I'm tempted to believe that we do only get one real shot.  That doesn't stop us from doing what we can to lay the groundwork now, mind you.

Al Gore makes two major points in his movie.  The first is that it has to be a political solution.  The second is that it has to be a GLOBAL solution, encompassing the rapidly industrializing countries like China and India.  That's why he travels to Asia to give his slideshow!

Some people have responded to this by pointing out that China and India have many more people than us, that they're likely to dwarf us in terms of emissions and pollution within the next few years, so why should we hurt our economy by making changes when China and India aren't doing anything?  To which Gore responds, the world will follow us, but we need to LEAD.

China and India use the exact same excuse, after all; why should they hamstring themselves, when the US is the world leader in carbon emissions and hasn't done anything about it?  (In fact, China's fuel economy standards make ours look like a joke.)

Are you with me so far?  We're in a situation where we need a major legislative program to fight climate change, but we also need to negotiate with other countries and make sure they follow our lead once we enact that program.  Because if they don't, the anti-environment types are going to say "See! No one else is doing anything, we're killing our own economy for no reason!"  And our awesome legislative program will get undone, and that's the end of our one real chance.

That's why I think no one can direct this effort except a President who is truly on board with combating climate change.  Even if you could give me an awesome set of new laws right now, it would amount to nothing in the end because Bush isn't the guy to go to China and urge them to follow our lead.  He doesn't care about climate change.

So I'm content to do what we can, to pass the laws that are politically feasible, but not to get too far ahead of ourselves until we have a Democratic President in office who can be an effective advocate on this issue.  If we try and fail, Capitol Hill may be beachfront property by the time we get another shot.

Yes, we need good, progressive national legislation on this issue, but there are some things we can do locally to make a difference too.

Today, I emailed my Home Owners Association to ask them to refrain from doing any gas-powered landscaping on code Yellow, Orange or Red air-quality days. HOAs are remarkably responsive considering how restrictive they can be, and my HOA board is looking into implementing such a policy.

It's not much, but some of us can lobby Congress, some of us can change our HOA policies. We all do what we can.

I think it's already over. It's time to start trying to build shelters/bunkers to retreat to until the world sorts itself out from the chaos of climatological collapse and we can emerge to found knew societies.

Decommissioned Missile Silos are pretty cheap I hear...

I'm with you, Natasha, I don't think we have the luxury of waiting. I went to the yKos Global Warming panel and learned that according to James Hanson, we only have 8 years left to prevent climate change from being an unmitigated catastrophe.

A couple of hours later, I attended the breakout session with John Edwards, and he said something relevant to this debate--"we don't have to wait!" i.e., let's not sit around for the next year and a half twiddling our thumbs and holding out for a regime change. I think this applies to the Farm Bill as well. Yes, it's been awfully discouraging to see our hopes for real reform dashed by the usual suspects, but we shouldn't discount the awesome force of people power.

As Markos said in his closing speech on Saturday night, "I'm just a guy who built a website." I rest my case.

Come on, That article could have been written by an Exxon executive.

Rolling Stone is not the greatest source but the claims have a great deal of support in the scientific literature.  Ethanol raises several legitimate concerns: trade-offs with food directly and through price pressures, exhaustion of scarce water resources, ff-intensiveness of corn production, etc.

I am sure it pains people in Iowa, but ethanol is not the answer.  

Conservation, conservation, conservation, conservation, then throw in a little wind, solar, geothermal, biomass other than corn, etc.

Thank you.  Sometimes you just don't know if you've reached anyone. Powerful statement. Glad that I played some small part in sparking it.

Now, there is a serious question, even with Dingell onboard, would we want 80% by 2050 legislation to pass?  Probably, I guess. Bush would veto it, but it would set the minimum for 2009.

Now, the real threat is a political desire to pass anything with "Global Warming" in the title so that they can say 'we've paid that bill' and not deal with it again for years to come.  Sadly, that might mean a dangerous bill like Lieberman-Warner could pass. And, well, what are we doing even considering legislation on a major issue that doesn't have a Democrat in the title?  (Although putting a Democratic Senator's name on the bill wouldn't make it smell any better.)

I do think you're right when you point out that we don't have the luxury of sitting around waiting for  the next president. But this is such a frustrating situation. I know it's naive, but I just keep hoping Al Gore will run and we'll finally get the leadership this requires.    

Keep in the mind that energy legislation is live in Congress right now. The Senate bill does have a hike in CAFE standards (closing the SUV loophole). The House bill has a mandate for more electricity coming from renewable sources. Both provisions could survive in House-Senate conference, or succumb to special interest pressure.

If we in the blogosphere help Washington enviros counter that special interest pressure, and get more citizens engaged, we can move the ball forward, and strengthen our position when broader cap-and-trade legislation is expected to be addressed by Congress in the fall.

More background here: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/energy_ independence