Extracting oil from the tar sands is a nasty, polluting, energy-intensive business.

One of the big questions in the climate change debate: Are humans any smarter than frogs in a pot? If you put a frog in a pot and slowly turn up the heat, it won't jump out. Instead, it will enjoy the nice warm bath until it is cooked to death. We humans seem to be doing pretty much the same thing.

When it comes to energy, cost isn't everything - but it's a lot. Everybody wants cheap power.

Americans don't pay much attention to environmental issues, because they aren't sexy. I mean, cleaning up coal plants and reining in outlaw frackers is hugely important work, but it doesn't get anybody's pulse racing.

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

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.

Have we failed to slow global warming pollution in part because climate and environmental activists have been too polite and well behaved?