RECOMMENDED READING

U.S. Works To Speed Solar Energy Development In The West

"The Obama administration on Monday announced that it would put solar energy development in the West on a fast track, with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signing an order that sets aside more than 1,000 square miles of public land for two years of study and environmental reviews.  Although the clean-energy initiative identifies some 676,000 acres of federal land for study, more than half -- 351,000 acres in the Mojave Desert -- are in California." [Los Angeles Times]

EPA to Let California Set Own Auto Emissions Limits

"The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday granted California's request to set its own limits on greenhouse gases from autos -- a long-sought victory with limited impact now that the federal government has pledged to impose national limits. That decision grants California a waiver to impose a limit on the emissions from new cars, when no such rules now exist in federal law." [Washington Post]

Poisoned Patriots

"From 1957 to 1987, hundreds of thousands of unprepared men, women and children who lived on or near Camp Lejeune, N.C., the largest Marine Corps base on the East Coast, were the unwitting victims of a decades-long water contamination disaster that is still claiming lives...The picture that emerges, after interviewing veterans who lost children to rare diseases and after extensively reviewing a variety of private and public documents, is of a site where up to a million people were potentially affected over the years and where the Marine Corps continually put people in harm’s way without warning."  [Natural Resources News Service]

Mountain Snow Melts Earlier Due To Blowing Dust

"Throughout memory the warmth of spring has begun the mountain snowmelt, bringing life-giving water to greening plants so they can blossom and renew their species.  But now, scientists say, the timing is being thrown off by desert dust stirred as global warming dries larger areas and human activity increases in those regions. This dust darkens the surface of winter snows, warming it by absorbing sunlight that the white surface would have reflected. That causes the snow to melt earlier than in the past, running off before the air has warmed enough to spur plant growth." [Los Angeles Times]

OPINION

• Michael Gerson: Cap and Traitors - 8 Republicans Stand Tall on Climate Change [Washington Post]
• Thomas Freidman: Just Do It  [New York Times]
• Editorial: Climate in the Senate [New York Times]