NEWSBYBEN BUCHWALTER

There's no doubt that our oceans are starting to see the real-world effect of climate change: a broken-off chunk of Greenland ice the size of four Manhattans is only the most recent evidence. Lately, geoscientists fear the Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point.

In the U.S., these dangers are largely conceptual so far. But for island nations like Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia, rising sea levels are already forcing entire communities to relocate inland, threatening notions of what it means to be a nation-state.

Now, Australian development company Oculus has come up with a solution to ease the tension. A "type of Ellis Island, a blend of Atlantis and Eden"... they call it an Embassy of Drowned Nations.  As Inhabitant reports, the company has launched a campaign to build a floating island off the coast of Fort Denison, Australia. In addition to advocating for communities impacted by sea level rise, the Embassy would provide a more tangible benefit: it would be the world's first climate refugee camp.

Proponents of nuclear energy rely on three key reasons our country should develop new nuclear reactors rather than invest in cleaner solar power. One: They claim nuclear is cheaper than alternatives. Two: They say it is more efficient. Three: They say it relies on existing technology.

Well, as for existing technology, I won't point them to the thousands of homes already outfitted with solar and a growing number of power plant-scale installations. Let me tackle their first argument for now. Lately, a growing number of reports now indicate that solar energy has overtaken the nuclear behemoth when long-term costs are compared.

Thursday was full of bad news for a climate deal here in the U.S. Recognizing they could not wrangle the 60 votes necessary to pass a carbon cap, Senate Democrats put their hands up in surrender and pronounced the bill dead. Fortunately, it appears the international community will pick up the fighting spirit we've lost and move aggressively to salvage an international climate change treaty -- another deal whose death has been proclaimed time and time again.

As a way to salvage the 12-year-old Kyoto protocol, the United Nations has suggested amending its rules to require only four fifths of the countries to agree to a climate deal, effectively forcing the opposed nations to accept a cleaner earth. "It reflects a degree of desperation -- and justifiable desperation -- on the part of the UN," says Mark Lynas, who advised the Maldives at the international climate summit in Copenhagen last winter.

What a relief it would be if the world were not, in fact, overpopulated.

That's the position Fred Pearce, a book author, journalist and commentator, took on Grist last week in warning readers to dismiss the hype of World Population Day. Slamming the green myth that "overbreeding poor people" would bring us to the tipping point, Pearce said,"This is nonsense. Worse, it is dangerous nonsense."

This is all well and good, and I also wish I could wish away the world's population problem. Unfortunately, it is Pearce's reasoning that's dangerous because of the fatal flaw it contains.

When the Obama administration announced in March that it would make good on a campaign promise to close the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository, it had to know this would be an uphill battle. And so it goes: The order set off a groundswell of opposition from both pro-nuclear groups and leaders across the political spectrum in nuclear-producing states. Places such as Washington and South Carolina were counting on the Yucca site to dump their waste.

Occurring alongside the BP oil spill and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's roller-coaster reelection campaign, the fate of Yucca Mountain reverberates across the most hotly debated issues of 2010: the dangers of traditional energy sources and the Democrats' ever-dwindling poll numbers leading up to November's elections.

And the questions surrounding that fate are still swirling. This week, the Obama administration announced that it will appeal last month's Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision nixing the Yucca closure plans. The three-judge panel ruled that the Department of Energy does not have the authority to "single-handedly derail" the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which began the process that pinpointed Yucca Mountain as the best location to store 77,000 tons of radioactive waste from reactors across the country.

While some scientists rack their brains to come up with a miracle cure for climate change, the effects are already being felt in island nations worldwide. The newest casualty in the inevitable wave of rising sea levels is the indigenous community living on the island of Carti Sugdub, Panama. They are jumping ship to the mainland to avoid sinking into the seas. "The water level is rising. The move is imminent," said Pablo Preciado, the island's leader.

"This is no longer about a scientist saying that climate change and the change in sea level will flood (a people) and affect them," said Panamanian marine biologist Hector Guzman. "This is happening now in the real world."

Over the last 100 years, sea levels on the coast of Carti Sugdub have risen seven inches, and the United Nations predicts the island could lose 25 inches of coastline this century. In a doomsday scenario, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said a rise of 6.5 feet worldwide is possible by 2100. As it now stands, says community school teacher Helen Perez, "sometimes the community is flooded up to the knees."

The U.S. was the first nation to put a man on the moon, develop the internet, and mass produce hamburgers. But when it comes to renewable energy production, the U.S. lags far behind other world powers, particularly Germany and England. If the U.S. wants to ever beat the Europeans, we've got to bring our A-game. So far, the Europeans are charging ahead without us.

The president of Germany's Federal Environment Agency Jochen Flasbarth, for example, announced recently that his country could switch entirely to renewables by 2050. "It's a very realistic target based on technology that already exists -- it's not a pie-in-the-sky prediction," he said.

Germany's Renewable Energy Act made the country a global leader in solar and wind energy. This year alone, the legislation is set to increase Germany's photovoltaic production by fifty percent. At a fraction of the size, Germany ranks second in wind production, just behind the U.S. Germany already plans to reduce its fossil fuel production by 85 percent by 2050, leading renewable cheerleaders to wonder, why not kick the addiction altogether?

Fourth of July weekend was met with a rare bit of good news for energy independence and homegrown jobs. Too bad Republicans didn't see it that way, even though those are two of their favorite things to talk about.

In his weekly video address, President Obama announced he would grant nearly $2 billion in loan guarantees to solar power projects in Arizona and Colorado, creating nearly 5,000 jobs and boosting the domestic solar manufacturing industry. This is welcome after a tough year in which the Obama team has so far failed to limit the stranglehold of traditional energy sources such as nuclear and oil.

Senate Republicans were quick to slam the solar investment. In response to the announcement, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said the country's debt is "one of the most dangerous threats confronting America today," adding "President Obama and the Democrats in Congress continue to spend the money that they -- we -- do not have."

It's been a banner year for nuclear energy. Meanwhile, the industry's "clean" little secret is once again being swept under the rug.

President Obama started the year off by declaring his strong support for nuclear in his State of the Union speech and promising up to $54 million for the construction of new reactors. Then, right as public opinion started to turn against nuclear energy during a series of high profile safety failures and public relations fiascoes, the BP oil spill gushed to the surface, hogging the spotlight as the energy sector's foremost villain.

With the public focused elsewhere, nuclear companies continue to thrive: The president vowed this month to send millions in funding to new nuclear projects in Georgia and Texas.

As all this proceeds, a much cleaner, less dangerous and cheaper nuclear fuel is being all but ignored.

In the 1950s and 1960s, US scientists abandoned thorium -- an entirely feasible reactor fuel -- in favor of uranium, which had the "bonus" benefit of also producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. But in addition to being a safer alternative to uranium, thorium is three times as abundant, and the United States has by far the largest untapped reserves. There's more: the annual fuel cost for a one gigawatt thorium reactor is approximately six hundred times lower than the price tag for a uranium reactor, which requires 250 times more of the raw element, and thorium degrades in hundreds of years, not thousands.

Each year, like clockwork, a bill co-sponsored by Sens Orrin Hatch (R-CO) an

You've got to admire the gall of the guys at BP.

Sure, in the last two months since the spill began, they've been smacked with a criminal investigation, a handful of class action lawsuits, and pressured to establish a $20 billion escrow fund on behalf of the Deepwater Horizon victims.

But still, in the midst of all this, they have not learned their lesson.

The New York Times reports that BP hopes to evade an offshore drilling moratorium in the Arctic with new plans to build an "onshore" rig called the Liberty.

By "onshore," BP really means the rig will drill two miles underwater from a location three miles out at sea -- a distance that could break records for long-range drilling. In a bit of wordsmithing, BP is calling the project "onshore" because it plans to build it in the middle of the ocean, atop a 31-acre pile of gravel...built by BP. It argues this "onshore" rig is supposedly safe.

"It makes no sense," said Rebecca Noblin of the Center for Biological Diversity. "BP pushes the envelope in the Gulf and ends up causing the moratorium. And now, in the Arctic, they are forging ahead again with untested technology, and as a result, they're the only ones left being allowed to drill there."

What's worse is that federal regulators allowed the project to sail under th