Fiddling on the roof. Photo: AstroPower/NREL. The Golden State could soon enact the most ambitious solar-energy initiative ever proposed in the U.S. -- legislation intended to put photovoltaic panels on a million California rooftops. Unless, that is, the bill gets derailed by a behind-the-scenes political pissing match between Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has thrown his prodigious weight behind the initiative, and the Democrats who control the state legislature. The Governator unveiled the initiative last August under the name "Million Solar Homes," proposing a 10-year subsidy plan to stimulate solar purchases on residential buildings. It picked up bipartisan backing from …

Senate quashes emissions caps and state authority over LNG terminals The Senate voted yesterday to reject a measure that would have given governors more power over the siting of terminals for tankers carrying liquefied natural gas. The Bush administration has pushed for total federal control over LNG terminal sites, while many state officials -- including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) -- and coast-state senators contend that the terminals could be targets for terrorist attacks or pose safety risks. The Senate also rejected by 60-38 the McCain-Lieberman proposal for mandatory caps on greenhouse-gas emissions, with opponents making the usual arguments that …

Remember when you first heard about that big hole in the ozone? Remember how they called it "the ozone hole"? Man, life was good then. Raise your hand if you're sure ... what you're talking about. Now everyone's talking about global warming. Or, actually, climate change. Or ... uh ... anthropogenic forcing? What we've got, to most people's ears, is global gibberish. This scientific lingo isn't just confusing the way, say, particle physics is confusing. It's also politicized beyond belief. Industry groups, politicians, scientists, and activists battle over terminology, wresting phrases from each other left and right. Onlookers are left …

Desertification will be big bummer for hundreds of thousands worldwide Hundreds of thousands of people -- some of them the world's poorest -- will be displaced in the next 30 years as the globe's deserts expand, according to the latest report from the U.N.'s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Climate change is likely to intensify droughts, heat waves, and floods in "drylands," which comprise 41 percent of the earth's land surface and are home to 2.1 billion people. Other human factors also contribute to desertification, including unsustainable farming and irrigation practices, overgrazing, and population overload. And the impacts are global: Huge dust …

Global warming to cause X-treme hurricanes; Sprite sponsorship in works Coming soon to our warming globe: extreme hurricanes. Research just published in the journal Science suggests that as higher temperatures draw more ocean water into the atmosphere, hurricanes and typhoons will intensify. Over the course of the 20th century, water vapor over the oceans increased by 5 percent overall and 10 percent in areas where hurricanes form, and will jump an additional 7 percent for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit the planet warms. Climatologists can't determine if there will be more storms -- numbers tend to hold steady worldwide from year …

Groups say foreign aid to Africa should be joined with climate action U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's top two agenda items for the upcoming G8 meeting of industrialized countries -- aid to Africa and climate change -- are intimately linked, say a pair of new reports. Britain's leading scientific body, the Royal Society, argues that Africans are uniquely vulnerable to climate change, as more extreme temperatures and changes in rainfall are likely to be particularly ruinous on a continent where 70 percent of people rely on small-scale, rain-fed agriculture. Meanwhile, the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, a coalition …

Electricity-hungry widescreen TVs spike home energy use Jonesing for one of those technolicious, 61-inch, flat-screen, hi-def, make-your-morning-coffee televisions? It's gonna cost you -- right in the utility bill. The Natural Resources Defense Council predicts that if current design standards hold, TVs and related accoutrements (DVD players, etc.) will account for about 10 percent of home electricity use by 2009. TVs alone will suck up about 50 percent more juice by then, for a grand total of 70 billion kilowatt-hours per year in the U.S. That will mean a lot more carbon pumped into the atmosphere just so you can get …

G8 climate statement edited into submission to appease U.S. An action plan on climate change being prepared for July's G8 summit has been substantially weakened in the lead-up to the meeting, the latest leaked draft anemic even by the not-terribly-strenuous standards of, uh, the last leaked draft. References to "setting ambitious targets and timetables" for cutting globe-warming emissions and calls for funding of R&D into clean technologies and fuels have been expunged from the document, and a statement about the world's top scientists calling for action has been marked with square brackets, meaning the text is controversial and may be …

Court hands coal-fired power plants huge victory on pollution regs The long-running legal battle launched by the Clinton administration against aging coal-fired power plants -- the nation's largest industrial source of smog-, asthma-, and global-warming-causing emissions -- was dealt a decisive blow yesterday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled that Duke Energy did not need U.S. EPA permits to modify eight power plants in the Carolinas between 1988 and 2000. The permits would have triggered new-source review (NSR) provisions of the Clean Air Act, requiring Duke to install more effective pollution controls. Why no permits …

Updates from yesterday's Senate energy-bill debate Highlights of yesterday's energy-bill proceedings: The Senate voted to double the amount of ethanol to be added to the nation's gasoline supply by 2012, from 4 billion to 8 billion gallons. Florida Sens. Mel Martinez (R) and Bill Nelson (D) successfully blocked attempts to end the congressional moratorium on oil and gas drilling near Florida's tourist-friendly coastline. When Senate Democrats proposed cutting U.S. oil imports by 40 percent within 20 years, Republicans cast them as crazy dreamers who would disrupt the nation's transportation system. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) "envisioned everybody this summer …