Jon Huntsman. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

For a while there, Jon Huntsman was the one Republican presidential candidate willing to deliver the straight dope on climate change. “To be clear,” he tweeted in August, “I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” He even argued that climate skepticism could cost the GOP a victory in November: “The minute that the Republican Party becomes the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.” Enviros praised Huntsman as the heroically rogue elephant.

Then he joined the herd.

In December, Huntsman told an audience at the Heritage Foundation that the "scientific community owes us more in terms of a better description or explanation” of climate change, and that there is “not enough info right now to be able to formulate policies.”

Since withdrawing from the GOP primary in mid-January and endorsing Mitt Romney, Huntsman has stayed visible in the media, challenging Romney’s position on trade with China and suggesting that the country might need a third party with “an alternative vision, a bold thinking.”

But has he come to any more clarity on his climate views? We called him up to find out.

Sen. Lamar Alexander.Photo: Office of Lamar AlexanderSen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is a patient politician. At age 38, he walked a thousand miles around the state of Tennessee to win support, door to door, for his successful campaign to become the state's governor. Now, at 71, Alexander is facing another grueling slog: building political consensus around issues like energy and climate change at a time of seemingly intractable congressional gridlock. The senator recently announced plans to forfeit his role as Republican Conference chair, the No. 3 leadership position in the Senate, so he'll be free to reach across the aisle and …

Check out our list of the top 12 women in cleantech.Clean energy is one of the most dynamic sectors in the world -- hot start-ups, technological whizbangery, cutthroat competition, billions in venture-capital investments, a race against the climate clock.  But there's one aspect of the clean-energy field that's just as sclerotic as the world of fossil fuels: patriarchy. Men invented, engineered, invested in, and presided over the technologies and companies that made oil, coal, and natural gas the dominant fuels of our time. And now men are running the show at most of the firms pushing renewables, efficiency, clean cars, …

While the cleantech sector is very much a boy's club, women are starting to break down the clubhouse door. Meet 12 of the most savvy and accomplished interlopers. Some are building their own start-ups, others are climbing the ranks in big companies, still others are plowing millions into new clean-energy endeavors via venture-capital firms. All of them, we hope, will inspire more women to get involved and take charge in industries that are changing how we power our lives, how we get around, and ultimately how we cope in a climate-changed world.  Lynn Jurich President, SunRun Twelve thousand American homes …

Envaya helps people in Africa build ultralight websites, on the ultracheap.Like most equatorial countries, Tanzania is feeling the impacts of climate change. Malaria is spreading to areas at ever-higher altitudes. Lake Victoria, which feeds the Nile, is retreating. The rainy season is starting later and getting shorter -- last year, the typically four-month season lasted just two, cutting soil moisture and stunting crop growth. Fodder for grazing animals is getter scarcer. Some farmers are foregoing water-hungry crops like corn, beans, and bananas in favor of mono-cropping plants like cassava, a tuber that is drought-resistant. These and other effects of global …

Jonathan FranzenPhoto: Greg MartinJonathan Franzen's blockbuster novel Freedom has been called the War and Peace of our day. Is it also our Silent Spring? Reviewers have almost unanimously lauded Franzen for capturing the early-21st-century American zeitgeist. Time knighted him the "Great American Novelist." Oprah picked Freedom as her final book club selection. New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani described the novel as "an indelible portrait of our times." What reviewers have almost unanimously ignored, however, is that this indelible portrait of our times is also an indelible portrait of contemporary environmental activism rendered through the protagonist Walter Berglund. Walter -- …

San Francisco's AT&T Park is one of several professional sports stadiums saving energy and money by going green.Photo: Wally GobetzCross-posted from Amanda Little's blog at Forbes.com. As the San Francisco Giants celebrate their 2010 World Series triumph, they're quietly coveting another, humbler feat -- one that's perhaps no less historic in the long run. The Giants are one of the greenest teams in professional sports, and they're proving that sustainable practices fatten the bottom line even as they ease the burdens on the planet. Their stadium, AT&T Park, which accommodates about 45,000 fans, runs its scoreboard on solar power, recycles …

My home state of Tennessee has been solid red for nearly 20 years. So red that it famously spurned Al Gore, its own homegrown political celebrity, in the 2000 presidential election, favoring Dubya by a wide margin. Now President Obama's popularity is faring even worse in these parts. Recent Tennessee polls estimate the commander in chief's approval rating at roughly 30 percent. So it's a curious political paradox that our outgoing Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen, is ending his eight years in office with an approval rating of 72 percent. More surprising than Bredesen's success at being a blue governor in …

Newt Gingrich, green conservative.Photo: Gage SkidmoreA couple of years ago, Newt Gingrich was sounding like a climate activist. The former Republican speaker of the House posed with current Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a couch in front of the Capitol for a 2008 ad sponsored by Al Gore's organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection. "[O]ur country must take action to address climate change," Gingrich said, calling on Americans to "demand action from our leaders." In his new book To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine, Gingrich pushes a strikingly different view, decrying "the doomsday theory of climate change," which he …

Homes in Nashville.Photo courtesy Eric Hamiter via FlickrNASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Four days after rainstorms pummeled my hometown, problems mount. Major portions of the city are still submerged beneath floodwaters. Thousands are displaced from their homes, the contents of their lives soaked, mud-caked, and molding. Thousands more have no electricity or plumbing. The city faces severe drinking water shortages, with several water treatment facilities paralyzed. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama declared Nashville a federal disaster area. On stoops and porches around the city, Nashvillians are sharing stories of shock, anguish, and wonder. They are recounting images of the homes and churches …