Offshore wind turbines (via TreeHugger)

While most of the news on catastrophic climate change isn’t good, there are some signs of hope  that the massive changes to move to a post-carbon future are happening.

Via TreeHugger:

The United States Interior Department just issued regulations governing offshore renewable energy projects that use wind, ocean currents and wave power for producing electricity. The offshore leasing rules for electricity production had stalled for two years over of a turf dispute as it were between governmental agencies, but that bottleneck has been broken…

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the framework for how leases will be issued and revenue shared. Nearby coastal states will receive 27.5 percent of the royalties generated from electricity production.

Salazar anticipates that many of the proposed offshore wind projects will be in the north and central Atlantic and that the first electricity production from some of the offshore projects in two or three years, probably off the Atlantic Coast.

Wind has enourmous potential for power production, and it is ecouraging to see that it is finally getting real support from the US.  There are also economic benefits, as wind power generates a lot of jobs in both maintenance and manufacturing, and have the potential to replace coal fired plants, which have a huge negative impact on the biosphere.

None of this would be possible without the leadership of someone who finally gets it, and isn’t beholden to the fossil fuel lobby and their allies (see this article for more on how they knew the science showing anthropogenic global warming was correct but still chose to deny it). Speaking yesterday at a wind tower production facility in Iowa, President Obama said:

Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy.  The choice we face is between prosperity and decline. We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy.  We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity:  The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy. (via Climate Progress.)

Here in Chiang Mai there is a store selling solar panels and wind generators.  Inexpensive, efficient, and with a lot of potential.  We see solar panels in a lot of the remote villages we work with. All of it from China. It will be important for the US to lead in the post-carbon future, or there is no reason for other countries (like China) to join the effort.  And if they don’t join, then the future really is doomed.

But there is hope.  Go to Climate Progress to read a longer except of Obama’s speech, and see this post for more about what he has accomplished so far.