If the polar bears aren’t drowning it's flooding somewhere and drying to dust somewhere else. Or, as a folk group from my youth sang, "They're rioting in Africa. . .and Texas needs rain." Plus ça change.

With all the horrible news, a bright spot is welcome, and this week's comes from the World Wildlife Fund via MSNBC. It has to do with African rhinos, which have staged an admirable comeback over the past decade or so as poaching has been cracked down on, habitat restored, and local people involved in the tourism trade.

White rhinos, the larger of the two subspecies, have seen their numbers rise from 8,500 to 14,500 in the past ten years. Black rhinos, the smaller cousin, have gone from 2,600 to about 4,000 in the same period, which leaves them still seriously endangered but headed in a better direction than they were ten years ago. One key has been stopping the killing of the huge beasts for their horns, much prized in some versions of Asian medicine. WWF reports that rhinos have been reintroduced recently to areas in Zambia and Uganda, from which they had been extirpated.

The stimulus package has pretty much disappeared from the front pages with Super Tuesday upon us and the New York Giants pulling off the greatest upset since David smote Goliath. But, in case you missed it, the suggestion we echoed last week that this moment offers a rare chance to get some green projects going quickly is being trumpeted in the Senate. The House has already passed a single-purpose show-me-the-money bill that would give most of us a few hundred bucks to stimulate with. The Senate Finance Committee, meanwhile, has approved a bill that includes cash for us taxpayers but also would provide some $5.5 billion in renewable energy tax credits, energy bonds, and other encouragements to renewables and energy efficiency. Here's what like-minded groups think about it. And a recent study by the Blue-Green Alliance, a Sierra Club-United Steelworkers project, suggests that such federal encouragements could create upwards of 820,000 new jobs to boot. The President will scorn this approach no doubt, but it'll be interesting to see whether the Senators hold firm. This really is one of those historic opportunities, or so it seems to us—a chance to make concrete the argument that combating global warming offers great economic opportunities.

I'm writing this a few hours before the State of the Union is assessed (for the last time!) by President Bush, so can't be sure of what he'll say. But if I were writing it for him (fat chance), here's what I'd say, cribbing heavily from Eileen Appelbaum, Dean Baker, and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.

Their idea is that we—the government, that is—direct the upcoming and inevitable economic stimulus package toward programs to tackle climate disruption. Sure makes sense to me. The specific proposals include a generous tax credit for installing energy efficient improvements for homes or businesses. A no-brainer, they say, partly because it would re-employ many workers recently laid off as the housing market collapsed.

This town is obsessed with the coming election. I guess most everyone is, but here, not surprisingly, it's topics A, B, and C. Every conversation I had quickly turned to the primaries, and there was no consensus about what would or should happen. At the gift shop at my hotel you could buy buttons and bumper stickers for Obama, Clinton, Romney, McCain, and all the rest, including those who have called it quits. Collectors' items someday, perhaps. In my experience, however, campaign trinkets like that are passed out free gratis for nothing. I guess if the hotel can make a buck off your political leanings, it's happy to do so.

I just met my first talking trash can. I emailed the news to a colleague who wrote back, "a politician?" But no, it was at the new cafe in the atrium of the National Portrait Gallery, one of the Smithsonian museums, this one a couple blocks off the Mall. It's all in aid of comity and recycling, I guess. One approaches the refuse area, puts glass here, plastic there, then dumps the rest into its assigned slot. "Thank you," says a voice from what the Brits would call the tip. And every now and then it says, "Please wait a minute while I compact the garbage," or words to that effect. An instant anachronism, I suppose, but charming in its way.

Another domino has toppled from the ranks of the most virulently anti-environment members of Congress. The election of 2006 took out Richard Pombo, then chairman of the House Resources Committee. Last week came the news that his comrade-in-chainsaws, Rep. John Doolittle, will retire at the end of this congress. Mr. Doolittle, who represents northeastern California, is being investigated for ties to Jack Abramoff and has chosen not to seek reelection under heavy pressure from fellow Republicans, who feared losing the seat to a Democrat. Doolittle, a shoo-in in most of his nine elections, barely edged his Democratic challenger last time. He has been a reliable supporter of timber companies and a vigorous champion of the proposed Auburn Dam on the American River. Environmental types are overjoyed to see him go.

The biggest story around here lately has been the tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo, and what a muddled tragedy it is. Spokespersons for the zoo couldn't even say how tall the wall the tiger got over was for a while. Were the victims high and drunk, as has been alleged? Did they roar at poor Tatiana, even attack her with slingshots? The rumor mill has been churning. And now the survivors have hired Mark Geragos, defender of Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson, the guy who gives lawyers black eyes by the dozen. Meanwhile, I'm wondering, along with many others, whether it's time to close all zoos. The pro-zoo faction argues that they're good for public education, recruit defenders of wildlife, and are a genetic reservoir of disappearing species. Others say that the animals you see in a zoo behave nothing like the way they do in the wild so the education is minimal and skewed, that you can learn more about tigers from Animal Planet, that a zoo is really just entertainment for humans, like a carnival midway. My kids loved going to the zoo, I'm quick to admit, but maybe it's time to close them down and turn our attention to preserving habitat so all those amazing creatures will survive on their own.

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I hate to throw stones, but I can't help but wonder how on earth the Sierra Club decided to give its David Brower journalism award to Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist. It's true that Friedman has been singing green tunes recently about energy and climate. It's also true that he has been the most strident and bombastic proponent of the World Trade Organization and free-trade-at-all-costs, the-environment-and-labor-be-damned. His best seller, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, for example, quoted dozens of bankers and corporate bigwigs on the greatness of trade (a rising tide lifts all boats, they say, which is fine unless you're tied up to a pier) and not a single one of the scores of able, even brilliant, critics of trade as currently practiced. I do not think Mr. Brower would be pleased.