Massachusetts, for example, streamlined the application process for building plants -- without softening environmental or other regulations; that is helping New England add enough plants this year to provide power to 2.6 million homes.
Yet Panamanians voted heavily in favour of expansion in a referendum in 2006 after concessions to soften the environmental impact: there will be no extra dam and the new locks will recycle most water.Panama took over the canal ten years ago this month under a treaty signed in 1977 by Jimmy Carter, then America's president.
Increasingly, the debate appears to be shifting away from whether or not the line should be built at all, to the compensation arrangements and detailed work on softening its environmental impact.
Eventually, wrote the scientist, Vladimir I. Vernadsky, global society, guided by science, would soften the human environmental impact, and earth would become a "noosphere," a planet of the mind, "life's domain ruled by reason".
Every day this week, senior administration officials participated in showy White House announcements to soften the president's environmental image.
The administration's gamble seems to be that labor and environmental groups might soften their opposition to pending trade agreements in return for a bigger voice in future ones.
In that role, he has spent much of his career trying to get courts to fashion new, conservative rulings that limit the reach of environmental regulation and soften guidelines on issues like affirmative action and sex discrimination.
Some items on Mr Brown's to-do list, including pension reform and a softening of environmental rules, will alienate some of his party allies.
On reaching Margaret River, however, thoughts of environmental apocalypse begin to soften, if not entirely disappear.
Some environmental groups are starting to soften their blanket opposition to nuclear power as an option for cutting coal use and emissions, but most still maintain that bright line in the sand.
