Brian Beutler: Will the Senate kill the Waxman-Markey climate change bill? | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

...the Senate seems at times as if it's designed to choke the life out of climate change legislation.

Hear No Climate Change: Alarmist Leslie Garrett is frustrated at our lack of panic over RC Cola fizz

In 2006, according to a Gallup poll, slightly less than a third of Americans believed that climate change was exaggerated. The following year, which incidentally was the year my book The Virtuous Consumer was published, that figure rose to 33 percent. (Say it isn’t so! Surely there isn’t a link between publication of my book – which outlines what we can do to combat our contribution to climate change – and the increase in those thinking it’s exaggerated! Almost certainly a coincidence.) And here we are in spring (though it feels like winter) 2009, and the figure has risen to 41 percent.

Let’s stop and consider that for a second. We’re closing in on half the population of a country (that seemed to be coming to its senses when it voted in a president who DIDN’T believe that science was the enemy of truth) turning its back on reams of research, volumes of physical evidence, dozens of Kyoto-supporting countries and concluding that climate change is exaggerated?

Who are these people? Do they not have cable? Basic literacy skills? Are they incapable of rational thought?

International Climate Talks Moving To Smaller Venue

The idea of the more intimate forum is to "try and generate a new level of political will," said Jonathan Pershing, the new chief U.S. delegate to the U.N. talks.

"We look at the last couple of years in this negotiation. It has made only very modest progress," Pershing told reporters.

Environmental activists, who monitor U.S. moves with a critical eye, agree the smaller group holds out some hope for a breakthrough.