This August was supposed to be the time for a great offensive in support of climate change legislation that is coming before the Senate this fall. Unfortunately, health reform behaved like a burst coal slurry dam, sweeping away all in its path – including climate change legislation as an issue. Faced with a blitz of angry right wingers besieging Congressional town halls, legislators went into a lock down mode. The result was that climate change activists, as well as the mouth breathers, found that negotiating their way in to lobby their representatives was as hazardous as a charge across the trenches of the Western Front. The opportunity was lost, and it probably won't be regained until health reform is either victorious or is defeated.

If it is victorious, the Obama administration might regain the Big Mo that they have lost, and climate change legislation might be able to ride the wake of health reform and be enacted as well. If it is defeated, then it will probably take climate legislation down with it. Our dysfunctional political system will have once more succeeded doing what it does best – absolutely nothing. Political scientists will be studying and debating for years how an alleged mandate for change was squandered, and how a triumphant political party on the rise, was rolled by a defeated political party on the skids.

In the meantime, environmental activists are starting to get restless. You can see this in a series of articles that are well worth looking up in Grist. The first, “Netroot Nation frustration and the impediments to progressive change” by David Roberts posted on August 17, 2009, reported on his trip to the Netroots Nation convention. Netroots Nation is the progressive network of internet activists and bloggers that have taken over activism since their debut with the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. The message was sobering in that the obstacles that we face in pushing climate legislation – or any other good environmental legislation – are structural, built into an arcane and archaic political system that is mined with institutional IEDs designed to blow up any initiative for change.

Another article by Mark Engler, “Climate disobedience: Is a new "Seattle" in the making?" that appeared on August 11, 2009 describes a growing willingness on the part of climate activists to put their bodies where their words are, and engage in civil disobedience to make their point and push the agenda forward. This is an old story in America, where initial hopes for change with a new administration curdle, and people come to the conclusion that change will only come the old fashioned way – with hard work, hitting the bricks and raising holy hell.

The third article I considered interesting, really got the fur flying on Grist. At last count, 50 comments were lodged in response. Not many articles get that. "The fallacy of climate activism" by Adam D. Sacks appeared on August 23, 2009 and says that when we are dealing with global warming, we are dealing with a symptom of much greater problems than just that. It is a symptom of our growth-at-all-cost economic system, and a culture that sees humanity as separate from the natural world. Sacks says that we will have to wage a cultural battle along with a political one, and that we should quit sugar coating the truth about just how much trouble we are in, and how we have already gone over the falls. He is a follower of Derrick Jensen, one of the most brilliant people who has ever infuriated me. The problem with this school is its Zen like refusal to say what this all means as far as practical activism and politics are concerned. They come down from the mountain, tell us we are screwed, and then return to the mountain. Nevertheless, it is still a message worth hearing, and shows just how high the boil is at the moment in the debates rolling through the environmental movement on how to deal with our current situation.

While this has been an August of our discontent, at least we recognize the challenges we are facing and are talking and walking about them. That means we are part of a living movement, and that is always reason to hope.