In reality, Republicans have long been at war with clean energy. They have ridiculed investments in solar and wind power, bashed energy-efficiency standards, attacked state moves to promote renewable energy and championed laws that would enshrine taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels while stripping them from wind and solar.

President Obama is in no danger of being judged by history as an eco-radical.

Bill Gates is a relative newcomer to the fight against global warming, but he's already shifting the debate over climate change.

Bloomberg is famously impatient with beltway politics and believes that to get anything done you need to work from the ground up.

It's not all Obama's fault: His plans to rebuild America's energy infrastructure have been hampered by the recession, and his efforts on global warming have been stymied by Tea Party wackos and weak-kneed Democrats in Congress.

Climate scientists have long pointed to the Southwest as one of the places in the U.S. that is most vulnerable to global warming impacts, especially drought. And if there's one thing that even climate denialists don't dispute, dry things burn.

Nowhere has the political power of coal been more obvious than in presidential campaigns.