When I sat down in a coffee shop in downtown Baltimore last Friday morning with a group of climate activists from Congressman Elijah Cummings’ district I did my best to project optimism and to rally the troops as it were prior to our big meeting. But the truth is that, internally, I wasn’t actually brimming with optimism. That’s not to say I wasn’t confident we’d get a good hearing or fail to have any impact on the Congressman; I was just a tad doubtful about the current potential for real aggressive leadership from Washington on climate policy, and perhaps rightly so.

For those of us who are deeply engaged in the climate and energy fight, the political events of this summer have been a constant reminder of the tendency of politics and partisanship to stifle leadership and smart policy-making at a time when we need them the most. True, there have been rare moments, like Al Gore’s landmark speech, when a spark of real leadership briefly illuminated an otherwise murky national energy debate. But for the most part our leaders have only succeeded in keeping the country in the dark; Convinced that the American public is impervious to the light of reason on issues like offshore drilling, we’ve seen one leader after another, from John McCain, to Nancy Pelosi, opt for the path of least political resistance, and thereby eclipse any short-term hope of a national climate and energy awakening.

So, when we all finally gathered around the table in Congressman Cummings’ office that morning I was expecting some variation on this prevailing political theme. First he would agree with us about the severity of the crisis and echo our sentiments about the need for strong, decisive federal action, but then the inevitable moment of political prevarication would arrive, and shaking his head in frustration, he’d inform us that, alas, the clout of King Coal and other special interests was just too darn strong to allow for the passage of really uncompromising climate legislation and that for the foreseeable future we’d have to live with whatever we could get. I’d this seen this pattern played out in other constituent meetings, and I had no reason to suspect that things would be different this time. But, then, I’d never met Congressman Elijah Cummings before.

From the very start he set an entirely refreshing tone. He was fully engaged. He was deeply curious. He looked at the incredibly diverse group of activists that had gathered in his office to discuss the 1Sky platform of climate solutions and he wanted to know all about the great cause that had compelled twelve constituents to take time out of their Friday morning to come and speak with their Congressman. So we told him all about the 1Sky platform. We told him all about the need for meaningful science based climate solutions, about the need to strengthen the Waxman Climate Principles that he had already endorsed to include scientifically mandated short term reduction targets of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. We told him about all about the great economic benefits that an aggressive pursuit of energy efficiency and a transition to a clean energy economy would entail for our country