For 2009 to be THE year to turn the tide on climate change.

Maryland has been a forerunner on fighting global warming for a while now, after passing the Healthy Air Act, the Clean Cars Act, and some great energy efficiency and renewable energy legislation – but was lagging behind on setting goals and making a long-term plan for making all the reductions that science demands. Which is why I’m SUPER-excited that the Global Warming Solutions Act is looking to be in an increasingly better position to pass into law in 2009. This is just one part of the snowballing solutions that we’re hearing more and more of. Even Virginia is starting to get on board the clean energy train.

The thing with 2009 is, good climate policy doesn’t only have to snowball up, from the state to the federal level. It’s also starting to snowball down – President-Elect Obama spoke consistently during the campaign about his desire to prioritize rebuilding America’s infrastructure with clean energy, and talks about the impending stimulus package seem to be backing up his promises. Hooray!

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all of us climate activists are out of a job quite yet. There is still a tough fight ahead. The international community may be at an impasse without a strong commitment from the US on climate action, which makes our actions (and those of Congress) during the first 100 days of the next administration all the more crucial. There are currently a round of negotiations happening in Poland. While the some EU officials are being obstructionist, leaving those most-impacted (and most-underrepresented) countries as the front-runners on calling for action, lining themselves up with huge parts of the world’s population.

Check out other reports from Poznan here. Most of them are from the awesome youth climate delegation, that is taking on obstructionist politicians head on in the fight to make 2009 the year of action.