Allow me to bury the lead. The Keystone XL pipeline is a climate disaster. I reiterate this, at the risk of what David Roberts calls "public flatulism," because this post is about jobs, and I don't want anyone to infer that any amount of jobs would justify committing climate suicide. IEA's warnings against imminent climate "lock-in" mean that any major investment in long-lived, capital-intensive fossil-fuel infrastructure must now be considered flatly immoral. So we quibble about jobs at the risk of blurring this moral line when we should be sharpening it. I hope I have mitigated that risk by naming …

Gaping budget deficits. Record foreclosures. High unemployment. Surely, this would be the perfect time to choose jobs over the environment. That's what two Texas oil companies figured when they put Proposition 23 on the California ballot in November. The measure would have "suspended" California's Global Warming Solutions Act until unemployment fell below 5.5 percent. California voters rejected it overwhelmingly. Do you think Californians, with 12.4 percent unemployment, were saying, "We want climate solutions, not jobs"? Of course not. They were saying something much more positive: "Climate solutions ARE jobs, and we'll have both." The West Coast clean energy economy is …

This piece was co-authored by Ross Macfarlane. Sens. Kerry (D-Mass) and Lieberman (I-Conn) finally released the American Power Act (APA) on Wednesday, May 11, after months of internal negotiations, and nearly a year after the House passed its comprehensive climate and energy bill, (the American Clean Energy and Security Act or ACES). Climate Solutions is still reviewing its nearly 1000 pages, and will be developing more detailed responses and priorities for our advocacy work. But we wanted to provide some high level reactions to our friends and supporters, and highlight some of the areas that we will be working on …

"There is no time to waste. America has made our choice. We have charted our course, we have made our commitments, and we will do what we say." -- President Obama, speaking to world leaders in Copenhagen December 18 "Kan Han?" (Can He?) So implored the headline and full-page picture of President Obama on the front of the Copenhagen MetroXpress on December 18, the day the President flew in to rescue the climate summit. With negotiations on the verge of collapse, Obama narrowly averted a total disaster with a strong show of determination and some deft eleventh-hour negotiating. The talks …

The "Copenhagen Accord" is terribly weak. Not just "weaker than it needs to be to prevent climate catastrophe." We knew it would be that, but hoped to emerge with a serious framework for real solutions. Formally, diplomatically, legally, we didn't get that. This truth is stark but indispensable. We shouldn't spin away from it. The Accord will include some positive developments: serious engagement by the U.S. and China, progress toward better accounting and verification, and real movement on climate finance - a critical issue that goes to the moral heart of the impasse. But it lacks legal and scientific integrity. …

The world is aghast. It’s fate, it seems, “lies in the hands of a few U.S. Senators,” as Tuvalu negotiator Ian Fry lamented in his plea for a real, science-driven deal here in Copenhagen. The collective forehead of humanity wrinkles at the prospect. Who are these people? A couple of them from North Dakota, representing 600,000 people (about 9% of the population of Mumbai’s slums), can prevent the world from rising to an emergency? A thought bubble floats above the Bella Center: “U.S. Senate: Huh?” A Japanese woman grilled me last night in broken but feisty English about the intricacies …

This has always been the big duh of climate and clean energy policy: How ‘bout we start by ending subsidies to fossil fuel development?  Clean energy reform is hard enough, swimming against the killer tides of free carbon dumping, car-centered development, and oil-soaked politics.  Can we pleeze stop adding insult to injury by targeting scarce public money toward making it worse? Steve Kretzmann's the man on oil subsidies. Steve's formula is catching on here in Copenhagen:  End fossil fuel subsidies in the developed world and use the proceeds to open a pathway to clean development in the global South.  It's …

I wish every American could get lost for a few days in the Bella Conference Center and the events surrounding it in Copenhagen.  I wish you could all see and feel the desperate depth of the world's hunger for America to step all the way up to its responsibilities here. And since at least one more of us will be here - the one who stoked your hopes; the one who just earned the first prospective Nobel Peace Prize in affirmation of the world's urgent need for American leadership - I address this request to him.  Mr. President, please come early.  Arrive incognito.  …

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has a well-earned reputation as a sharp, level-headed, practical leader. Most people wouldn't describe him as a visionary. But in his excellent speech yesterday in Copenhagen, he laid out the case for profound transformation, and the explosive economic opportunities that come with it. Check out this passage (emphasis in bold is mine): Think for a moment about the long-term emissions targets we are all considering. President Obama is calling for an 83 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. You're not going to meet those targets with a wind or solar farm here and there. …

A specter hangs over the U.S. negotiators at the Copenhagen climate summit: the Kyoto Syndrome. Conventional wisdom holds that the Clinton Administration, and Al Gore in particular, blew it by agreeing to the Kyoto Accords without building the foundation for the Senate to ratify it, which it never did. (See, e.g., "How to Prevent Climate Change Summit from Failure"). "America lost a lot of credibility when then-Vice President Al Gore promised the international community in Kyoto something that he knew could never be passed by the Congress," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who will lead a group of House Republicans …