Twenty years ago, when Bill Clinton was first running for president, his political adviser James Carville used to respond to questions about the issues in the campaign by saying, “it’s the economy, stupid.” The “stupid” was a little gratuitous. But the point – that the economy is everything in American politics – still holds true, and it’s just as true when it comes to energy and global warming.

The International Energy Agency put out its latest estimates of world greenhouse gas emissions last week, and found that carbon dioxide emissions had reached a record high in 2010, bouncing back from two years of decline. The reason? The fact the world economy is finally starting to recover from the Great Recession.

When