Earth at Risk could turn out to be quite interesting — Derrick Jensen, the author and environmental activist, is holding an event this weekend at Seven Hills Conference Center at San Francisco State University.  The entire title is “Earth at Risk: Building a Resistance Movement to Save the Planet”.  The website is here.

Well, as you know, the climate bill in the U.S. Senate is “dead” (for now at least) and it wasn’t very good to begin with*.    There is also another climate conference coming up in December, this time in Cancun.  It will amount to lots of arguing and probably very little decided, just like in years past.  There are other alternatives like a potential clean energy bill (like Germany has!)   which I will write about later, so don’t give up hope yet.  Something will happen soon.  It’s just that political systems are probably a bad place turn to when trying to solve complex world-wide problems of a scientific nature.

There are three main reasons  that the Senate failed to pass a climate change bill in 2010, according to the article below.  I would add a fourth:  that they were never committed to being honest with the public about climate change and what must be done, so there was lack of public support for doing anything about something so vague.  Politicians droned on and on about “green jobs” that never materialized, or at least didn’t materialize in an obvious, widespread, public way that could be used as good examples. That has to change next year.

We still have time to do enough about climate change to matter, but just barely.  The worst case scenarios seem to be what the government of the U.S. is now planning for:  “adapting” to climate change, and ultimately, geoengineering.

This is a cross post by Center for American Progress’s Daniel J. Weiss.

School children planting trees on 10-10-10 in Thailand. From 350.org

October 12, 2010– President Barack Obama took office with four major domestic agenda items: a plan to prevent the recession from growing worse and launch recovery; health care reform; financial reform to avoid future meltdowns; and clean energy and global warming legislation to create jobs, reduce oil use, and cut pollution. The president succeeded with the first three items. But clean energy legislation died in the Senate after passing the House.

The October 6, 2010 New Yorker has a “behind the curtain” dissection of the rise and fall of climate legislation in the Senate. It provides an interesting insider view of the always messy legislative process.

Reporter Ryan Lizza details some senators’ admirable willingness to stretch beyond their comfort zones on some energy issues to cement an agreement that would establish declining limits on carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants while allowing more offshore oil drilling and subsidies for nuclear power. He also notes the critical miscommunications and different approaches by senators and the Obama administration that reduced prospects for success.

Lizza gives short shrift, however, to [...]