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Salazar has taken a wise step to help the country deal with the growing impacts of warming. He has issued a "secretarial order" creating a Climate Change Response Council. It will coordinate DOI agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and the Forest Service, with state and local governments to "address current and future impacts of climate change on America's land, water, ocean, fish, wildlife, and cultural resources," monitor changes and collect data in eight regions and educate the public.

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Salazar vowed to have 13 "commercial-scale" solar projects under construction by the end of 2010. He set a goal of producing a total of 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity.

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Conservationists who for years have struggled to win federal funding for new or expanded parks suddenly are seeing green, even in these lean budgetary times.

President Obama has proposed spending $420 million next year to buy land for national parks, forests and wildlife refuges, and to help states fund parks and recreation projects. That is more than double the amount Congress provided for 2009.

…”It is a new day," said Alan Rowsome of the Wilderness Society.

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In one of her earliest appearances before the Senate Natural Resources Committee, Gale Norton, President George W. Bush's first interior secretary, proclaimed in 2001 the need to "explore the entire smorgasbord of different options" when it came to domestic energy production.

But what was actually on the buffet was telling: Drilling off the coast of Florida, coal extraction in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah and exploring for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

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Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s first major decision — to cancel oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of public land in Utah — could not have sent a clearer signal that his department is under new management. It also was a strong indication that the Obama administration intends to take a more measured approach to energy exploration on the public lands and that its predecessor’s drill-now, drill-anywhere policies are a thing of the past.