There is great concern and potential for action on climate change in the general public. The problem is that most people feel that it’s the government’s job to change things, or that the individual citizen is powerless in the face of such a daunting challenge. With some fresh ideas and renewed efforts at coordination, I hope we can change that.

The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill was likely the last hope for major climate-change legislation for a number of years. With Obama on the defensive and unwilling to spend political capital on the issue, and with Congress certainly getting more Republican in November, a great window of opportunity has been missed.

Texas energy companies stuck it to California a decade ago, and now they’re coming back again to try to derail California’s law on greenhouse gas emissions.

I have a hunch that someone is not happy about that prospect . . .

I worked on Capitol Hill for a long time, and I do not consider myself naive about the inner workings of Washington. But even I was surprised by two revelations this week exposing the amount of money the oil industry is spending to buy political influence.

When Obama placed a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling after the BP spill, the oil industry and one notable judge predicted thousands of lost jobs and billions in lost revenue. According to the New York Times, that hasn’t happened.

The 12 Steps were originally developed as a recovery program for alcoholics, but they have since been used for addictions of all kinds. Since it is clear that American culture is gripped by an addiction that is destroying our land and our people, it only seems natural that we should look to the 12 Steps for guidance.

It seems clear that the environmental devastation of an entire region should take priority over the continued operation of an industry that is mired in corruption and recklessness. Perhaps it is fair that they lose some profits and some jobs as a result of this disaster.

This story on Judge Martin Feldman’s overturning of the Obama offsfore drilling ban aired today on NPR’s "All Things Considered." The speakers are NPR reporter Robert Smith, Kate Gordon of the "liberal" think tank Center for American Progress, and Tulane law professor Ed Sherman. Smith:  Judge Feldman gave the oil industry everything it wanted in the lawsuit. [...]

According to Think Progress, Judge Martin Feldman had plenty of personal reasons to lift Obama’s six-month moratorium on offshore drilling:

Like many judges presiding in the Gulf region, Feldman owns lots of energy stocks, including Transocean, Halliburton, and two of BP’s largest U.S. private shareholders.

President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders spent this week trying to stand up to the oil industry. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama pushed BP to siphon $20 billion into a escrow fund that will cover liability claims, and Congress grilled BP CEO Tony Hayward and other oil bigwigs as to how they were protecting the country’s coastal waters.