it's also easy to get gloomy about our ability to reverse these terrifying trends. World leaders keep holding climate sum mits where they jibber jabber about the plight of the planet and get nothing done in the u.s., the Republican Parth opposes climate action, as do many fossil-fuel state Democrats. Oil spills, superstorms and other ads for the dangers of cabon have not inspired us to rethink our daily energy use; meanwhile, billions of people in developing nations yearn to match our daily energy use. And the dream of a silver bullet substitute for fossil fuels has not come true. The nuclear renaissance has sputtered. The biofuels revolution hasn't happened. Clean coal is still a mirage.