If you’ve been following the Copenhagen process this week, you may have noticed that the “debate” over climate change and what to do about it has regressed. Whereas, just a few years ago, George W. Bush acknowledged the human role in global warming and John McCain was a leading proponent of climate-change legislation, know-nothingism is now resurgent. The GOP pins its electoral hopes on slogans like “drill, baby drill” and “cap-and-tax”; McCain has soured on cap-and-trade; and on the nation’s airwaves and op-ed pages, climate-change deniers (and their more circumspect brethren, the “skeptics”) crow triumphantly at every snowstorm and every controversy, real or imagined, that puts climate scientists on the defensive.

Worse yet, many years of painstaking efforts to explain climate change to the American people and get them concerned about it seem to be gradually unraveling. As Chris Mooney notes in a piece on the ‘disastrous’ turn in the narrative, an October 2009 Pew report shows that, since April 2008, the number of Americans who believe there is “solid evidence the earth is warming” has dropped from 71 percent to 57 percent. During that same period, the proportion who accept the existence of climate change and attribute it to human activity has dropped from 47 percent to 36 percent–not exactly a robust constituency for immediate action. (There is a brand new poll from the World Bank that suggests more robust support among Americans for carbon emissions limits; I hope–but don’t believe, in the absence of more details–that it’s accurate.)

What is causing this apparent unraveling? There are three competing theories as to its source:

(1) The first and most obvious is that support for allegedly expensive or growth-threatening environmental action always declines during economic downturns. Gallupperiodically asks Americans which they value more: environmental protection or economic growth. Interestingly, from 1984–2008, a plurality (and usually a strong majority) of Americans always prioritized the environment over growth (even when their voting behavior indicated otherwise). But this tendency to prioritize environmental action does flag during recessions, as was evidenced by a steep slide in the “top priority environment” / “top priority growth” ratio from 70 percent / 23 percent in 2000 to 47 percent / 42 percent in 2003. After an uptick in support for the environment as a priority over the economy from 2004–2007, the ratio nose-dived during the most recent economic crisis, to the point where an actual majoritysaid the economy is more important in March 2009 (51 percent / 42 percent), the first time that has happened in Gallup’s polling.

(2) A second possibility is that the change in public opinion is largely a byproduct of the radicalization of the Republican Party. There’s certainly some support for that proposition in the Pew surveys. As recently as 2007, 62 percent of self-identified Republicans told Pew they believed there was solid evidence for global warming. That percentage dropped to 49 percent in 2008 and then to 35 percent this year. (There’s also been a similarly large drop in belief about global warming among self-identified independents—a group that includes a lot of people who are objectively Republicans. The drop among Democrats has been less than half as large.) It’s probably no accident that this change of opinion occurred during the 2008 campaign, when Republicans suddenly made offshore drilling their top energy-policy priority, and this year, when virtually anything embraced by the Obama administration has drawn the collective wrath of the GOP.

(3) Then, there’s the third factor that might explain the changes in public opinion: a determined effort by the hard-core anti-environmental right to dominate the discussion and change its terms. This is the main subject of Mooney’s essay, which focuses on the “statistical liars” like columnist George Will who have distorted climate data to raise doubts about the scientific consensus, and on the continuing brouhaha in the conservative media about “Climategate.” Matt Yglesias has gone further, arguing that climate-change deniers have scored a coup by convincing the mainstream media (most notably the Washington Post, which regularly publishes Will’s columns, and recently published a predictably shrill op-ed by Sarah Palin on the subject) to treat the existence of climate change as scientifically debatable.

I have no compelling evidence to demonstrate which of these factors has contributed most to the gradual ungreening of America, but there are ways to mitigate the negative impacts from all three. Fears that environmental protection is “unaffordable” in a poor economy are obviously cyclical, so unless we are in a recession that will endure for many years, this problem should at some point recede. What’s more, there’s some evidence that suggests efforts to sell action on climate change as “pro-growth” via investments in green technologies can help cushion the public’s skepticism.

Meanwhile, the second and third causes—GOP radicalization and the revival of a powerful denialist media presence—are clearly interrelated. Self-identified Republicans who spend a lot of time watching Fox News are obviously influenced by the torrent of “information” about the “hoax” of global climate change; while both conservative opinion leaders and GOP politicians are invested in promoting polarization on a historic scale. But this toxic environment would be largely self-contained if misinformation weren’t bleeding over into the broader discourse that includes Americans who don’t think Obama is a committed socialist or that environmentalists want to take the country back to the Stone Age.

And that’s why Yglesias is right: This is one area of public policy where “respect for contrary views” and “editorial balance” are misplaced. Sure, there are many aspects of the climate-change challenge that ought to be debated, and not just between those at the ideological and partisan extremes. But we shouldn’t be “debating” whether or not the scientific consensus on climate change actually represents a vast conspiracy to destroy capitalism and enslave the human race, any more than we should be debating whether “death panels” are a key element of health care reform.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Over the past decade, I have had the opportunity to travel to different countries and interact with many of the world’s top nuclear engineers and scientists. They all say the same thing: the U.S. needs to reclaim its leadership role in nuclear energy development activities.

The international nuclear science and engineering community looks to the U.S. for leadership and direction in nuclear technology research, new concept development, deployment of advanced technologies, construction of research and power reactors, and the safe operation, regulation, and oversight of nuclear facilities, and their regulation and oversight.

However, for the past two decades the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the world in many areas. Although we maintain a leading position in some, including research productivity and reactor operation and regulation, we have lagged in others: the development of research facilities, new power reactor construction, used nuclear fuel recycling, and implementation of new technology. In recent years, we have lagged in a number of key nuclear technology areas and have failed to significantly upgrade our capabilities and facilities. The result is that other nations now have the world-class leadership position in key aspects of nuclear energy.

Here’s what we haven’t done:

• We have not built a new power reactor in this country for more than 25 years.

• We have not upgraded or grown our capabilities to analyze radioactive materials.

• We have not commissioned a research or test reactor since 1992 or a new power reactor since the mid-1990s.

• We no longer have the fast neutron irradiation facilities, which are necessary in the development and testing of advanced materials, reactor concepts, fuel cycles, and the destruction of radioactive waste materials.

• We no longer have the capability to forge the large steel components needed for the next generation of nuclear power plants.

Meanwhile, other countries have stepped forward to advance nuclear technology. In China, 16 new plants will be in operation by 2020, which would quadruple its nuclear capacity in the next decade or so. Other developing countries are following this example — some 30 countries that do not currently operate commercial nuclear plants are actively considering the construction of nuclear power plants.

Yet even as the world proceeds apace on nuclear energy, America is essentially sitting out the game, unable to compete because our nuclear technological and operational capabilities have atrophied from decades of dormancy.

To retain a world leadership position — to compete in the burgeoning global market for nuclear energy and take the lead in nuclear energy security — the U.S. must consistently invest in building new plants and developing new concepts for future reactors; lead in fuel-cycle research; educate future generations of nuclear scientists and engineers; and consistently upgrade facilities for the study of materials, fuel cycles, radiation damage, large-scale component manufacturing, neutron data measurements, and critical facilities. We also need to maintain our capabilities and understanding of radioactive material handling and the protection of workers and the public.

Technological leadership today requires being an active and reliable participant in the international community that one desires to lead. The U.S. needs to reinvest, replenish, and grow its capabilities in order to maintain a leadership position. Otherwise we cede the leadership and court the danger of becoming a minor player — even an irrelevant one — in the global discussion on nuclear energy.

Read Andrew Klein’s new PPI Policy Memo, “Why Progressives Should Be More Open to Nuclear Energy.”

You’ve doubtless seen ads recently offering you a $1,500 “stimulus federal tax credit” for 30 percent of the cost of putting in new windows. How the stimulus is related to windows might not be transparent to anyone less than wonky. But it’s an important facet of the Obama administration’s broader attempt to place retrofitting at the center of a new national energy policy.

The sexy side of environmentalism has never been about houses. We generally focus on cute animals (e.g. polar bears marooned on ice floes) or Hollywood disaster scenarios (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow). But the fact is that retrofitting houses to make them more efficient, through means that will create jobs, is the low-hanging fruit of the new environmental movement.

The new path was amply revealed in an exciting (if this is your sort of thing) report recently released by Vice President Biden’s Middle Class Task Force and the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality titled, “Recovery through Retrofit.” The report puts the stimulus expenditures (such as the $1,500 windows credit) in a broader strategy.

The potential gains are pretty staggering. As the authors note, existing techniques and technologies — that is, “business as usual” approaches — can yield an incredible 40 percent energy savings per home, a reduction of 160 million metric tons of greenhouse gases by 2020, and total savings of $21 billion in home energy bills annually.

The report does the smart thing in modern progressive policymaking, focusing on how to use government to create a market that will allow entrepreneurs and consumers to find their own solutions, rather than imposing top-down measures that end up being inflexible and oppressive.

Consistent with this market-based approach, the report isolates three “market barriers”:

• Access to information for consumers who need to understand how to retrofit their homes — it can be challenging to figure out if an “energy audit” firm is legit.
• Access to financing for homeowners facing high upfront costs for home energy audits and retrofits — installing solar panels on your roof, for example, can be several thousand dollars.
• Access to skilled workers who can actually perform the weatherization and retrofits — making sure folks are trained to strip and install adequate insulation is not as simple as it sounds.

There’s a lot of good stuff in the report. On improving consumer information, it proposes applying the ENERGY STAR ® label, which has worked beautifully to help consumers purchase efficient appliances, to houses as well.

On access to financing, the authors suggest measures that would allow the cost of retrofits to be added into a homeowner’s property tax bill, with amortized payments lower than the average utility bill. The cost (and value) of retrofitting would attach to the property, not an individual, meaning it would become part of the value of the house.

Finally, on worker training, the report advocates establishing uniform national workforce and certification training standards for retrofit workers — familiar to anyone who’s had to be licensed for a craft.

This is just a brief outline. You can check out the 12-page report for yourself here. It’s not polar bears or a new ice age, but from windows to workers, it’s a promising blueprint for change.