Heart of Stone: Upcoming Movie Trailer

Editor's note: With all the bad news out there, why not bid farewell to the week with an easy-to-digest roundup of our favorite forward looking and generally optimistic stories from the fine folks at The Stimulist. We're just getting the series started, and would love to hear your feedback, good or bad. Email feedback@takepart.com to let us know what you think.

The biggest news to come out of last week's G-8's conference was that there was no news at all. The world's most important powers bobbled international economic reform, failed to come to any agreement on Iran, and hit a dead end when it came to setting any meaningful climate change policy. Case in point: the REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) program. Having already received the UN go-ahead in 2007, the cap-and-trade-type scheme could put an immediate stop to deforestation and the millions of tons of carbon emissions that come with it. Despite REDD's obvious merits, concerns that it could provide Yucca Mountain-sized loopholes for exploitation by the biggest polluters have hindered its adoption by the international community.

Although the US cap-and-trade bill has had slightly more success, it's passage won't be an easy feat either. Environmentalists despise the bill because it codifies industrial pollution. Big business despises the bill because it regulates pollution in the first place. It'll take a not-so-desirable mess of compromises to get anything substantial passed, but, says Josh Skolnick, it's not like Congress hasn't been through this before. Looking back to the bygone days of acid rain along the Eastern Seaboard, Skolnick reminds us that the elder Bush's cap-and-trade policies were largely responsible for shrinking the sulfur dioxide cloud.

While Wall Street trades carbon credits to cut emissions, it will take the work of the next generation of environmental innovators to ensure we don't continue fueling the fire. Billed as the "21st Century's Ben Franklin," Saul Griffith may be poised to lead that energy revolution. Where Franklin kicked off this carbon emissions mess with a kite in a thunderstorm, Griffith is attempting to solve the problem with a kite of his own. The Aussie prodigy is sending kites into the sky to harness wind power at its source. Capturing the wind won't be easy, Griffith admits, but with more than $15 million in funding, he's hoping he can reinvent the way we power the world.

In Washington, Obama is attempting to do the same with health care, but he can't do it alone. Forget bipartisanship, what Obama needs is a proper villain. Just as civil rights wouldn't have progressed without Bull Connor or the Peace Corps without the Commies, the President will need to assign an evil face to the opposition. In the end, it may not be about passing universal health care so much as defeating the system as it exists today.

Even that showdown may not rival the storm that may be brewing on the Supreme Court. Behind that technocratic, staid facade, Sonia Sotomayor may be the Left's answer to Antonin Scalia after all. Both New York Catholics with immigrants heritages and both bullies at the bench, Sonia and Nino may provide the judicial fireworks that have been missing from the court since the days of the Four Horsemen.

Whether or not they butt heads, there's almost a guarantee that both justices will be forced to contend with the culture war over gay rights. With the recent outing--and dismissal--of Lt. Dan Choi, the Clinton-era "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy has been coming under immense pressure from civil rights groups who claim the discriminatory rule just doesn't make sense. For a quick fix, Sean Braswell suggests the Spartacus option. If all men and women in the Armed Forces came out, he says, there would be no need to ask and no need to tell. Problem solved.