The departure of Brazil's environment minister signals the end of the small-is-beautiful vision of sustainable development in the Amazon. Since the U.N. conference in Rio in 1992, everyone has learned that there are no simple solutions to deforestation. It's now time to realize that there are no small ones either.

Who killed cap and trade? Dogmatists on left and right.

On the right, Senate Republican leadership insisted that the problem of climate change isn't serious and nothing should be done. On the left, environmentalist Democratic Senators insist that the only way to achieve emissions reductions is to price our way to a clean energy economy. In this way Democrats actually helped Republicans, who didn't need to do much more than repeat "higher gasoline prices" to defeat the bill.

The price-centric approach is a political, technological, economic, and ecological loser. Voters, and thus politicians, will never accept raising energy prices high enough to make clean energy cost competitive.

by Michael Shellenberger

Sometime in late 2006, American climate activists got the idea that one of the highest priorities of the movement should be to pressure politicians to endorse the goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. This goal is broadly consistent with reducing global emissions 50 percent by the same date. Rallies were held. Protesters formed the words "80 by 2050" with their bodies so they could be photographed by helicopters.

Some of the world's leading energy and climate experts have now officially responded to Roger Pielke, Tom Wigley, and Chris Green's May 8, 2008 "Dangerous Assumptions" article in Nature, which showed that the U.N. IPCC has radically underestimated the technological challenge of reducing emissions. (The reason? In a word: China.)

What stands out is that there is a clear consensus about the need for massive public investments to bridge the technology gap -- and a bit of humor about the enormity of the challenge.

Well, okay -- not quite. But it did just issue a bright orange smack-down of environmentalism for not facing up to some inconvenient truths about global warming. Wired's June 2008 issue is a powerful challenge to environmentalists — and a must-read for anyone who cares about climate change.

Dave Roberts at Grist is, predictably, freaking out. (You can always tell when Dave is excited because he goes on and on about how bored he is.)

The special issue is the opposite of boring. It's totally provocative and interesting. While I don't agree with all of it (I'd like our few remaining old-growth forests to remain standing!) Wired nails a bunch of hugely important issues that greens still haven't grappled with.

While the call by Hillary Clinton and John McCain to suspend the gasoline tax is unquestionably a crass pander to working class swing voters more concerned about rising energy prices than global warming, it is also a warning to Democrats that dealing with global warming by raising energy prices is not a sustainable political strategy.

This week at Breakthrough News we're doing a special issue on "Fear and Politics." Please weigh in!

Against the Politics of Fear

In most of the talks we give about global warming, we lay out the social science research about the connection between fear and conservatism. We describe why fear-based appeals on global warming (read: "An Inconvenient Truth") often backfire. And we argue that progressives must find a way to build a bridge for the public from fear to hope.

Inevitably, somebody afterwards protests, "But fear works so well for conservatives!"

To which we reply: exactly. Fear works well for conservatives.

The Swedish-Spitzer solution seems morally just: the law punishes the supposed perpetrator not the victim. But it begs an important question: will prostitutes be better off with johns like Spitzer in jail or prison?

After we published Break Through last fall we constantly heard from old-school environmentalists like the Center for American Progress blogger Joe Romm that we don't need technological breakthroughs. (Romm was careful to narrowly define "breakthrough" as the invention of a brand new technology, even though we had explicitly defined it as "breakthroughs in performance and price.")

One of the chief barriers to dealing with global warming is that clean energy remains much more expensive  than fossil fuels. As long as that remains the case, neither rich countries like the U.S. nor poor countries like China are going to move to clean energy sources any time soon. What to do? We argue that major federal investments in clean energy are required to scale up the technologies and bring down their price.

This is the final installment of my debate with Colin Beaven, the New York City writer who goes by the moniker "No Impact Man"and is massively cutting back on his energy consumption. This episode begins with Colin criticizing my pro-growth position. I give him the last word, so let me just say I wish him the best and hope he changes his avatar to "Impact Man" and finds a logo and theme song that communicates all the ways in which human power is good, not evil.

The New Republic today starts airing a debate between leading conservatives and Ted and me on global warming.  I know Kossacks are supposed to hate TNR, but I hope you'll consider checking it out anyway.

A few weeks back a New York City writer named Colin Beavan blogged about our book, and we began an email exchange.

Colin is "No Impact Man," made famous through a profile in the New York Times and appearances on television. Colin, his wife, and his young daughter are doing their best to have as small of an impact on Nature as possible, in particular, by reducing their consumption of energy. They turn down the lights, buy very little, and have even given up toilet paper.

Increasing numbers of bloggers and grassroots activists are calling on Congress and the White House to direct a portion of the economic stimulus package (which could be as large as $150 billion) to clean energy.

Take action today by clicking here to sign the Breakthrough Institute petition. Breakthrough colleagues Energy Action, 1Sky, Center for American Progress, Ella Baker Center, and the Center for State Innovation. Happily, the Sierra Club are also working on a statement.

The "stimulus" should focus on investment in clean energy.

It's good politics and what's right for America.

Who will be the first to step up to the Clean Energy Stimulus plate? Obama, Hillary, or Edwards?

What the hell is one of the sunniest places on earth doing getting its power from coal?

The Bali global warming talks ended in nothing, but that didn't stop European leaders from pointing to the bright side: the U.S. was booed.

Here's Wash Post:

"As we saw in the room today, the political price for blocking things has come up in recent months," said Connie Hedegaard, the Danish climate and energy minister, whose government will host the 2009 treaty talks.

On Monday, a group of more than three dozen leading energy scientists, including three Nobel Prize winners, called on Congress and presidential candidates to invest $30 billion each year in clean energy.

While United Nations diplomats are meeting in Bali, Indonesia to discuss the future of international efforts on climate change, they would do well to take a page from Google and change the focus of their efforts from reducing emissions to making clean energy cheaper than coal.

In its decision to invest hundreds of millions in technology innovation to make solar and wind energy cheaper than coal, Google has identified the central challenge in dealing with global warming: the comparatively high price of clean energy technologies.