to records that date back 133 years.  Capital Climate has the details.

UPDATE:  Meteorologist Jeff Masters notes “a station in the foothills at 1260′ elevation near Beverly Hills owned by the Los Angeles Fire Department hit 119°F yesterday–the hottest temperature ever measured in the Los Angeles area, tying the 119°F reading from Woodland Hills on July 22, 2006.”

Weather historian Christopher C. Burt has a great post at Weather Underground, “The Remarkable Summer of 2010,” which concludes, “it is probable that no warmer summer in the Northern Hemisphere has ever been experienced by so many people in world history.”  He reprints this climatecentral.org graph

For climate deniers and big oil interests, this is an unfortunate coincidence.  In the midst of the hottest year on record, they are the main supporters of Prop 23, a controversial ballot measure that would effectively repeal the California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, “AB 32″.  CAP’s Jorge Madrid has the story.

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UPDATE:  Listen to Hansen LIVE on WPFW in DC, online here, from 10 to 11 am.

Yesterday, scientists, youth, and coal-field residents came together to protest the coal industry’s destruction of our future in a global day of action.  Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has the story.

In Washington, DC, top climate scientist James Hansen, who warned Congress of the coming scourge of global warming in 1989, joined over a hundred others who were arrested at the White House for protesting mountaintop removal, which Barack Obama has called an “environmental disaster.”  The Rainforest Action Network, which helped organize the Appalachia Rising protest, reports on the arrests:

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Water use in Southwest heads for a Day of Reckoning

LAKE MEAD NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, Nev. “” A once-unthinkable day is looming on the Colorado River.

Barring a sudden end to the Southwest’s 11-year drought, the distribution of the river’s dwindling bounty is likely to be reordered as early as next year because the flow of water cannot keep pace with the region’s demands.

For the first time, federal estimates issued in August indicate that Lake Mead, the heart of the lower Colorado basin’s water system “” irrigating lettuce, onions and wheat in reclaimed corners of the Sonoran Desert, and lawns and golf courses from Las Vegas to Los Angeles “” could drop below a crucial demarcation line of 1,075 feet.

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