The coal industry is fighting for its life! Give the job of making windmills, solar collectors, water-generators to the families who have been mining coal for generations. Replace the myth of "clean" coal and the resulting destruction of our air, land, and water with something else. You can't destroy their means of livelihood without replacing it with an alternative. Would it be possible to locate other industries in areas currently used for mining, industries that would manufacture components needed for generation of clean, renewable energy? That might satisfy the people lobbying to keep the coal industry alive. Men would no longer have to go down in dangerous mines, or ruin their own landscape to make a living. It takes time to retool, to build factories. But remember how fast the steel industry grew in its early days, and how quickly the country geared up for the World Wars. We need a concerted effort from the government AND the people to put this country back to work, and to solve the climate crisis before it passes the point of no return! Like the problem of the soiled restroom walls, this requires a creative solution where everyone wins something. This is not the time to power over longtime industries and the people who labor in them. They should be wooed with an attractive solution that can aid in solving the even-larger problem.

Add to that my agreement that we need to make SF, and every other American city, much better designed for navigation on foot and bike.

I even agree that at least one or two of the mainstream enviros appear to have sold out, but many others stuck in the fight because they believed without some kind of domestic policy (albeit a distressingly weak) we would be 100% inneffective in Copenhagen, and that would make the odds even worse for us all. Instead of painting all the enviros with a broad brush as sell-outs, can't we just try to build a bigger movement that demands faster, bigger changes?

Here in SF, I couldn't be prouder of the SFBC for pushing the city gov't to move ahead with the long-delayed bike plan. While I completely agree we can't be satisfied and must demand more, letting folks celebrate victories along the way keeps up the spirits of those who did the hard work, and makes a movement more fun---and more inviting to those on the sidelines.

When Waxman-Markey barely creeps below the 1990 baseline level (which itself will be a remarkable achievement for energy-hog America) by 2030, and then with a sense that parochial interests (King Coal, Agriculture) can be negotiated with for now, the political challenge to get to real declines remains enormous.

http://sites.google.com/a/primap.org/www/nature/nature_presscoverage/newscientist

We had best hope that Waxman-Markey kickstarts a global race for low-carbon tech and practices, than some of the more dismal alternatives.

http://www.thebreakthrough.org/blog/2009/05/climate_bills_offsets_provisio.shtml

If the treaty calls for adequate reductions in emissions, and if an American cap and trade sets a cap that lowers emissions adequately, then the price of emissions will go up and that will help rearrange our dwellings, shift people to transit, and shift our economy to clean energy.

You might as well say that the treaty should tell people in detail what they should eat for dinner, since beef is a major source of ghg emissions. If there is an effective cap on emissions, that will ultimately effect what people eat for dinner, even if that is not mentioned explicitly in the law or the treaty.

It would be good to have a more effective short-term cap: at least 20% or more by 2020 instead of 17%.

But many of the objections to Waxman-Markey seem extremely petty to me: lots of people seem to care more about their own political interest than about actually reducing emissions in time to ward off the worst effects of climate change.

With Waxman-Markey and a good treaty in Copenhagen, it is possible to reduce emissions enough that world temperatures will increase no more than 2 degrees centigrade, avoiding catastrophic climate change. We should focus on that key point.

So then even the modest bike plan of one 49 square mile city represents less a complete ecotopian solution, than a bedrock investment that might quickly grow as conditions change far quicker than anyone today would care to admit is possible, even probable. It's imperative then that every kind of permaculture experiment get a foothold now, to set precedents in the bureaucratic texts, and the first collisions of community interests get worked out now...so that our city can be in a better and more resilient position than the mandatory evacuation fated for almost the entire Eastern Seaboard.

On the issue of precedents, it seems to me it'll be a lot easier for a city to take a whole lane for a bike boulevard in a carbon constrained future when a lane exists, than to start from nothing. Likewise, from Boston to Dallas to San Francisco, I suspect we should start resurrecting some (useful) old ordinances for a future that will have a lot of horses, goats, and chickens in cities again.