Bradford Plumer: How Much Urgency Can We Really Take? - Environment and Energy

All good points, but how far can Obama realistically nudge the public? Revkin's interlocutors suggest the answer is "moderately far." Is that far enough?
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What makes this all politically dicey, of course, is that climate change is a problem that needs to be tackled long before the worst starts happening. Carbon lingers in the air for centuries, which means that by the time global temperatures have spiked a couple of degrees above pre-industrial levels, it's too late for remedies (unless someone devises a way to pull carbon out of the air). But right now, the problem's difficult to visualize: It's hard to finger a culprit for drought in the Southwest or intense hurricane seasons in the Gulf of Mexico as cleanly as you can point to a terrorist group responsible for a bombing attack. Arctic sea ice is melting at a record pace, sure—but who's really been affected? It's the same, tired old story: Climate change is an abstract problem, and easy to put out of mind. The IPCC head may be insisting that, "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late," but hey, we've got a million other issues—the economy, health care, Gaza, Afghanistan—that are concretely urgent right now. And whether Obama or U.S. environmental groups have a workable strategy for shifting that political terrain is as unclear as ever.

We Still Need More Energy Supply in America » The Foundry

Sarah Palin is not the VP of the United States but we can still drill, baby, drill. Although President Obama and some Democrats have hinted at reinstating the ban on offshore drilling and implementing restrictions on oil shale development in the West, nine Republican members of Georgia’s congressional delegation are on the offensive - emphasizing the need for more domestic energy supply. Yesterday, they wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to reconsider any plans to halt energy production in America

Keeping U.S. solvent must be Obama's top security goal - UPI.com

Voters may decry the fact that eight gigatons of carbon are being spewed into the atmosphere from human sources each year, but when the economy falters, they pray that some of that carbon will keep coming out of smokestacks at the factories where they work.
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What the new administration needs are climate-change initiatives that don't require much money to pursue. Northrop Grumman Chief Executive Officer Ronald Sugar, himself a scientist, has one such idea. Sugar says the government should network together the climate-change data being collected by dozens of satellites and other sensors scattered around the world. The information would be integrated and analyzed, then disseminated to regional centers for specific applications.

The virtue of this idea is that it adds value through better utilization of existing assets, rather than demanding vast new outlays. Sugar's idea won't solve global warming, but it will help policymakers and scientists get a better understanding of the problem -- an essential first step in framing climate-change initiatives that are affordable.