Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation

While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her "closest friends." According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama's Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, "luxurious," "posh" and "a millionaires' playground." Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

To be clear, what the Obamas do with their money is one thing; what they do with ours is another. Transporting and housing the estimated 70 Secret Service agents who will flank the material girl will cost the taxpayers a pretty penny.

Climate change could destroy 80 per cent of rainforest by next century - Telegraph

Fewer than one in five of the plants and animals which currently live in the world's rainforests will still be here in 90 years time, a study predicts.
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Asner and his team made their findings by looking at global deforestation and logging maps from satellite imagery, and high-resolution data from 16 climate-change projections worldwide.

They then ran scenarios on how different types of species could be geographically reshuffled by 2100.

The results showed only 18 per cent- less than a fifth – to 45 per cent – less than half- of the plants and animals making up ecosystems in tropical rainforests may remain as we known them today.

Daniel Nepstad, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, which studies climate change in Massachusetts, said: "This study is the strongest evidence yet that the world's natural ecosystems will undergo profound changes including severe alterations in their species composition through the combined influence of climate change and land use.

[Breaking: Two weeks of local "weather" is now "climate"]: Utilities may win big from energy bill | Analysis & Opinion

Having spent the past two weeks in record high temperatures in Beijing and Shanghai, with global warming being noted publicly by Chinese officials as the primary cause of severe weather, I find the situation faced by U.S. companies somewhat ironic.
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Looking beyond current paralysis and partisan debate, climate regulation in some form or another is likely even though discussion about it among average citizens seems to be waning.