I'm frantically trying to finish up a print magazine piece today and am going a little light on blogging for now, but here are a few links from around the Internet that caught my eye:
* Keith Johnson scrutinizes a subject that's likely to get overshadowed in the coming months: Sonia Sotomayor's environmental record. The short version: "In 2007, Ms. Sotomayor sided with the fishes and against power companies and the Environmental Protection Agency." Long version's at the link, of course.
* The New York Times peeks at the (possibly quixotic, but still fascinating to learn about) quest for fusion power at the National Ignition Facility in California.
* Jim Turner, the COO of Duke Energy, argues in Energy Daily that the electric utility will be able to pare back its carbon footprint under a national cap-and-trade system without levying painful price hikes on consumers. Elsewhere, Duke Energy's CEO, Jim Rogers, tells Reuters that he's betting on nuclear power over coal with carbon sequestration (which is still very much unproven) as the surest route to carbon-free power. He also mentions that Duke looked into building a pilot solar-thermal plant, but was having trouble obtaining financing.
* Josie Garthwaite surveys the state of play for electric-car infrastructure.
* David Jenkins of Republicans for Environmental Protection takes stock of his party's skull-in-the-sand approach to climate change and finds a few, tiny glimmers of hope. I forgot to mention last week that California Republican Mary Bono Mack ended up voting to pass the Waxman-Markey climate bill out fo committee, making it technically bipartisan. The Palm Springs Desert Sun breaks down Bono Mack's decision.
--Bradford Plumer