Senate Passes Arms Control Treaty With Russia, 71-26

The reason Obama has a failed presidency is that he let die our best chance to preserve a livable climate and restore US leadership in clean energy – without a serious fight.

We can’t run history over again, just like we can’t run our suicidal climate experiment over again.  So all suppositions that things could have been different are just that, counterfactual suppositions.

BUT we can see in the likely ratification of the New Start treaty that a completely different strategy than the one the White House had for climate change can get significant bipartisan support for a controversial piece of legislation in the face of concerted obstructionism by the Senate minority leader.

What did Obama do right on New Start that he didn’t bother to do on climate?

Read more

Solar projects storing energy in molten salt move ahead [click on image to enlarge]

SolarReserve Co. has received essential clearances on its first two utility-scale solar projects, offering power after sundown by storing solar-generated energy in reservoirs as molten salt.

Read more

Some myths pushed by the anti-science crowd are so laughably backwards that repeating them should be grounds for expulsion from homo ‘sapiens’ sapiens.  And so it is with the doubly wrong claim that progressives are now using the term ‘climate change’ because the planet has supposedly stopped warming.

Read more

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” “” Mahatma Gandhi

Calcars.org founder Felix Kramer tells the plug-in hybrid story in this re-post.  For background, see “Plug-in hybrids and electric cars “” a core climate solution.”

In 2001, I never expected when I started thinking about better cars that I’d devote a decade to a quest that began as quixotic and ended up as the best work experience of my life. I’ve met amazing people, and joined with them to start to turn around one of the world’s biggest and hardest-to-change industries.

Along the way, we’ve formed a coalition that inspires people to look for -and find! “” points of leverage to move mountains. Our success shows what we need to solve two huge global problems “” our dependence on fossil fuels and our uncontrolled experiment with our planet’s air and water .

That’s fortunate, since we have just a few decades to transform almost everything. We can succeed only by finding a path that unites unlikely allies around common goals “” and shows entrenched interests how they can profit from disruptive change.

I’ll highlight some of my peak experiences, then consider the implications of the plug-in campaign for the giant challenges ahead.

Read more

The 111th Congress witnessed a record amount of Republican obstruction. Wielding an unprecedented number of filibusters, the GOP waged war against the Democratic agenda to defeat Obama, apparently viewing unemployed workers, judicial nominees, service members, and even 9/11 rescue workers as collateral damage.

Think Progress has the story of the Senate majority leader’s plans to amp up GOP obstructionism in the next Congress.

Read more