Usually I limit my blogging to environment-related topics, but this was just too good to be true (though I assure you, it is). Tom Waits’ publicist verified last night that Waits is in fact going on tour this summer. It will be a U.S. and European tour, with no dates determined as of yet. This is a rare event for the legendary American musician whose last (very short) tour was in 2006.

Now that the roller coaster that was 2008 has come to an end, we thought it would be fun to look back at some of our most popular, thought-provoking and entertaining posts from The Streak over the past year. This post was chosen by TWI staff as one of the most memorable of 2008.

The sixth-graders in Marti Goldstone’s science class at Horace Mann Elementary are working on a project that could save their D.C. public school a lot of money. They are conducting an energy audit of their entire school. They calculate how much energy each classroom, gym, cafeteria, office, etc. uses, how much electricity each item in a room consumes, which appliances eat up too much electricity and what adjustments can be made to save energy.

“One thing the kids have honed in on,” Goldstone noticed, “is that little things use different amounts of energy.” A few of her sixth-graders discovered, for instance, that nearly identical electric pencil sharpeners in two different classrooms consumed different quantities of electricity. After measuring both, the kids found that one used 75 watts to sharpen a pencil, while the other took just 22.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

The science students are in their third week of working on the project. Goldstone says they’re enjoying it immensely. “Very often, when you’re asking students how to be greener, they automatically think of home,” she said. “It’s a little tougher when you ask, ‘What can you do for the environment when you’re at school?’”

That’s an important question because students in grades K-12 spend the better part of their days at school.

Goldstone is one of about 100 teachers nationwide who have teamed up with the conservation group the Alliance to Save Energy in an effort to make schools greener by identifying wasteful practices and adopting more energy-efficient measures to replace them. The group’s energy-audit exercise is part of its Green Schools program.

For public school teachers like Goldstone, the energy-audit lesson is a great opportunity for students to use math, science and social studies in pursuit of an important environmental goal. For superintendents of school districts, the project is worthwhile for another reason — it can save them money.

Many schools spend thousands of dollars a month on energy bills, said Emily Curley, who runs the Green Schools program at the Alliance to Save Energy. Even such simple no-cost acts as turning off classroom lights and computers and adjusting thermostat settings can save schools between 5 percent to 15 percent of their energy bills, she said. “That’s pretty significant, especially for public schools that might not have the upfront funding for big [green] renovations.”

Still, some public school districts have spent money to conform new construction, or retrofit existing buildings, to green standards. A few districts are required by law to make their campuses more energy efficient. Montgomery County in Maryland, for one, passed a measure requiring all its public schools achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. LEED, which is administered by the U.S. Green Building Council, is the most widely used green-building rating system in the nation.

The Green Schools Initiative, a nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, Calif., calculates that that while the cost premium for green construction is around $3 a square foot, the return on the initial investment can be about $70 a square foot. For example, the upfront costs of building a highly durable wall could be offset exponentially by future savings on heating and air-conditioning bills.

Retrofitting existing buildings to confirm to green standards can more than pay for itself too. Deborah Moore, executive director of the Green Schools Initiative, estimates that the costs in terms of energy savings can be recouped between one to three years.

Montgomery County Public Schools in Rockville, Md., invests $500,000 a year in a green schools program, which yields annual energy savings of $5 million, according to Moore. The effort includes a green building program.

And Murrieta Valley Unified School District in Murrieta, Calif., saved $145,000 in energy costs over a span of nine months from energy-efficiency investments, according to the Green Schools Initiative.

While the environmental and economic benefits of greening schools are clear, it isn’t easy for public school districts to adopt such policies because they usually require increased funding up front. “School districts are perpetually strapped for money,” Moore said. “To come up with anything extra, they have to justify it to taxpayers who don’t want to pay anything extra.”

But Curley of the Alliance to Save Energy says that the payoff for public school districts from greening their campuses can be big. Because their school buildings tend to be older and less energy efficient, no-cost and low-cost steps to bring them up to greener standards can have an immediate effect, with big savings.

When it comes to green buildings, though, public schools don’t always have the money that some private schools do to achieve LEED certification. Yet, public school districts do have cheaper options for green building. They can simply adopt green standards of their own choosing, ignoring LEED rules altogether, or, they can meet LEED standards without going through the costly process of becoming certified.

Some public schools are going the extra green mile, outdoing even some state-of-the-art green private schools. Below are a few of the greenest public schools in the nation and a sampling of the factors that made them so. (You can find more of the greenest schools across the country by checking out National Geographic’s 2006 rankings.)

Desert Edge High School, Goodyear, Ariz. The school holds a LEED Silver certification thanks to such features as motion sensor lighting (which automatically turns on or off when people enter or leave a room), waterless urinals, low-flow toilets and a heat-reflecting roof that cuts air-conditioning costs. The LEED green-building requirements include using non-toxic paint and building materials low in toxins such as volatile organic compounds.

Michael E. Capuano Early Childhood Center, Somerville, Mass. The center, which has both a preschool and kindergarten, is powered by a combination of its own wind turbine and electricity bought from solar and wind sources. It serves nutritional food grown locally, some of which is cultivated by students in a community garden nearby. The school is also pesticide-free and uses natural cleaning products. To improve outdoor air quality, cars and buses follow a no-idling policy.

East Clayton Elementary School, Clayton, N.C. To save on energy costs, the school’s many windows take advantage of sunlight to light halls and classrooms. The school uses recycled denim to insulate its walls, another energy saver. It has a no-idling policy for buses to reduce pollution, and its cafeteria offers fresh, locally produced food. East Clayton also has an environmental curricula that includes garden programs and ecosystem projects at the nearby Clemmons Educational State Forest.

Sonoji Sakai Intermediate School, Bainbridge Island, Wash. Sonoji Sakai was built near a watershed and salmon stream, so its builders were careful not to disrupt the ecosystem. As part of its curriculum, fifth- and sixth-grade classes raise salmons and then release the fish into an on-campus stream. For the project, the students monitor the aquifer leading to the stream for pollutants. During the project, they learn about wetland ecosystems, life sciences and water preservation.

These and many other schools can be models for public school districts across the country to emulate — for environmental and economic reasons. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of these environmental efforts is the effect they’re having on students.

Meg Lusardi of the Massachusetts Dept. of Energy Resources runs the state’s green communities program and does a lot of work in the area of green schools. She says the excitement generated by the green projects is contagious in her state. “I think it’s part of the green wave,” Lisardi said. “The youth, especially, really take this stuff on, and then they carry it home with them. That’s why it’s so cool to do this at the school level.”

Flickr: .bullish

Over the last few days, in discussing his plans for stimulating the nation’s limp economy, President-elect Barack Obama has placed strong emphasis on green investment. That includes a green jobs program, which could invest up to $100 billion in projects with energy efficiency and clean energy goals.

The idea that green goals are central to Obama’s economic mission demonstrates that his campaign rhetoric was more than just talk. And Obama wasn’t the only candidate talking green this election season. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his GOP opponent, also ran on an environmentally aware platform. He talked about battling climate change and reducing dependence on foreign oil. So did many candidates running for office in states across the country.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Of course, politicians’ interest in the environment was spiked by this past summer’s record oil prices and the resulting sticker shock at the gas pump. While gas prices have plummeted since, to below $2 a gallon in some parts of the country, consumers don’t seem to be returning to their old driving habits. Federal data indicate that Americans are still driving fewer miles.

Public opinion related to energy made for a unique national election in 2006. Consumers’ concerns about energy use and the environment carried through on Election Day, with pollsters and environmental advocates saying that many Americans voted with these issues in mind in casting their presidential ballot. There were also many state and local initiatives related to the environment and energy.

Obama seems to have been the chief beneficiary of the “environmental” vote. One reason is that young voters turned out in record numbers — and they rank energy and the environment higher on their priority lists than other voter groups. About 24 million people under age 30 voted in the presidential election — up 19 percent, or 2.2 million, from 2004, according to exit polls.

Fully 64 percent of these young voters said the environment was “very important” to their vote, compared with 55 percent of older voters, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in October. Pre-election polls also found that young voters tended to favor Obama’s energy plan, which stressed development of alternative energy sources, over that of McCain, which talked about offshore oil drilling and more nuclear power plants.

Some post-election polls confirmed the electorate’s concern about energy and the environment. A Sierra Club poll released Nov. 6 reported that 50 percent of its respondents said energy-related issues played a role in how they voted. Of those, 49 percent said Obama had a better plan for investing in clean energy to create jobs than McCain, who was at 35 percent.

The Sierra Club says it plans to do additional research in the coming weeks to determine how its poll results break down demographically. The group’s researchers said that they expect to find that energy-related issues like global warming were more important to young voters.

CNN’s exit polling on Election Day showed that, overall, energy policy was the most important issue to 7 percent of voters. While that pales in comparison to the economy, voters still ranked energy fifth in importance. Of those voters who ranked energy as the most important issue, 50 percent voted for Obama while 46 percent voted for McCain.

The presidential vote was not the only indicator of the increasing importance of energy and the environment to voters. In several states, a number of initiatives on the issues appeared on the ballot. The message was mixed.

In California, two measures were up for a vote. Proposition 7 would have required utilities to increase their dependency over time on renewable energy to generate power. Proposition 10 would have used bond money to reward buyers of more fuel-efficient or alternative-fuel cars, as well as to promote clean-energy research and development.

Both measures went down to defeat largely because environmental groups opposed them. The environmentalists contended that Prop 7 was so vaguely worded that it might have done more harm than good to the solar industry, while Prop 10 was considered a handout to the natural-gas industry.

California voters did pass Proposition 1A, which partly funds a high-speed train connected Northern and Southern California, and Proposition 2, which prohibits confining livestock.

In Colorado, voters struck down an amendment that would have raised taxes on oil and gas companies to fund college scholarships, conservation, renewable energy and water treatment. They also voted against a counter-initiative to that amendment, which would have channeled money from the Dept. of Natural Resources to a transportation trust fund to ease congestion.

In other states, initiatives favoring the environment fared better. In Missouri, voters wanted 15 percent of the state’s electricity to be generated from clean sources by 2021. Floridians favored a property-tax exemption for land that falls under permanent conservation protection. Minnesotans voted to increase funding for natural-resource protection programs. Ohio voters authorized the state to borrow $400 million for environmental conservation. And in Washington, voters backed an $18-billion mass-transit project.

But it was the increased presence of environmentally conscious young voters that consistently marked this election. Energy Action Coalition, a coalition of organizations, worked to get out the youth vote by running a nonpartisan campaign called “Power Vote.” It claimed to have secured commitments from 350,000 young people in more than 40 states to vote for candidates and referendums promoting clean energy and green jobs.

“What we saw from literally millions of conversations,” said Brianna Cotter, head of the Power Vote campaign, “is that young people who pledged to vote understood the connection between our country’s energy choices, the economy, health care and national security.”

Cotter told one story about galvanizing the youth “green vote” in Florida. A precinct in Gainesville, Fla., where many University of Florida students vote, had a 60 percent increase in youth voter turnout this year. “That’s where we had an incredibly active group of ‘power voters,’” she said. “We had 2,000 young people in that precinct commit to vote [on energy and the environment].”

Sierra Club spokesman David Willett said this level of interest in environmental issues is unprecedented in a presidential race. Why that was so is unclear. For example, did energy rank high in voters’ minds because of the work of groups like Sierra Club, or because the presidential candidates talked a lot about it?

Youth grass-roots campaigns like Power Vote, though, had an effect on how young people voted, Willett believes.

“[Energy Action Coalition] did a lot of voter registration, and that certainly helps because once [an environmental group] registers people,” Willett said, “they’re primed to hear a positive message about clean energy — which Obama was giving them.”

Still, there were factors beyond organizers’ control that contributed to the increased voter interest in energy.

Gasoline at more than $4 a gallon “was part of the evolution of the environment as an issue,” said Gallup spokesman Eric Nielsen. “More and more, [people] are seeing it as a problem and talking about it more, so the two [presidential] candidates were reflective of it.”

Sen. Barack Obama speaks at a rally on the football field of Abington High School in Abington, PA on Friday, Oct. 3, 2008.(David Katz, Campaign Photo)

Five million green jobs. One million hybrid cars on the road. Some $150 billion in clean-energy investment. Eighty percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions.

These are just some of the promises made by President-elect Barack Obama during the long presidential campaign. He is now focused sharply on the nation’s economic woes, saying that solving the grave economic crisis is his top priority. But Obama made many other promises in the name of “change” — expanding health-care coverage, improving education, devising an exit strategy for Iraq, shutting down Guantanamo Bay. Everyone wants to know which of these goals Obama will focus on when he takes office Jan. 20.

Illustration by:Matt Mahurin

So far, the president-elect has hinted that making the U.S. more energy independent is his No. 2 priority, after the economy. But that need not be incompatible with restarting economic growth. For example, developing alternative energies like wind and solar could lead to more green jobs.

Still, delivering on these energy promises won’t be easy. In the short term, reviving the economy could mean greater demand for oil, because U.S. manufacturers are largely powered by fossil fuels.

But, for the long term, many energy experts have recommendations about how to mesh energy and economic goals. They have pointed suggestions about what could be Obama’s most realistic targets in fulfilling his green promises.

Greener economic pastures

On the campaign trail, Obama said he would create 5 million green jobs by investing $150 billion in clean energy over 10 years. That translates into 500,000 jobs a year.

Brooks Yeager, executive vice president of Clean Air-Cool Planet, a non-partisan group, said that such a goal is not unrealistic. “There’s a lot of potential for growth in [green] jobs, but it depends on the mix of investments and policies.” One job-producing policy favored by Clean Air-Cool Planet would have the federal government invest in projects to retrofit existing buildings, to make them more energy efficient. This could create much engineering and construction work.

Yeager doesn’t believe that shifting to a renewable-energy-based economy would cause employment havoc in fossil-fuel industries. “In most economic models of how [this] system would work,” he said, “you don’t lose many jobs in these traditional … industries; you reduce their rate of growth.” Meanwhile, the rate of job growth in clean energy would increase, which would help offset job losses in traditional industries.

Not everyone agrees. The Institute for Energy Research, a think tank promoting free-market-based energy policies, is skeptical about any increase in green-job creation if the economy tries to kick its addiction to oil. “We’ve done some analysis with the green-jobs stuff,” said Dan Kish, senior vice president for policy, “and we don’t quite get it. … Nobody really knows where these green jobs are.”

Kish says that all the talk about an explosion in green jobs is speculative because the development of renewable-energy industries is so dependent on government subsidies.

“We’re never against tax incentives for [new industries] — that’s probably the least damaging way you can go about things,” he said. But he worried that such incentives would be paired with regulations requiring states to generate a portion of electricity from renewable sources. That, Kish contends, could artificially hike utility bills for consumers.

“Take somebody on a fixed income,” Kish said, “whose rent is going up and [cost of] food is going up. If his electric bill starts going up, too, because the government says [utilities] have to use a certain type of electricity, all he knows is that he’ll be paying more for utilities.”

The largest industrial trade union, the United Steelworkers in North America sees an upside in such regulations. Requiring that a portion of electricity be generated from renewable sources would mean more investment in existing and new green technologies, which, in turn, would create jobs, contends Roxanne Brown, assistant legislative director for the union.

“A part of the reason [clean energy] industries haven’t taken off as much as they have in other countries,” Brown said, “is because the investment is not there to help these industries grow. [Regulatory] policies would drive that investment.”

Brown contends that the jobs now being lost in construction and manufacturing are comparable to those that would be created if more solar- and wind-power plants were built, and additional buildings and infrastructure projects were made to comply with more energy-efficient standards.

Oily realities

Obama has said that reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil will be a priority of his administration. One proposal he’s made about this involves putting one million new plug-in hybrid cars on the road. But now that oil prices have fallen below $60 a barrel, this goal seems further out of reach.

With the average price of gasoline at around $2.20 a gallon, consumers could very well return to old, gas-guzzling habits, says David Pumphrey, director of the energy and national security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This could make hybrid electric cars less attractive to the average consumer. Pumphrey told The Washington Independent last month, for example, that he expects to see a rise in SUV sales if gas prices remain low.

He conceded, though, that given the “uncharted territory” that gas prices have seen this year, it’s hard to predict what will happen. Gas prices have trampolined up and down more drastically than ever, reaching an all-time high of $4 a gallon over the summer and then plummeting to half that. What’s really unpredictable is what will happen to the oil industry as it struggles with a growing economic crisis.

The economic downturn, though, could be just what the doctor ordered when it comes to reducing dependence on foreign oil. As the economy worsens, demand for oil drops. Less productivity means less fuel consumption. This is why oil prices dropped so quickly.

The volatility of oil prices, says Yeager of Clean Air-Cool Planet, may also contribute to a decrease in oil consumption, because businesses may seek fuels that are more economically sustainable over time. “Ultimately, it’s important to get a steady price signal — one that incorporates the real cost of using or overusing [oil],” Yeager said.

Acclimatizing policy

On the campaign trail, Obama said he was committed to reducing U.S. CO2 emissions by 80 percent, to meet recommendations set by the United Nations. To achieve this goal, Obama has talked about launching a carbon cap-and-trade system, which would first enforce a cap on the annual amount of CO2 released by industry and then allow companies to trade or bid on permits to emit CO2. Cap-and-trade would reward companies that innovate their way out of emitting CO2 and punish companies that don’t.

Clean Air-Cool Planet offers recommendations to the Obama administration on what a cap-and-trade system should look like. The organization suggests holding CO2 auctions in which companies can bid for the right to pollute; the revenue from the auctions would be “recycled” back to taxpayers in the form of income-tax reductions. Using the revenue to cut income taxes would offset any additional costs consumers might face, Clean Air-Cool Planet contends. For instance, if a utility company uses new technologies to decrease emissions, it may have to charge consumers extra; but with revenue recycling, consumers could actually make money off of the deal.

“We think this mechanism is essential to a larger economic revitalization strategy” to pull the country out of recession, said Yeager.

Groups like the Institute for Energy Research think tank, however, contend that a cap-and-trade program is not a free-market solution. Cap-and-trade, writes Institute economist Robert Murphy,” relies on a political scheme to increase costs, and can therefore be justly viewed as a tax, stealthy or otherwise, on energy — the lifeblood of our economy.”

But there are other ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that free-market thinkers should embrace, contends John Topping, president of the Climate Institute, a large nonprofit working to raise awareness about climate change. He says that one of the first things Obama should do after Jan. 20 is lift restrictions on energy recycling. The U.S. generates about 6.5 percent of its energy from recycling the waste-heat that comes off industrial smokestacks. In most states, only utilities are allowed to harvest this waste-heat, which is produced by oil refineries, steel mills and other factories.

Opening this energy source to the free market could not only drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, Topping says, it could result in huge savings for the country’s economy. “Reasonable estimates say that you could save somewhere between $70 billion and $80 billion annually and cut overall CO2 emissions by 20 percent,” said Topping.

One would think energy recycling would be a favorite of environmentalists and free-market advocates. But green activists argue that energy recycling would be tough to market, Topping speculates, because images of pollution don’t immediately convey environmentally friendly practices. For everyone else, there’s a fear that large utilities would have to pay more for access to waste-heat and then pass the higher cost on to customers.

The double-green bottom line

Regardless of the mechanism, greater energy efficiency is the one goal that analysts across the ideological spectrum can agree on as a worthwhile. Policies and market forces that promote energy conservation can produce economic and environmental savings.

If measures to improve energy efficiency were adopted in transportation, lighting, construction, infrastructure and fossil fuel sectors, says Climate Institute president Topping, we could kill a lot of birds with just one stone.

“You can make a really huge difference,” Topping said, “without sticking it to the American taxpayer or to the consumer.”

The autos and the utilities could have a nice little symbiotic relationship. While the auto industry has something to build, utility companies have another place to sell their product.

The utilities are hoping for a major shift in vehicles from gasoline to electricity. If such a shift takes place, according to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, oil imports would drop by 52 percent.

The talks are exploratory right now, but worth watching.

In the past year, the Obama campaign has made a lot of promises on energy, related to jobs, climate change, clean energy, gas prices and the list goes on. Now energy analysts, the environmental community and Americans struggling with a failing economy want to know exactly how the new president plans to deliver on these promises.

I was interested to see some of these issues broken down by Guy Caruso, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who formerly headed up the Energy Information Administration (the agency that does independent analysis for the Dept. of Energy). In an interview with E&E TV, Caruso discussed key points that Obama’s administration will need to keep in mind when tackling energy. Here are some that stood out.

Plummeting oil prices: Gas prices getting below $2.50 is good news for consumers faced with grim economic times, said Caruso. “[I]t’s like a tax cut when the average consumer now fills the car up for $40 instead of $60,” he said, implying that low gas prices will help Obama take on financial problems. But, that assumes Americans will use the same amount of gas that they used over the summer when gas was $4 a gallon. It’s still unclear whether consumer behaviors will change or remain the same, as I reported here.

Offshore drilling: Caruso says there’s no telling what position Obama will ultimately take on this. Obama, who initially opposed offshore drilling, eventually caved and publicly supported lifting the moratorium on drilling in coastal areas. This is exactly the same thing his opponent Sen. John McCain did — although Obama’s support didn’t quite reach the “Drill, Baby, Drill” levels that McCain’s did. Now, environmentalists are hoping Obama will flip-flop again, this time in their favor. Already, Obama Transition Team co-chair John Podesta, has said that the President-elect may reverse an executive order by lame duck President Bush which allows drilling in Utah. However, Caruso says, Obama may continue to support offshore drilling in other domestic areas in order to hold onto certain “bargaining chips.”

Green jobs: Over and over again, Obama has talked about creating 5 million green jobs. “And I think now reality sets in,” Caruso said. “I mean 5 million jobs is a huge number of jobs.” Plus, certain factors which could create green jobs could also eliminate other jobs. For example, Caruso talked about regulatory policies that affect fossil fuel industries. If a carbon tax is implemented, clean energy will gain a competitive advantage and green jobs will open up; but, that could potentially lose jobs for the oil, gas and coal industries.

Renewable Energy: While Caruso didn’t go into too much detail about how the new White House should think about clean energy, he mentioned a couple significant points. First off, the transition from dirty fuels to clean fuels will probably take decades. Obama, like most politicians, said Caruso, don’t like to talk about things in terms of decades. As for his administration’s first 100 days, Caruso suspects that Obama will have trouble getting a renewables-heavy energy package to pass Congress, even with a strong Democratic majority. However, incentives for renewable energy are sure to show up in a financial package, Caruso believes, so environmentalists can at least rest easy on that note.

Newsweek reports this quote from Barack Obama while he was preparing for a debate — a quote which, as an environment reporter, I absolutely love.

“I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f***ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective.’”

From an environmental perspective, what I like about this quote is that it highlights the needs to address the root problems of climate change and to come up with large-scale solutions.

From an observer’s standpoint, the quote confirms my longtime feeling that the basic format of these debates produces an outcome that’s contrived, rehearsed and insincere. The funny thing is, Jim Lehrer, who moderated the first presidential debates, feels the same way.

According to Lawrence O’Donnell, a writer for “The West Wing,” Lehrer told him that he has wanted to break with the format for a long time. O’Donnell tried to get Lehrer to appear on “The West Wing” to host a fictional presidential debate in which the candidates, played by Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits, would completely break with the usual format and engage with each other — ie., have a real debate.

While Lehrer couldn’t appear on the show because of a PBS rule that he wrote, he reportedly wanted to emulate the fictional debate, asking debate commissioners to watch tapes of the show to get some pointers. That’s why Lehrer tried to get Obama and Sen. John McCain to actually talk to each other.

O’Donnell talked about all this in commentary on MSNBC here.

Just wanted to mention other names on  short list. They are: Kathleen McGinty, former secretary of Pennsylvania’s Dept. of Environmental Protection; Mary Nichols of California’s Air Resources Board; Ian Bowles of the Massachusetts Dept. of Environmental Protection; Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius; and Lisa Jackson, environmental commissioner of New Jersey.

The League of Conservation Voters urges Obama to keep climate change in mind when picking a new chief to run the Environmental Protection Agency because greenhouse gas pollution is a pressing environmental concern.

From its awesome bit of fake news, entitled, “Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress”:

Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change.

“Today the American people have made their voices heard, and they have said, ‘Things are finally as terrible as we’re willing to tolerate,” said Obama, addressing a crowd of unemployed, uninsured, and debt-ridden supporters. “To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time—these last eight years must have really broken you.”

Added Obama, “It’s a great day for our nation.

For the first time since 1964, Virginia is in play in a presidential election. Many residents are surprised to see Virginia shaded blue on some electoral maps. The state will indeed make history if it favors Sen. Barack Obama. But in my mind, Virginia is already making history.

Polls show Obama leading, on average, by about 4.4 percent. This is monumental because the first African-American presidential candidate might take the state and because, more important, he’s so close to actually pulling it off.

Slavery, segregation and racial hatred clouds Virginia’s past. In some parts of the state, racial hatred is still alive — a reality we’ve been forced to face this election season. But another reality has also surfaced: Virginians have looked beyond skin color to learn about the candidates and what they stand for. In doing so, they’ve become so energized about the issues that they are turning out in record numbers to vote.

White that’s exciting, it’s also worrisome. High turnout and wet weather have caused problems at polling places throughout the state.

Twenty-five percent of Virginia’s polling places use optical scanning machines. There are reports that some are acting up because paper ballots were wet and the machines couldn’t read them. There have been voting-machine malfunctions in Louisa, Petersburg and Chesterfield counties, as well as elsewhere. In Richmond and Virginia Beach, precincts opened late. Long lines in Richmond and its suburbs have reportedly created some voting problems.

Hopefully, most of these problems will get sorted out, and all registered Virginians who haven’t already voted will make it to the polls by 7 p.m. Any voters encountering problems can report them to the CNN Voter Hotline at 1-877-462-6608.

No matter the outcome, this election is groundbreaking for Virginia. My state may still have a long way to go — but it’s on the right track.