Energy Secretary Steven Chu has explained why China’s bid for clean energy leadership should be our “Sputnik Moment.” The Center for American Progress and ClimateProgress have proposed a variety of common sense strategies for responding to China’s innovation and competitiveness policies.  But the conservative movement is hell-bent on forever ceding leadership in the most important job-creating industries of the next several decades, as Kate Gordon, CAP’s VP for Energy Policy explains in this cross-post.

On Thursday, the Republican Study Committee unveiled its Spending Reduction Act, a broad swath of recommendations aimed at cutting trillions of dollars out of the budget. The committee, which includes the vast majority of Republican House members (175 out of 242), claims these cuts are necessary so government does not “rob our children of the opportunity to reach for the American Dream.”

But the American Dream depends on American prosperity and leadership. And several of the committee’s cuts explicitly undermine our future prosperity, especially in the area of clean energy technology.

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Siemens Renewable-Energy Division Planning to Add 2,000 Jobs This Year

Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering company, will add at least 2,000 jobs at its renewable-energy division this year, as the business expands to meet rising demand for clean energy.

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By Auden Schendler, author of “Getting Green Done.”

A business colleague and friend recently had a nice conversation with his brother, a doctor visiting from the South. His brother doesn’t think climate change is a problem. It went something like this:

Brother: “I’ve been reading some interesting articles about climate change that don’t”¦.”
Colleague: “Shut the $%& up, you’re a %$&ing DUMBASS!!!”

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We have a long way to go before even fairly sophisticated members of the media understand what’s happening now and what’s coming if we don’t act soon (see Royal Society: “There are very strong indications that the current rate of species extinctions far exceeds anything in the fossil record”).

Brad Johnson has a telling example.

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More than two dozen of the nation’s leading environmental, scientific, and progressive organizations — including CAP — sent a letter to Obama yesterday about the importance of defending the Clean Air Act.  Here it is:

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