The hopeful signs around US climate policy are not coming from the hallowed halls of Congress these days, but rather from the offices of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The many years, lawyers and activists have spent pressuring EPA to act are beginning to pay off. While the Senate has several inadequate -- and some disastrous -- ideas floating in committee or the press, several moves by the EPA to use the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to curb global warming are showing promise.

Late in 2009, the EPA made its historic "endangerment finding", concluding that greenhouse gas pollution constitutes a threat to public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act. This marked the first step toward implementing comprehensive global warming solutions under the Act.

Eric Larsen, an adventurer drawing attention to climate change by attempting to become the first person to reach the poles and Mount Everest in one year, hopes the question of climate policy will promite discussion, and understanding. Share your thoughts below.

Is the ice more beautiful because, for us here, it is dangerous and potentially deadly? Or is it beautiful because so few people have seen this place? Perhaps, it's the fact that we are looking at something that may be gone in the future. Or does beauty lie just by existing?

We continue to be astounded by the forms and variety of ice here. Each day has seen a slight change in conditions. Today, we were pleased to find harder patches of snow as well as fewer pressure ridges; however, we are presently camped among some of the biggest pressure we've seen yet.

Studies show that an astonishing 35 percent of species on earth could be committed to extinction by 2050 if current greenhouse gas pollution emissions continue. The bright lining: these extinctions could be significantly reduced if we succeed in curbing our addiction to fossil fuels.

Perhaps best known among species at risk is the iconic polar bear. U.S. government scientists predict that two-thirds of the world's polar bears could disappear by mid-century. The melting of its sea-ice habitat is causing individual bears to drown, starve, and even resort to cannibalism. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in May 2008 in response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to protect the bear from global warming.

Adventurer Eric Larsen is en route to the North Pole in his bid to get people talking about climate change. He's also encouraging folks to vote on and discuss issues like this one.

"....the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

What always strikes me most about the science of global warming is how much we do know. We know what the problem is. And, unlike so many other problems, we also know what the solution is.

After voting, feel free to kick around ideas with other newsvine readers in the discussion thread below.