The President has a speech at this hour where he will call for the consolidation of several federal agencies to shrink the federal bureaucracy and save money, a return to the “age of austerity” Obama that has faded of late as the election nears and populism returns to the fore.

This year’s event took place directly across the street from Occupy San Francisco – and from the welcome by BSR’s head, Aaron Cramer – through the passionate call to action of Al Gore and finally to the insights of Civicus’ Ingrid Srinath – the presence of Occupy was a constant message and the attendees were listening carefully.

Bill McKibben is one of the most effective and widely-respected writers on environmental issues today. Starting with The End of Nature in 1989, he’s written and published a long line of powerful works that make complex environmental issues accessible to a general audience.

Hey, Al Gore! Come on down to the White House fence where the Tar Sands protesters were arrested and dare Obama to arrest you!

On his blog, former Vice President Al Gore harshly criticized President Obama’s recent decision to shelve the EPA’s new ozone regulations. Gore says Obama is ignoring science, and instead, bowing to the pressure from polluters.

Amanda Little makes the case that the road to our new energy future runs not through Washington, DC but through the prairies of west Texas, where wind energy can be cheaply harvested, and the South Bronx, where activists like Majora Carter are leading a new environmental movement based on protecting public health. The great energy debate will be settled not with a single headline-making event, Little argues, but gradually as dropping clean energy prices first converge with rising dirty energy prices, then leave them in the dust.

Al Gore’s indictment of politics and the media fiddling (and lying) while the world’s environment falls apart.

Al Gore, in a must-read piece in Rolling Stone, thinks Obama has fallen down on the job on the issue of global warming. President Obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change. After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to [...]

Although most states give their electoral college votes to the presidential candidate that wins the most votes in the state, they are technically free to assign those votes based on whatever criteria they want. So, the national popular vote campaign is trying to use this function to essentially replace the arcane and undemocratic electoral college system with a true, national democratic election.

FDL News can confirm that, in a little over an hour, Keith Olbermann will announce on a conference call with reporters that he will join Current TV for a nightly television show. Bill Carter and Brian Stelter at the New York Times hinted at this last night. Former and current employees of Current were able to confirm the deal.