California Pushes Forward on Solar & Wind Power

Photo Credit: CA Governor's Office

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With so much attention focused on health care, it seems that the media has all-but-forgotten that this was supposed to be the year the United States took the lead in fighting global warming.

Now it appears Congress may have also forgotten.

“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just told reporters that the Senate could push back climate legislation until next years,” writes MoJo’s Rachel Morris today.

It’s a good thing that CA Governor Arnold Schwarztenegger remember’s the most important issue of our time.

Yesterday, the Governator signed an Executive Order ordering that rules and regulations be implemented to ensure that California gets a third of its electricity from renewable, clean energy sources by the year 2020.

It’s great that California leads the nation in this fight. If we want to actually win the battle, however, the federal government needs to act, and act now. Not next year.

Ernest Hemingway, of all people, understood the necessity of collective action. To quote the last words of his dying protagonist in Islands In the Stream:

A man alone ain’t got no bloody fucking chance.

———–

Osha Gray Davidson is a contributing blogger at Mother Jones and publisher of The Phoenix Sun, an online news service reporting on solar energy. He tweets @thephoenixsun.

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OUR DEADLINE MATH PROBLEM

It’s risky, but also unavoidable: A full one-third of the dollars that we need to pay for the journalism you rely on has to get raised in December. A good December means our newsroom is fully staffed, well-resourced, and on the beat. A bad one portends budget trouble and hard choices.

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