A conference committee is resolving differences between House and (much weaker) Senate versions of a solar energy standard in Minnesota today. Here's 8 graphic reasons why the state should go for solar as aggressively as it can. 8 Vivid Charts – 8 Reasons for a Solar Energy Standard in Minnesota from John Farrell

Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it's a wonder that humanitarians aren't clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide.

No, it's not The Onion. It's the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which nowadays is much the same thing.

Once again, the country’s leading financial newspaper is recycling long-debunked myths from disinformers with PhDs posing as climate scientists -- in this case, Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer, "In Defense of Carbon Dioxide: The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature."

But what nefarious forces have been demonizing CO2? Let’s see:

Melting glaciers might have been the farthest thing from some lakeshore-dwelling Minnesotans' and Manitobans' minds these past few days.

Fast-growing sheets of ice, marching steadily forward as if out of a horror film, destroyed homes near Dauphin Lake in Manitoba, Canada, and caused damage along the southeastern shores of Lake Mille Lacs in Minnesota. They rose from melting lakes and were blown by powerful winds up foreshores into yards and homes.

Amateur video of the advancing ice was captured Saturday by anxious residents in Minnesota and posted to YouTube:

Last week, the Washington DC publication National Journal gave us the scoop, in an article entitled, "What People Close to Obama Think About the Keystone XL Pipeline": Obama-connected environmental experts "are now saying publicly what many Democratic energy and climate advisers have said more privately over the past couple of years: The Keystone XL pipeline is not that big of a deal." The National Journal article seems designed to persuade the DC policy community of the inevitability -- and maybe even the correctness -- of a decision by the Obama Administration to allow the controversial pipeline to go forward. In other words, …

The National Journal has a long piece out, "The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change: Science, storms, and demographics are starting to change minds among the rank and file."

Back in October 2010, NJ ran an article explaining, "The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones."

Now reality is biting back, or, perhaps more accurately, nibbling back. The new piece begins with MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel, a registered Republican since 1973. He switched his registration to "independent" shortly after a not-so-successful meeting with Republican presidential candidates in the run up to South Carolina’s GOP presidential primary, a meeting arranged by the influential Charleston-based Christian Coalition of America:

We already told you that carbon dioxide could pass a daily average of 400 parts per million (ppm) sometime this May -- an atmospheric concentration not seen in human history, and generally a sign that we're passing into the climatological period known as "the gnashing of teeth." The New York Times now reports that we've Usain Bolted past that milestone:

Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

Brooklyn Police descended upon a Lefferts Avenue apartment building this Wednesday, responding to a report that there were marijuana plants on the building's roof. The report came from the building's superintendent, but the cops didn't check it out first. They should've, because the plants in question were not pot plants but tomato plants. For the curious:

I was 9 years old when the political first became personal. Swayed by stories of kids not much older than me stitching together soccer balls and sneakers, my sister, mom, and I made a pact to never wear Nike. In a sea of Air Jordans, I held my own in uncool shoes* against neoliberal arguments I could tell were bullshit years before I hit puberty.

Sixteen years later, I found myself sneaking stories about sustainable fashion into Grist. Why clothing? Why this issue, so often associated with vanity, and not another, more worthy topic? What about the local food movement? Or the multifaceted battles over renewable and dirty energy? The world is burning, and you want to write about jeans? Really?

Clothing is a giant, wasteful industry in need of serious reform. Just growing enough cotton for a T-shirt swallows up anywhere from 700 to 2,000 gallons of water. Then there’s the other end of that shirt’s life cycle: Americans threw out 11.1 million tons of textiles in 2010.

There’s good news, too. An army of millennials are fighting to shake up, reinvent, and reinvigorate the way we do fashion. Major brands are already gearing up to go green (or greenwash like mad). And there’s a growing backlash to business-as-usual. "We're having conversations about clothing that people were having about food 15 years ago," Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed, a book on the social and environmental costs of fashion, tells NPR.

That’s all important, but it wasn’t until I tried to write about the recent collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Bangladesh that I made the connection as to why this stuff matters so much to me. By last count, more than 1,000 people have died in Rana Plaza, making it the most deadly accident the garment industry has ever seen.

One-thousand. For comparison, the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which spurred safety and labor laws across the U.S., killed 146. Last November, 117 people died in the Tazreen Factory fire in Bangladesh. And while they were still pulling bodies out of Rana Plaza’s rubble, another Bangladesh factory went up in flames on Thursday, killing eight.

Plans for two Oregon coal-export terminals have gone up in smoke in the last two months. That makes for a total of three scrapped terminals in the Pacific Northwest, after a proposed facility in Grays Harbor, Wash., bit the coal dust last year. Three others in the region remain in the works, but they face many of the same challenges -- permitting and zoning issues, stalled negotiations, and delayed environmental reviews, not to mention fierce public opposition.

A spokesperson for Kinder Morgan, which announced Wednesday it was abandoning plans for a coal-export terminal at Oregon's Port of St. Helens, “blamed site logistics for stopping the project, not the intense controversy over exporting coal from the green Northwest,” reports The Oregonian. He said Kinder Morgan would continue to explore options for a West Coast terminal.

The abrupt announcement came barely a month after the Port of Coos Bay ended negotiations with a California company looking to build a terminal there. There's a chance the port could consider coal-export options with other companies, but the expensive rail improvements any project would require make a coal deal unlikely, said David Petrie, founder of Coos Waterkeeper.

As a former New York City dweller (I won't risk the ire of people who feel like you need to live there since birth to be called a New Yorker) now living in relatively inexpensive, spacious, and rural splendor in NorCal boy, oh, boy did I chortle my way through this blog of thoroughly shitty, almost uninhabitable New York City rooms. Seriously, only look at these if you're feeling kind of stable or in a good mood. Definitely do not look at them if you're a dancer/writer/actor/urban farm intern trying to make your dreams come true in the Big Apple. …