The U.N. climate talks desperately need a crisis. For the last 10 days, negotiations here in Durban, South Africa, have made little progress on the fundamental challenge these talks were set up to confront: how the world can come together to avoid catastrophic climate change. Instead, the pace of negotiations has been set by the one country the rest of the world should be turning their back on: the United States. The U.S. never signed the Kyoto Protocol, the only legally binding international agreement designed to reduce emissions, but it is allowed to take part in the negotiations in a …

Maine activists showing their support for Put Solar On It.For the last three days, I've been sitting at my kitchen table in California cranking out press releases, calling reporters, and generally playing "pit crew" for Bill McKibben and our Put Solar On It road trip. It's been a great ride: tens of thousands of people have shown their support for putting solar back on the White House, the crew had great stops in Boston, New York, and D.C., and we managed to secure a meeting with the administration to discuss putting solar back on the roof. As we expected (but …