Important Issue Round-up - cap and trade and wind

How about this weekend? Busy, innit?

Which isn't stopping Obama from backing down (a bit) from hard-hitting climate legislation. Yglesias has good points on how it's basically the Senate's fault - which is to say that the Senate is the least progressive of the three groups in control of the process (House, Senate, and White House). In the end, it probably will not pass - though the Reconciliation process might change up the game. So that's bad, anyway - cap and trade (hopefully heavily auctioned, and the auction revenues paid back to low-income families to help off-set the increase in electricity rates) is the most realistic way to phase out coal as a power source. Joe Romm thinks it's a pretty good bill, as is.

In the meantime, though, wind has been growing and hiring new people, which is good. The future relies heavily on solar - though new solar plants are showing up here and there - but wind, especially debugged and decentralized, is the way forward in my mind. It's strange that wind is so much farther ahead than solar - and probably points to something fundamental. Have to give some thought to that.