Summer movie season is over and it's back to school. I don't know whether anyone noticed, but this summer movies were full of references to sustainable energy. I thought that was interesting, since political culture seems to be moving away from it.

1. In the Avengers, Tony Stark (Iron Man) had just completed a "clean energy" reactor to power the Stark Tower; the reactor played a major role in the plot.

2. In the Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne (Batman) spent his fortune developing a cold fusion reactor, which was successful but which he decommissioned for fear (justified, it turned out in the movie) it could be weaponized.

3. In Oliver Stone's film Savages, Ben, the idealistic drug dealer, wants to leave the drug business in order to invest in sustainable energy. He does not get to fulfill his plans.

It's interesting that sustainable energy is in the background of all of these films, while serious discussion of it in politics is rare.