It is the worst of times.

In a post today at Climate Progress,Bill Becker announced that the Presidential Climate Action Project is closing down. It has, to some extent, completed what it started out to do and that is to provide advice and guidance on climate policy for the new president, who ever it might have been. Since it turned out to be Obama, the might have felt that their job was done.

If you think that is so, then we need to start a whole series of new projects.


Becker listed a number of accomplishments wrapped in Dickensian analogies of a tale of two climates. Then, came the following eye opener:

It’s the worst of times because they are heavily outnumbered in the climate wars on Capitol Hill. As has been widely reported in recent weeks, there are more than 2,300 lobbyists working the climate issue in Congress, a 300 percent increase over the past five years. Only one in eight of them represents the green side of the climate issue.

If you want to understand why politicians are so slow to act on climate, you have only to count the lobbyists. If you want to understand why so many voters are in denial, you have only to look at the manner in which the American Petroleum Institute operates. It is difficult to watch any amount of television news without seeing one of their Ads, nearly all of which are misleading at best and often designed to make us all stupid. Then, they are not just in Washington, but also in 27 state capitals.

Just consider the ad where they claim we have enough oil and gas for home heating for 60 years. Well, what then? Maybe the are counting on global warming to obviate the need for home heating.

Is it any wonder that we are losing the information war on climate change? This, even as some of the mainstream media is turning around. Tonight on NBC's Nightly News, Anne Thompson covered the collapse of an ice bridge in Antarctica. Thompson concludes the we are in "a situation made worse by man made global warming that now needs a man made solution."

Greens need to take every advantage on Earth Day to take the message of climate change to the streets, to hold sit-ins at our congressional offices, to do mass phone calls to all of our representatives and senators.

It is only our planet. We may not get to live in it, but our children and grandchildren deserve better than they are going to get.