E2 Round-up: What Brown means for climate bill, the pace of glacial retreat, and more green energy awards

All eyes are on Massachusetts today, the site of a special election to fill the seat held by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

A victory by Republican Scott Brown over Democrat Martha Coakley promises to make the push on healthcare reform harder because it would knock Democrats off their 60-seat perch in the Senate. It of course would present other political problems for Dems, namely on their efforts to pass a cap-and-trade bill, in SolveClimate.

Brown opposes the bill but offers qualified support for renewable energy projects. Coakley calls climate change “one of the most pressing moral issues of our time.” Of course, climate change seems to have a long road to go no matter the outcome in the Bay State.

Perhaps Congress has a bit more time to act than we thought. The Wall Street Journal notes that questions are being raised about a United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that said glaciers in the Himalayas could be gone by 2035. That struck alarm in countries like India that rely on the glaciers as an important water source. 

Turns out they may not be retreating quite so fast. But the article doesn’t provide an estimate of the pace of glacial retreat in the Himalayas, which is still occurring. Bloomberg says the IPCC will review its position.

The feds keep giving out the green. Yesterday, the Energy Department announced new awards for the development of LED (light emitting diodes) lighting, in the New York Times's Green Inc. LED bulbs use a lot less energy than Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb. (Although some fathers E2 Wire knows complain they can’t see a thing in LED-lit rooms).

With climate legislation still struggling in the Senate, it is tempting to see the first year of the Obama administration as a failure, environmentally speaking. Not so, says the San Jose Mercury News.

And the Christian Science Monitor has a piece on the "cash for caulkers" effort.