For the eighth time the U.S. Republican Party — the party of big oil and climate change — has held future green energy hostage [ark] in the Senate to an insistence upon drilling every last bit of oil in every last wildernesses’ intact ecosystems first. Given an American addiction to cheap fossil fuels necessary to power climate changing conspicuous consumption [ark] as the meaning of life, the public appears willing to fall lemming like into line with the myth that the “energy crisis” can be solved by drilling. Paying the full cost of energy including upon the environment is no crisis.

This comes as MIT researchers appear to have overcome a major technological limitation to economical solar energy storage [ark], perhaps removing the last major barrier to solar energy charged fuel cells [search] handling base energy loads. Green energy advances are being made constantly, and solar and wind energy is ready for wholesale introduction, but faces market obstacles that can be offset by renewing renewable energy tax credits similar to those enjoyed by traditional fuels forever. It is reprehensible that realistic opportunities to produce green energy locally while saving our shared atmosphere are being treated as no more than a political football. One can only wish a special place in the coming climate hell for these bad people.