This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project. ----- A recent issue of Scientific American featured a "Solar Grand Plan." Its authors described a way for the United States to obtain nearly 100 percent of its electricity and 90 percent of its total energy, including transportation, from solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal resources by end-of-century. Electricity would cost a comfortable 5 cents per kilowatt hour. U.S. carbon emissions would be reduced 62 percent from their 2005 levels. Some 600 coal and gas-fired power plants would be displaced. The federal investment would …

We like the idea of harvesting energy from our own movement, but wearing a knee brace just sounds too clunky. But now U.S. researchers publishing in Nature have developed a way to generate electricity from nanofibers woven into fabric. If the technology goes mainstream, we'll be able to generate energy just by getting dressed -- which, of course, we do every day. Except on Nude Friday.

The following post was first published on Passing Through, The Nation's guest blog, where I will be posting all month. Though recession and war are probably higher on the public's immediate priority list, there is no challenge of greater historical consequence facing the next U.S. president than the climate crisis. It is vitally important that the next chief executive enter the Oval Office committed to decisive and sustained action. He or she will need a firm grasp of the developing science, the political obstacles, the economic trade-offs, and the technological opportunities. John McCain. Photo: Jim Greenhill Does John McCain have …

I was at a meeting earlier this week and was talking to one of the coordinating lead authors of the recent IPCC working group 1 report on the physical science of climate change. He remarked that he was quite surprised that how little substantive criticism the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report had received since its release just about one year ago. The reason, he thought, was that the skeptics were "in the room" with the writing team. What he meant was that the scientists writing the report knew that the denial machine would go over the report with a fine tooth …

Science textbooks approved for California public schools would have to cover climate change, and science teachers would be required to put warming in their curricula, under a bill approved by the state Senate and heading to the Assembly. Says state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who introduced the bill, "This is a phenomenon of global importance and our kids ought to understand the science behind that phenomenon." Critics of the bill had the usual concerns: children shouldn't be indoctrinated with environmental propaganda, climate science is uncertain, the skeptic voice wouldn't get fair time, blah blah blah.

Nearly 500 corporate leaders and institutional investors representing $20 trillion in capital met at the United Nations Thursday to discuss the risks and opportunities presented by climate change. The gathering called itself the largest ever meeting of investment types specifically convened to discuss climate change. Attendees mused about how they could continue to make money in a climate-changed future, set a price for carbon that wouldn't hurt them financially, pressure the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to endorse disclosing climate-related risks, and prompt the United States to adopt legislation slashing its greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 90 percent from 1990 …

Prince Charles warned in a speech on Thursday that if a "courageous and revolutionary" approach to tackling climate change is not undertaken, "the result will be catastrophe for all of us but with the poorest in our world hit hardest of all. In this sense it is surely comparable to war." Also this week, Virgin Group big gun Richard Branson suggested at a United Nations conference that an "environmental war room" be set up to combine "entrepreneurial muscle, the best possible data, and the power to mobilize resources and influence policy." OK, so we're at war with the climate; the …

When will the media stop calling McCain a straight-talker and realize he is a pathological doubletalker? I realize the "L" word is frowned upon in politics, so instead of using that word, which, in any case, doesn't do justice to the full range of doubletalk in the political arena -- let's just imagine there is an agreed-upon objective scale from 1 to 10 of veracity (with 5 being half-true) that goes something like this: (10) Fred Thompson, December 2007: "I'm not particularly interested in running for president." (9) Bush, May 2000: "I think we agree, the past is over." (8) …

Planktos, the company that proposed fending off global warming by seeding the ocean with iron dust, has failed to get enough funding to go forward with planned tests. Under the Planktos business plan, iron fertilization would encourage phytoplankton blooms, which would suck up extra CO2, allowing the company to sell carbon offsets. But it was not to be: According to the Planktos website, "A highly effective disinformation campaign waged by anti-offset crusaders has provoked widespread opposition to plankton restoration in the environmental world." We can just see 'em, shaking their iron fists at us.

It is now less than four weeks until the EPA announces its decision on whether to change current national standards for ozone or smog. And things are getting very interesting behind the scenes. Officially, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget website, the EPA has not yet transmitted its plan to the White House for review. The truth is, the EPA is obviously being picked at by the OMB already. The Bush administration is just trying to keep the details of this matter as secret as possible. (Some business lobbyists have heard that the EPA is pushing …