A group of veterans is in Virginia on a nationwide bus tour to support reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

California appears poised to ban energy-sucking big-screen plasma TVs, despite vigorous lobbying by the Arlington, Va.-based Consumer Electronics Association. The ban will be imposed by executive fiat, courtesy of the state’s energy commission. The reason for banning the big boob tubes is the same as the one behind the push to switch from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs: It’s good for the environment.

Global-warming skeptics frequently argue that the computer models used to predict climate change cannot begin to account for the complexity of the real world. Yet when it comes to the economic consequences of cap-and-trade legislation supported by liberals who want to mitigate climate change, conservative skeptics can be very precise indeed.

Global climate change over the next 20 years will cause intense droughts in the Southwest, floods in the Northeast threatening the coastline and urban areas, and significant storm damage along the Gulf Coast, a panel of Southern governors was told yesterday. Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Engel, director of the Climate Change and State Stability program of the National Intelligence Council, told the governors that the changes could also affect U.S. national-security interests—aggravating poverty, degrading the environment and destabilizing fragile government regimes of nations around the world.

After the law of supply and demand, there may be no law more difficult to evade than the law of unintended consequences. And there may be no arena in which that law is more pervasive than environmental regulation. Some years ago, stricter clean-air standards led to the introduction of MTBE, an oxygenation agent that helped engines burn gasoline more completely. Unfortunately, MTBE’s high water solubility led to groundwater contamination in many parts of the country. (“An effort to cut air pollution winds up fouling the water,“ as The New York Times summarized a few years ago.) Federal requirements for reformulated gasoline including MTBE also contributed to regional gasoline price spikes. So eventually Washington decided that ethanol, made from corn, would make a better gasoline blend. Federal ethanol subsidies quickly led to price spikes for food commodities and livestock feed.

Who are these crazy people claiming the $787 billion stimulus bill hasn’t worked? It already achieved its main objective: a bigger federal government for you and me. And we’ve only just begun. The Obama 10-Year Plan (also called the federal budget), the Obama Healthy Government Initiative (usually referred to as health care reform in the ministries of propaganda formerly known as newsrooms), and the Heroic Obama Save the Planet Now Scheme (Cap’n Trade) could one day combine to make government in America nearly as large as the private economy.

President Barack Obama said the global recession makes it harder to strike an international agreement to battle dangerous temperature increases, but he urged the poor emerging economies that rejected specific clean-energy goals to “fight the temptation toward cynicism” and embrace them soon.

By SAMUEL THERNSTROM WASHINGTON After years of deadlock over climate policy, Congress appears poised to enact the first federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions this fall. Yet a growing number of climate scientists and scholars believe that such efforts are likely to be too little, too late to stop warming—and that, consequently, a broader view of our climate policy options is needed.

As we all recognize, our environment is in danger, our climate at risk, and the health of our Earth perilous. We must take steps to remedy this situation for our children and grandchildren. In many ways, no issue could be more important, more imperative, or timelier. We are at a crossroads. If we do not take stewardship of our Earth and all vitality on it, we may never again have the opportunity. We owe it to our children and grandchildren.

As we all recognize, our environment is in danger, our climate at risk, and the health of our Earth perilous. We must take steps to remedy this situation for our children and grandchildren. In many ways, no issue could be more important, more imperative, or timelier. We are at a crossroads. If we do not take stewardship of our Earth and all vitality on it, we may never again have the opportunity. We owe it to our children and grandchildren.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was on Capitol Hill yesterday to take part in a one-day symposium on climate change, along with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, senators, fellow governors, business leaders and academics. “We know that the issues around global warming and climate change reach across party lines and across national boundaries, across state borders and communities,“ Kaine said in a statement.

President-elect Barack Obama recently unveiled a massive infrastructure spending package that includes new federal investments in energy efficiency.

Virginians and most other Americans believe global warming is a real and serious problem, a poll says, and they want local, state and federal governments to do something about it. They’re split, however, on what should be done. Those results from national and state-level polls measuring public attitudes on climate change were released yesterday during the National Conference on Climate Governance at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

The state Commission on Climate Change unanimously adopted its final report yesterday, and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine indicated he would act on it. “In my administration, we don’t get reports and put them on shelves,“ Kaine told the panel during a meeting in the General Assembly Building. The report makes more than 100 recommendations, including calls to conserve energy better, rely more on nuclear power and increase protections for forests and wetlands.