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Now, however, a somewhat uneasy coalition of progressives and centrists rules Washington, and staking out a position has become much trickier. Policy tends to move things in a desirable direction, yet to fall short of what you’d hoped to see. And the question becomes how many compromises, how much watering down, one is willing to accept.

…But right now it’s the environmental community that has to decide how much it’s willing to bend.

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These new data come as predictions of an ice-free Arctic Sea during the summer get ever closer. Just two years ago, an NSIDC scientist estimated that worrisome event could happen within 20 to 30 years. Last month, Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec, told Reuters, "2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction."

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The task force will identify specific zones on public lands where the department can act rapidly to create large-scale production of solar, wind, geothermal and biomass energy.

"We will assign a high priority to identifying renewable energy zones and completing the permitting and appropriate environmental review of transmission rights-of-way applications that are necessary to deliver renewable energy generation to consumers," Salazar said. "We have to connect the sun of the deserts and the wind of the plains with the places where people live."

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Old-growth logging on lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management needs to be halted to reduce the agencies' carbon footprint, said DellaSala, president-elect of the Society for Conservation Biology's North America section.

…Congress also needs to provide new direction for both the BLM and Forest Service to minimize greenhouse gas emissions while optimizing carbon capture and storage on federal lands, he said.

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Schlesinger's talk will serve as a prologue to the Headwaters Gathering being held at the college March 27-29. The three-day long conference hosted by Warren Wilson, Orion Magazine and The Wilderness Society will focus on how climate change is going to affect the mountain region environmentally as well as socially, economically and culturally, said Margo Flood, executive director of the Environmental Leadership Center at Warren Wilson.