Anyone who takes the threat of climate change seriously has to view the reelection of Barack Obama with great satisfaction. The American people rejected Mitt Romney, a candidate who mocked the threat of climate change, much to the delight of his base. Among the millions of Americans already suffering from climate impacts, and the thousands who spend their waking hours pushing for urgent action, glasses were raised, and rightfully so. But if we look at the past few months with clear eyes, we must acknowledge that our victory toasts are bittersweet, given the near total refusal by both candidates to …

Jill Stein, the Green Party's candidate for the presidency, earned just shy of 400,000 votes Tuesday, putting her in fourth place. Had all of those votes been in one state, Stein could have earned a maximum of four electoral votes in a state like Maine or New Hampshire. The last time 400,000-some votes would have actually won the office was 1824, though Stein would not have been able to vote for herself.

Stein's candidacy -- like those of the candidates for the Libertarian Party or the Peace and Freedom Party, or that of Santa Claus -- accomplished one thing: reinforcing that third parties are a joke. That they are not even tangential to the political discussion, because "tangential" implies touching. Third parties are asymptotic to the American political conversation. For all of the (fair) arguments that the system is rigged against third parties, it is also true that third parties are not interested enough in being taken seriously to do the hard, grueling work it would take to actually build a political movement.

With falling water tables, eroding soils, and rising temperatures making it difficult to feed growing populations, control of arable land and water resources is moving to center stage in the global struggle for food security. What will the geopolitics of food look like in a new era dominated by scarcity and food nationalism? Here are a few of the many facts from the book to consider: There will be 219,000 people at the dinner table tonight who were not there last night—many of them with empty plates. As a result of chronic hunger, 48 percent of all children in India …

President Obama's victory yesterday was a victory for clean energy, one that gives us a fighting chance to slash coal pollution and turn the corner on climate change, in the wake of a devastating hurricane that brought global warming into sharp, painful focus for millions of Americans. As the Sierra Club's Michael Brune said on election night, "We did it." Fossil fuel billionaires had spent at record levels to defeat Obama in this election, and Romney had returned the favor, promising to open the floodgates on more mining and drilling if elected. But then Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern Seaboard, …

It was worth staying up ‘til 2 am last night to hear Barack Obama’s victory speech. The brother sure can bring it when he is inspired. Now it’s time for the climate and progressive movements to do our job as citizens and demand that he do the same on climate. It’s time, long past time, for Barack Obama to break his own self-imposed silence on climate. When did this silence begin? A piece in last week’s Guardian newspaper reminded me of how far back it goes, to a meeting the White House organized for leaders of environmental groups in March …

Tests performed by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found no copper, zinc, nickel, or titanium in water samples taken near a fracking wastewater site.

Well, actually, that's not true. The Pennsylvania DEP didn't report finding any of those metals, because the department's oil and gas division didn't ask for data on them. But the DEP found the metals. From the New York Times:

Pennsylvania officials reported incomplete test results that omitted data on some toxic metals that were found in drinking water taken from a private well near a natural gas drilling site, according to legal documents released this week.

The documents were part of a lawsuit claiming that natural gas extraction through a method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and storage of the resulting wastewater at a site in southwestern Pennsylvania has contaminated drinking water and sickened seven plaintiffs who live nearby. ...

Taru Upadhyay, the technical director of the department’s Bureau of Laboratories, said the metals found in the water sample but not reported to either the oil and gas division or to the homeowner who requested the tests, included copper, nickel, zinc and titanium, all of which may damage the health of people exposed to them, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Ms. Upadhyay said that the bureau did not arbitrarily decide to withhold those results. “It was not requested by our client for that particular test, so we did -- it is not on our final report,” she said in a deposition on Sept. 26.

When you subtract out shady roofs, renters, and other factors, only about 25% of Americans have a place to install solar power.  With the high upfront cost of a complete system, the potential solar universe shrinks further. That changes with “community solar.” After a long wait on the state’s Public Utilities Commission to finalize the rules, Colorado’s “community solar gardens” program (my summary here) sold out in 30 minutes when it opened two months ago, testament to the pent-up demand for solar among who don’t own a sunny roof.  The program allows individuals to subscribe or buy shares in a …

At a campaign event today in Etna, Ohio, Gov. Romney was asked, “Do you still think the rising of the seas is funny?” Romney responded, “I never imagined such a thing is funny,” despite using rising sea levels as a punchline in his speech to the Republican National Convention.

According to The Wall Street Journal, tapping into Alberta's tar sands is starting to look like a much riskier business proposal.

Amid rising costs, gyrating prices and a burst of supply competition down south, Canadian oil companies are rethinking investment in one of North America's earliest and fastest-growing "unconventional" oil frontiers -- Alberta's oil sands. ...

The slowdown so far is limited, affecting only the industry's most expensive segment, which mines and upgrades bitumen into a low-sulphur, synthetic crude. Still, it underscores the extent to which today's booming North American energy-production growth remains at the mercy of market forces, which often reward higher output with lower prices. That dynamic can sap fresh investment incentives, especially in the case of the capital-intensive energy industry.

Let's take a look at that "burst of supply competition down south." As we noted last week, the massive spike in U.S. oil production has reversed the flow of crude -- quite literally in the case of a pipeline near Corpus Christi. But moreover:

[P]rices for synthetic crude have been buffeted by a flood of new production in the middle of the continent, especially in North Dakota. Producers there are using the same sort of drilling technology that [natural] gas producers have used to unlock fresh supplies of oil. The crude is similar in grade to Canada's synthetic oil, putting the two blends in competition with each other to find refinery buyers. At the same time, limited pipeline capacity has bottled up Canadian supplies, exacerbating price swings and threatening lower prices to come.

This is putting some big expansion plans up north on the back burner.

You read that? "Limited pipeline capacity." In the last two paragraphs of the article, they say the words you've been waiting for.

With Election Day just around the corner, I know many of you will be thinking about clean energy, climate change, and coal pollution when you cast your ballots. I have to admit, I'm a little jealous of my friends in Michigan who get to vote on a fantastic opportunity for more clean energy in their state. Unfortunately, big fossil fuel companies are spending big at the eleventh hour to try and stand in the way of a clean energy future for Michigan -- and the nation. Proposal 3, which will be on the Michigan ballot next Tuesday, calls for 25 …