The first decade of the twenty-first century ended with the hottest and wettest year in recorded history, which also saw an extraordinary level of climate disasters like the catastrophic heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan. This young year is already continuing the misery. Record-hot seas, warmed by billions of tons of greenhouse pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, are fueling catastrophic floods and storms around the planet. Global food and energy prices are rising as nations overwhelmed by disasters struggle with production, which threatens our economic recovery. In the United States, the blazing summer of 2010 is being followed by a harsh winter of extremes: record snowfalls, disastrous flooding, and record heat waves. Climate scientists first warned policymakers of the harsh consequences of dependence on the unconstrained abuse of coal and oil in the 1950s and 1960s, forecasting a future which is now our generation’s reality. “The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,” confirmed the World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.” With unabated pollution, climate disasters are poised to reach unimaginable levels of devastation in the coming years. The political climate in Washington, DC is not any brighter, as polluters have taken over of the halls of Congress. Lobbyists for carbon pollution interests have set up shop in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Republican Party is dominated by politicians who paint global warming as a scientific conspiracy. Some Democrats have joined the Republican assault on President Barack Obama’s efforts to turn back carbon pollution, arguing that the only way to preserve the American dream is to leave the coal and oil industries in control of our nation’s energy destiny.

GLOBAL FLOODS: On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI offered prayers for the international victims of catastrophic flooding. Australia is facing a “disaster of biblical proportions” after weeks of rain. “The extent of flooding being experienced by Queensland is unprecedented and requires a national and united response,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said. “Dozens of towns have been isolated or partially submerged” by Australia’s extraordinary floods, which have killed at least 20 people and are now “flushing toxic, pesticide-laden sediment into the Great Barrier Reef, and could threaten fragile corals and marine life in the world’s largest living organism.” The disaster “is costing Australia at least $3 billion in lost farming and coal exports.” Elsewhere, extraordinary rains “have triggered widespread floods and mudslides” in Sri Lanka, killing 43 people and affecting millions more, prompting the United Nation to make a $51 million appeal for help. With heavy rains across southern Africa, “over 50 people have died in floods in South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique,” and “Zimbabwean authorities have issued flood warnings for points in the south and west of the country.” Continuous rains in the Philippines have killed at least 56 people and left hundreds of thousands of people “reeling.” Extreme rains have caused “the worst natural disaster to hit Brazil in four decades,” where the “death toll from flooding and mudslides near Rio de Janeiro” could approach 1,000 victims. “Heavy snow and rain in the U.S. Midwest” likely means record springtime floods. “Changes in Iowa’s weather patterns, landscape, cities and farms have rendered some of the state’s most trusted flood prevention safeguards outmoded and inadequate,” a review by The Des Moines Register shows. “This is no longer something that’s theory or conjecture or something that comes out of computer models,” Dr. Richard Somerville, the Nobel-winning scientist who led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the state of climate science in 2007, explained to ABC News. “We’re observing the climate changing. It’s real. It’s happening. It’s scientific fact.”

POLLUTER TAKEOVER: The Republican surge into the halls of Congress during the 2010 elections was bankrolled by millions from right-wing coal and oil polluters like Koch Industries and Tesoro Oil that now expect a return on the investment. Conservatives have announced an ambitious agenda of deregulating the pollution that is killing Americans and threatening the planet. The incoming Republican chairs of crucial committees in the House of Representatives opposed the climate legislation supported by President Barack Obama, and now oppose limits on global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. Their attack on public health is being led by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), once considered a “moderate on environmental issues,” but who has since worked hard to refashion himself as a hard-right defender of pollution as the incoming chairman of the House energy committee. To run his committee, Upton hired a slew of lobbyists, whose client rolls include fossil fuel interests and environmental criminals. These ex-lobbyists “met in a closed-door session Tuesday with energy industry interests to work on strategy to handcuff the Obama administration’s climate change agenda,” Politico reports. In the Senate, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) “will introduce sweeping legislation later this month to block the Obama administration and states from imposing climate rules.” Also, “[a]t least 56 senators — just four short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster — will most likely support measures to hamstring climate rules, and an additional eight votes may be in play this Congress.” Texas oil company Tesoro has launched a new campaign to vilify the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution rules as a “regulatory blizzard” and an “avalanche of regulations that will wipe out jobs.” This attack on the EPA is being joined by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Farm Bureau, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, and dozens of other right-wing front groups.

FIGHTING FOR THE FUTURE: Leadership that serves the American people and addresses climate change has not been abandoned entirely, however. “How many times do we have to be smacked in the face with factual evidence before we address global climate change? Report after report keep confirming it’s getting worse every year,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) last week. The bipartisan presidential oil spill commission rebuked the “compromised” American Petroleum Insitute for being both the industry’s standard-setter and political lobbyist. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) is combatting the Republican agenda of “taxpayer subsidies for big polluters, less oversight of oil refineries and drilling rigs, and less protections for our health.” Activists across the country are defending their air and water against newly elected Tea Party politicians. Climate scientists are fighting back as well, telling “Republican politicians to stop beating up on science and scientists.” Thanks to the Recovery Act, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced yesterday that more than 300,000 low-income homes have been weatherized. High-quality clean energy technologies, he stressed, are the “road to wealth creation in the United States.” At a joint news conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, President Barack Obama said the two countries — the world’s largest energy consumers and greenhouse polluters — “have a responsibility to combat climate change … and showing the way to a clean energy future.” Looking forward, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Daniel Weiss writes that the State of the Union address next week “presents a golden opportunity for the president to contrast conservative opposition with his reaffirmation of the nation’s commitment to a clean energy future.”