If Sandy – and this summer’s record US heat wave – end up blowing Obama back into the White House with enough wind in his sails to persuade him to make climate change a winning issue, it really could have positive global consequences. If not, I shudder to think what scale of apocalyptic disaster will be needed to destroy the political cowardice among world leaders that is stoking the ever greater climate change storms of the future.

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Concerned scientists certainly saw an opportunity to get a message across: In a telephone briefing last week, Princeton geosciences professor Michael Oppenheimer said, "What we're seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like. It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster … This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future."

Maybe this would be the moment that the visceral reality of disaster broke through the political fog. League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinski thought it might, saying he hoped that “record-breaking temperatures, intense droughts and wildfires and other climate-related disasters” would act as “a wakeup call” for the dangers posed by climate change.

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Cushing was a particularly appropriate setting to convey that message: It's the crossroads for much of the nation’s oil and gas infrastructure, and inadequate pipeline capacity has made the town a bottleneck for fossil fuels, particularly with the recent influx of oil coming from Alberta. At any given time, between 30 and 40 million gallons of oil sit there, awaiting transport to Midwestern or Gulf Coast refineries. This means that the chunk of the pipeline that connects Cushing's surplus to refineries along the Gulf Coast — the chunk of the project that’s moving forward — is the one that TransCanada really cares about in the short term.

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“In the national debate, job creation has been set alongside environmental concerns in a rigid either-or fashion," says Sean Sweeney, one of the study’s authors, "But oil spills also kill jobs, they consume resources, they have an impact on health, and can also lead to a lower quality of life.”

The range of estimates of jobs vary widely. TransCanada claims the pipeline will create 20,000 jobs. A State Department report estimates that only 20 permanent operating jobs would be created in the six states along the pipeline route. By comparison, those same states are home to robust agricultural, ranching and tourist industries that are dependent on water and vulnerable to environmental contamination. Across the six states agriculture employs 571,000 workers and tourism 780,000; the total revenue from those sectors, respectively, is $76.3 billion and $67 billion.

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The House’s transportation bill is on the rocks, but the Senate’s version is moving along, and the pro-Keystone amendment sponsored by John Hoeven, R-N.D., went up for a vote yesterday. The Hoeven amendment would have bypassed the need for presidential approval, using Congress’ constitutional power to regulate international commerce to skip the review process and green-light the pipeline immediately. The amendment failed in a close vote Thursday afternoon: a majority of senators, including 11 Democrats, voted in favor, but the 56 votes it garnered were just shy of the 60 needed to pass.

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The maneuvering is intense because the struggle over the 1,600-mile proposed pipeline has become a proxy battle in a larger war over climate change, corporate influence and the legacy of the Obama administration. Both sides agree that the fate of Keystone XL will influence more than just whether oil is transported from the tar sands of central Canada to the United States. It will signal whether the U.S. is moving away from the carbon-fueled economy or embracing it anew.

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The Obama administration announced today that it has rejected the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline that would link the tar sands of Alberta, where crude oil is extracted, with U.S. refineries along the Gulf. Republicans are promising to step up their efforts to build the pipeline, which was largely unknown to the public just six months ago.

The decision isn't exactly a surprise. Obama has repeatedly made clear that he would not approve any attempts to force the pipeline through without an adequate environmental review. The State Department had also stated that it would not approve the pipeline if the time frame for the review was rushed, warning in December that the deadline imposed by Congress would “compromise the process.” Nevertheless, House Republicans inserted a provision into the payroll bill passed last month requiring the administration to reach a decision on the pipeline by Feb. 21^.

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The Republican leadership is seeking to portray the environmental and health review of the Keystone project as a capitulation to fringe interests. Newt Gingrich described the pipeline opponents as “left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco,” while Mitch McConnell said the president shouldn’t “let a few radical environmentalists stand in the way” of a pipeline Republicans claim would create 20,000 jobs.

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Last Wednesday, a group of Republican senators, including Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns, co-sponsored a bill that would fast-track the pipeline, requiring President Obama to issue a decision on the pipeline within the next 60 days and precluding a more in-depth review of its impacts. Now, Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry, with support from House Speaker John Boehner, is seeking to attach a provision that would force a quick decision on the pipeline to a bill designed to extend unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts, which are currently set to expire Jan. 1 of next year.

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One of the most enduring accomplishments of Republican President Richard Nixon, the Clean Air Act is a popular and effective law. The EPA estimates that the act saved 160,000 lives in 2010 alone, and projects that the new standards targeted by these bills would prevent up to 9,000 premature deaths annually. As a result, policies to ensure clean air enjoy wide support in both parties and all regions of the country. A recent nationwide poll, conducted by Hart Research, found respondents favor air pollution protections by 60 percent to 22 percent. Three out of four people believe that the EPA, rather than Congress, should set air pollution standards.

But in Washington, industry interests have prevailed over popular sentiment among House Republicans, who voted almost unanimously in favor of both bills. The communities most affected by industrial pollution stand to suffer most from the bills now going before the Senate.

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The federal Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), created in 1976 to save energy in the midst of the first oil crisis, offers a comprehensive array of weatherization services to 8 million low-income households. Funded through Community Action Agencies (CAAs), created by Lyndon Johnson' War on Poverty, the WAP is the anti-Solyndra, a symbol of what the Obama administration got right on green jobs.

Double-glazed windows and insulated water heaters lack the luster of mammoth solar farms, high-tech innovation funds and shiny new photovoltaic panels. But the process of making the homes of low-income families more energy-efficient by conducting energy audits, installing insulation, sealing gaps and cracks, replacing drafty windows and doors, sealing air ducts and improving ventilation has proven effective in saving money and energy while creating jobs.

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Yes, $534 million is a lot of money, and 1,100 jobs is a lot of jobs, but Solyndra represents just 1.3 percent of the Department of Energy's loan portfolio. America's investment in renewables, and particularly solar, lags behind that of many other G-20 countries as a percentage of GDP. Yet sheer investment isn't enough to ensure a robust renewable sector; it has to be smart investment. And that doesn't mean fussing over individual companies; instead of picking the right companies, we need to pick the right policies. We need to look at what's worked elsewhere, particularly in Germany, which continues to blaze the trail in solar innovation, production and installation.

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Nothing she's done since resigning her position as governor of Alaska really suggests she's planning a serious presidential candidacy, nor are her current activities indicative of any real commitment to public service. What they do demonstrate is an understanding that outrageous statements, calculated controversy and the blurring of the line between candidate and celebrity are a sure route to lots of attention -- and lots of money. 

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All together that makes for a lot of Important Men in the news lately whose sexual proclivities and behavior toward women have come under scrutiny in the course of their public lives. Which makes this a good time to think about whether and how progressives can respect public figures' privacy while retaining a critical perspective on sexual politics. Should we not care how public figures conduct themselves privately so long as they don't stick their noses into our bedrooms? Or is the personal political? Is it even possible to stake out a position that acknowledges the importance of both perspectives?

To be clear up-front, leaving one's cancer-stricken wife for being too "frumpy" (Newt) or ordering women to submit themselves to sexual appraisal (Trump) is hardly on a par with alleged sexual assault. And it’s not as if public office be reserved only for those who stay faithfully married to one other person forever or otherwise meet our standards for sexual propriety.

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Calling for prayer while refusing to recognize the EPA's regulations on greenhouse gases seemed like an act of willful ignorance, as if Texas were sticking its fingers in its ears and humming as loud as it could to drown out what amounts to a warning of a future climate-change-induced catastrophe.

For my part, I'll cop to having sent a disparaging tweet or two. But I shouldn't have. Ridiculing Texas for attempting to pray away drought is a bad idea -- and not just because it makes progressives seem like Al Gore when he sighed with exasperation at George Bush in the 2000 presidential debate. The bigger issue is that, as the effects of climate change become more tangible, weather more unpredictable, and ordinary conditions more disastrous, progressives will have to offer more than sniggers to those who feel threatened by changes they don't understand.

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For an American observer, it was an impressive showing that made it hard not to wonder why the only movement with any steam in the U.S. these days is the Tea Party. Why is it that our economic crisis has prompted people to beg for more public sector cuts instead of fewer, for more austerity instead of less? Is a movement against the continued ravaging of state services even possible here?

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Much has been made of Walker's decision to exempt from his plan firefighter, police and state trooper unions -- conveniently, the only three public sector unions that endorsed him. But as Dana Goldstein points out, not only are the exempted unions largely Republican-leaning, they’re also overwhelmingly male -- over 70 percent of law enforcement personnel are male, as are over 96 percent of firefighters. On the other hand, many of the non-exempt unions represent professions that are disproportionately female -- approximately 80 percent of teachers are women, for example, as are 95 percent of nurses.

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His column earlier this week, on "The Experience Economy," demonstrates this vividly. It bears all the hallmarks of a Brooks classic. Reference to the hot policy book of the moment? Got it: Tyler Cowen's "The Great Stagnation" -- and in the first sentence, no less. Substitution of "values" explanations for political, economic and historical context? Check. A set of generically benign character traits anthropomorphized into an "average" (ostensibly white, middle class, male) American? Not just one, but two.

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