Currently the U.S. has no unified federal program that provides guidance and funding for the relocation of affected communities such as those in Alaska that are pummeled by coastal storms.

At a time when government funding is strained, can nature offer some of the protection that engineered structures were built to provide? And can nature do it at lower cost?

When it comes to solving problems, elected officials are inclined to support solutions that allow people to keep behaving as they always have, but with less damage. That's how it has been with America's response to weather-related disasters. It's a response that won't work anymore.

How can it be that investment in clean energy is heading for a disappointing drop in 2012 while the International Energy Agency warns that without a radical change in direction, in just a few short years we will have closed the door to limiting global temperature rise to 2°?

Oddly, the State Department's environmental review process of the Keystone XL pipeline, carrying bitumen products from one of the planet's greatest bastions of climate wrecking carbon, does not include a consideration of climate impacts.

Striking images and video are beginning to stream in from more than 1,000 events in more than 100 countries where people are "connecting the dots" between climate change and extreme weather.

Obama is the leader most likely to be blamed 20 or 30 years from now when people around the world are suffering from intense, diverse and irreversible stresses from climate change.

The world has missed the opportunity to avoid serious, damaging human-induced climate change. How bad it ultimately gets depends on how much longer Congress hides behind political ideology, and religion to deny the reality of climate change.

Global warming has almost certainly already made allergy conditions worse and we've only seen the tip of the iceberg so far. Time to stock up on Benadryl and consider buying some drug company stocks.