Ethanol subsidies are up for renewal at the end of the year. And some prominent conservatives have pitched letting them expire, to the chagrin of farm-state Senators and establishment Republicans.

For three years, former Time chief political correspondent Eric Pooley has followed the political fight over limiting the amount of carbon pollution emitted by the United States — and the Climate War is his blow-by-blow report from the front. Urgent and timely, the book is a behind-the-scenes page-turner for the green set, a detailed explanation of this country’s national inaction on carbon limits. It’s a rich story of scientists, schemers, politicos and hacks, but the main characters are three men who have tried — and up till now, failed — to forever change the way America uses energy and hopefully help stem global warming.

So rumors abound that Al Gore did some extra-marital global warming. Gore and the most-likely lady–Laurie David, who produced An Inconvenient Truth (can you hear the jokes now?)–both deny having an incandescent liaison.

Way to jump on the extra-marital bandwagon, Al. Actually if the affair story is true, Gore handled it with far more discretion than Edwards, Ensign, Sanford…But still, extra-marital affairs just seem so de riguer nowadays.

More on the Village telling you how to live without a mirror.

American news media failing to keep covering the Gaza story in depth.

We keep looking for silver bullets in solving our energy issues that carry major risks to our environment and public health. Meanwhile renewable technologies that offer great promise don’t get the same level of attention or interest.

When we pointed out that this is in fact what the bill does, Ezra dismissed it as “helping activists kill the bill” rather than “actually informing anyone about what is in the bill.” According to Ezra, “the restriction here is not on the right to choose, but on whether primary insurance covers abortion.” Therefore, since the goal of the bill is not restricting a woman’s right to choose, the fact that it does so anyway is just a coincidence and therefore not a valid reason to object to the bill’s passage.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote movingly and powerfully about the wave of anti-gay hate that is sweeping his continent of Africa. His words, though, bring to mind the very same attitudes in many of our American religious and political leaders. If only there was an American Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spoke like Tutu. Wait — there is. If only there were two.

Kevin Grandia at DeSmog Blog regularly debunks the well-funded PR campaigns that promote this kind of crap, and he did some actual reporting. He contacted Dr. Michael Mann for clarification, whose name appears in some of the emails and whose graph was used in Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth.” Mann’s quote was widely disseminated by wingnutia as proof that “truth doesn’t matter.”

In a major restructuring, cable channel Current TV–co-founded by Al Gore–has laid off 80 employees, about 25% of its staff.

Most of the axed were based in the Los Angeles office, affecting in-house production and striking a yet another blow to the city’s already suffering entertainment industry. The original programs “Current Tonight,” “Current Takeover” and “Current Exposed” have been canceled and David Neumann, the head of programming was fired. About 300 employees total remain.