As a new administration committed to addressing climate change takes office, intelligence and defense officials are laying plans to address the national security implications of a warmer planet. In recent months, U.S. military planners have discussed the impact on personnel, equipment and installations of extreme weather events, rising ocean temperatures, shifts in rainfall patterns and stresses on natural resources.

While the jury is still out on whether President-elect Barack Obama will prove able to usher in meaningful “change†during his time in office, his campaign seems to have sparked a shift in voter sentiment toward clean energy and greater climate change awareness.

An issue that received little attention during the early days of the campaign – energy independence – became, along with “green jobs,†one of the election’s hottest buzzwords in the latter stages.

(It didn’t hurt that the economy started tanking right around the time the presidential debates began.)

 

Wow. A decision by the Environmental Protection Agency today has ruled that all new and proposed coal-fired power plants must have their carbon dioxide emissions regulated.

What this means is that 30 permits for new coal-fired power plants in the seven state directly regulated by the EPA's permitting process, plus projects on all Indian Reservations will immediately die because of this ruling.

by Sheril Kirshenbaum

It's not clear how the Obama administration will move on climate change, but they must focus on a single defining message: advancing national economic interests.

Just a week ago, Barack Obama addressed the nation that had just elected him the 44th President of the United States. When he named America’s greatest challenges, “a planet in peril†was a centerpiece. After the Bush administration’s eight-year war on our air, oceans, and wildlife, concerned citizens everywhere had justified reason to celebrate, feeling that they too had possibly won a great victory that night.