The Wonk Room

Entergy CEO Warns Of Humanity’s Extinction If Climate Legislation Not Passed »

Last week, over a hundred CEOs of American companies broke with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lobby Congress to “pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year.” The U.S. Senate is now considering the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, which would set a market-based limit on global warming pollution. Participants in a Clean Energy Economy Forum at the White House included J. Wayne Leonard, the Chairman and CEO of Entergy Corporation, the utility giant based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Speaking at the White House event, Leonard called for action on climate change and clean energy not just for economic reasons but starkly moral ones:

We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities. We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There’s no good things that’s going to come of this. But what’s uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50% probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not.

We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy — risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse — but at the same time we’re taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction.

Watch it:

In a powerful speech, Leonard called a national system to cap carbon pollution “an investment that by all facts, figures and analysis pays back many times over,” and warned that “history will judge us if we don’t pass comprehensive climate and energy reform now” for “cheating [our children] out of their future.”

Entergy serves “two-and-a-half million customers in the mid-South and the Gulf South portion of the country, some of the poorest people in the country,” Leonard noted. These customers already suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which global warming likely fueled.

Although Entergy’s website warns that the “ramifications of global climate change, while uncertain, paint a devastating portrait of an unsustainable world” and that what “the United States does now is critical to eliminating or at least reducing the possibility of catastrophic outcomes for future generations,” the corporation is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is spending millions of dollars to fight the regulation of climate pollution. Entergy plans to remain in the climate-denial organization in an attempt to “convince other members to agree to emissions limits.”

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Dorgan Supports Climate Legislation So Long As It Doesn’t Address Climate Change »

Speaking on the Senate floor this morning, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) responded to criticism that he does not support climate change legislation. Dorgan reiterated his opposition to the creation of a carbon market with a cap-and-trade system to limit global warming pollution. He aggressively dismissed the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the clean energy and climate legislation supported by President Obama and passed by the House in June. Arguing that the energy legislation crafted by the Senate Energy Committee “takes significant steps towards addressing climate,” Dorgan calls for its passage “and then at some point later bringing a climate change bill to the floor”:

I hope very much when people think about energy and climate change, that a consideration will exist of bringing a good energy bill to the floor that is a significant step in the right direction for climate change. And then at some point later bringing a climate change bill to the floor, because I think they are related but separate. And I think it would be much smarter to get the value and the success of an energy bill that’s now out of the committee and ready to be dealt with by the Senate at some point very soon.

Watch it:

Dorgan’s belief that energy and climate policy are “separate” mirrors the argument made by House Agriculture chair Collin Peterson (D-MN) that “mixing climate change together with energy independence” isn’t smart. In fact, reforming our broken energy policy requires recognition that the entire lifecycle of energy use matters.

Worse, however, is Dorgan’s claim that the legislation the Senate energy committee approved — the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA) — is a “giant way towards addressing climate change.” This is simply untrue. As Center for American Progress Action Fund John Podesta has described, the Senate bill is “weak, toothless, and unacceptable.”

The Senate bill has a ineffectual renewable electricity standard — which Dorgan seemed to recognize when he said it should be raised to match the level in ACES — in addition to expanded subsidies for nuclear, coal, and the oil and gas industries. In no way would its passage begin to reduce the global warming pollution of the United States, the essence of a “climate bill.”

Dorgan also pledged his allegiance to coal, which he calls “our most abundant resource,” despite it being — unlike the wind, sun, and tides — a finite fossil fuel. This year alone, Dorgan has received $225,910 from coal-powered electric utilities and is the number two recipient of coal mining cash in the Senate.

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GOP Team At American Energy Alliance Runs ‘Energy Town Hall’ Oil Bus Tour

American Energy Alliance staffers Kevin Kennedy, Patrick Creighton, and Laura Henderson on tour in Pennsylvania. All are former House GOP staff.

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative lies that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tour pictures workers in hard hats:

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.

In fact, by attacking legislation that addresses climate change and our national dependence on fossil fuels, AEA is preventing a clean-energy economic boom. Laughably, AEA claims it has “no ties to any political party“:

AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party.

AEA may be telling the truth that it has “no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party” — its only interest seems to be blocking progressive reform by spreading lies and distortions. However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

Thomas J. Pyle, AEA President, Is A Oil Lobbyist And DeLay Operative. Before joining the Institute for Energy Research and the American Energy Alliance, Pyle worked as a lobbyist for the right-wing oil giant Koch Industries, first in-house starting in 2001, and then at the Rhoads Group. In 2008 Pyle became a lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Previously, Pyle served as policy analyst for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the GOP Congressional Western Caucus. Pyle started as a legislative assistant for radical anti-environmentalists Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). [Institute for Energy Research, Center for Public Integrity]

Patrick Creighton, AEA Communications Director, Worked For Bush And Pennsylvania Republicans. Patrick Creighton was the special assistant to Samuel T. Mok, the chief financial officer at the Department of Labor from 2004 to 2006. He then worked as a spokesman for oil and natural gas advocate Rep. John Peterson (R-PA) from 2006 to 2009, worked to elect Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), then joined Thompson’s office until May 2009. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Kevin Kennedy, AEA Federal Affairs Director, Promoted Alaska Drilling Under Don Young. After graduating from Union College in 2004, Kevin Kennedy worked for the Astroturf organization Arctic Power, which advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2007, Kennedy became a legislative assistant for the corrupt Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He joined the Institute for Energy Research and American Energy Alliance in 2009. [Institute for Energy Research]

Laura Henderson, AEA Spokesperson, Served Shelby, Dole, And Tiberi. Laura Henderson was a former press secretary for offshore drilling advocate Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) from 2005-2009. Previously, she worked for former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH). [Institute for Energy Research]

Daniel R. Simmons, AEA State Affairs Director, Is A Koch-Funded GOP Staffer. Simmons was the Director of the Natural Resources Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing network funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and other corporate and right-wing organizations. Previously, Simmons was a Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, also funded by Koch. From 2001 to 2005, Simmons served on the staff of Rep. George Nethercutt (R-WA) on the House Natural Resources Committee. Simmons holds a B.A. in Economics from Utah State University and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law, also supported by Koch Industries. [Institute for Energy Research, Legistorm]

Furthermore, AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org website is run by yet another former GOP House staffer:

GOP.gov Webmaster Nathan Imperiale Runs EnergyTownHall.Org. AEA’s EnergyTownHall.org was designed by NJI Media Group, part of Endeavour Global Strategies. Endeavour’s head, Sean Spicer, is a long-time GOP operative, including communications work for the House Republican Conference and the Bush White House. NJI Media Group’s president, Nathan Imperiale, served as Director of New Media for the House Republican Conference, building its GOP.gov website. [Twitter, 2/13/09; Endeavour Global Strategies]

AEA’s “American Energy Express” joins a field crowded by conservative oil and coal propaganda — the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s “Factuality” bus tour, the American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” oil rallies, and the Americans For Prosperity “Hot Air” balloon tour.

American Flags Not Welcome At Oil Astroturf Rally

At a “grassroots” rally organized by the American Petroleum Institute in Houston on Tuesday, activists bearing American flags were turned away. Oil company employees were bused in to the “Energy Citizens” gathering to hear billionaire Drayton McLane Jr. attack President Barack Obama’s clean energy agenda as an economy-destroying energy tax. However, grassroots tea-party activists told Public Citizen Texas that they and their American flags were refused entry to the company picnic:

ACTIVIST: They said, “We won’t let you have an American flag either.” They said they won’t let you have this, and then the guy touched this, the American flag.

ANOTHER ACTIVIST: I got an email from Freedomworks saying, “Come, it’s free, free food,” doodah doodah. And then I get here and they say, “Well, it’s against fire code to let people in the door.” And then, they let all these people in. Granted, one of the people was Drayton McLane. He’s got more money than God, so, I guess…

Watch it:

The activists explained that they were invited by Dick Armey’s Astroturf organization Freedomworks, one of the participating organizations in the new Energy Citizens coalition. While the activists were locked out, employees of the public corporations Chevron, Anadarko Energy, Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, and others were “invited to participate” and bused to the event on company time.

At the company picnic, Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane defended his billionaire lifestyle, saying, “We need to preserve this way of life.” Inheriting much of his wealth, McLane made billions by selling his grocery business to Wal-Mart. In January 2008, McLane received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service for showing a “deep concern for the common good beyond the bottom line.” National Black Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Harry Alford, who recently accused Barbara Boxer of racism, was also a featured speaker.

GM Shows Off Their New 230mpg Chevy Volt »

Our guest blogger is Kate Tecku, Energy Policy Intern at the Center for American Progress

On Tuesday, after weeks of buzz from a viral media blitz, GM finally answered its own marketing spin, “What is 230?” Apparently, the new Chevrolet Volt – set to hit show room floors in 2010 – will achieve an astounding city fuel economy of 230 miles per gallon.

GM Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson exclaimed in a press release on Tuesday that the Volt is sure to be a “game changer.” He went on to note that “based on the results of unofficial development testing of pre-production prototypes, the Volt has achieved 40 miles of electric-only, petroleum-free driving.” This, taken in conjunction with the Department of Transportation’s findings that nearly 8 in 10 Americans drive less than 40 miles per day, means that “many Chevy Volt drivers may be able to be in pure electric mode on a daily basis without having to use any gas” – unlike other hybrids such as the Toyota Prius.

The Volt, however, could cost about $40,000, putting it out of reach of many middle income consumers. GM believes that government incentives and battery warranties can make this new PHEV model an appealing option to climate- and cost-conscious consumers, despite the Volt’s high production costs. Prime among these government measures is a $7,500 consumer rebate in the 2009 stimulus package for purchasing qualifying electric plug-in vehicles such as the Volt. The Volt will become more economically attractive when oil and gasoline prices rise during the worldwide economic recovery. In contrast to their conservative predictions in 2008, the Energy Information Agency now expects oil prices to increase to $110 a barrel by 2015.

Critics say the 230 mpg claim for GM’s new plug-in is misleading – and even if it does live up to the hype, the Volt’s fuel range will pale in comparison to Nissan’s new plug-in model, the Leaf, due out in 2012. In a show of industry competition for most fuel economy supremacy, Nissan’s EV Twitter feed posted this yesterday: “Nissan Leaf = 367 mpg, no tailpipe, and no gas required. Oh yeah, and it’ll be affordable too.” More »« Less

Markey: President Obama Needs To ‘Make The Case In Prime Time’ For Clean Energy Reform »

The author of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation believes that President Obama can convince the American public to embrace energy reform. Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu spoke at the Harvard Kennedy School on “Laying the Foundation for the Next Generation of Clean Energy Jobs.” Both Markey and Secretary Chu argued that the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed the House in June and is now under consideration by the Senate, is critical to keeping America economically competitive. Responding to a question from the Wonk Room about the fears being expressed at town hall meetings about the cap-and-trade legislation, Markey explained that the American public need to know how this bill will cut our dependence on foreign oil, create millions of new jobs, and strengthen our national security:

I think once the president makes this case in prime time, after this health care debate passes us by, I think it’s going to pass. I think the American people are going to understand the bill and support the bill in overwhelming numbers. The polling actually says that when the argument is made that way, 70 percent Americans want us to finally put this relationship we have with these old technologies to the rear of us and move ahead. And that’s going to be our opportunity this fall, hopefully with the help of everyone here.

Watch it:

Markey concluded that “the larger goals in this bill, what it’s going to accomplish, are so historic, that it would be the most important energy and environmental bill that has ever passed this United States Congress.” To great applause, he asked the entire audience of climate activists and clean energy supporters to accomplish its passage.

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Top Utility-Fueled Senators Are Skeptical Of Clean Energy Reform »

Our guest blogger is Stacy Morford, managing editor for SolveClimate.com.

The electric utility industry has been one of Congress’s top campaign contributers for years. Already in the still young 2009-2010 election cycle, it has contributed $2.4 million to congressional campaigns. During the 2007-2008 election cycle, when the Senate rejected the Lieberman-Warner climate bill, the industry gave $20.6 million.

As the Senate debate ramps up, the top ten Senate recipients of electric utility contributions so far this cycle have staked out positions on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act that range from skepticism to virulent opposition.

Byron Dorgan (D-ND): $70,200

Dorgan, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is the top recipient of campaign cash connected to electric utilities so far in the 2010 election cycle. He’s leery of the cap-and-trade approach, and he sees a future still powered by fossil fuels. His home state happens to have vast coal reserves. Dorgan wrote in a recent opinion article in the Bismarck Tribune that to protect the environment and make the nation less dependent on foreign oil, the U.S. should:

Establish caps on carbon that are accompanied by both adequate research and development funding and reasonable time lines for implementation to develop and commercialize technologies that will greatly reduce the CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): $60,000

Murkowski is the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. She criticized ACES for not promoting nuclear and oil and gas development. When her committee took up its own energy bill earlier this year, she pushed for a lower renewable energy standard of 15 percent by 2021, opening the Florida coast to oil drilling, creating a green bank that could heavily benefit nuclear development, and providing ample funding to Alaska’s natural gas pipeline project.

Richard Burr (R-NC): $55,449

Burr, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, believes in an “all options on the table” approach. He supports energy efficiency and renewable energy development, as well as continued oil exploration. He also believes nuclear “can and must be part of the energy solution if our country wants to achieve meaningful reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” More »« Less

China’s Coal Power Sector: Larger, But Also More Efficient

Our guest blogger is Julian L. Wong, Senior Policy Analyst with the Energy Opportunity team.

China’s energy sector gets a bad reputation because of its heavy reliance on coal, which accounts for 80 percent of its electricity supply, and its continued appetite to expand coal power capacity at a rate of two coal power plants a week. While all of this is true, it’s not the full story.

The plants that China is currently building are some of the most efficient in the industry. And as the Wall Street Journal reported today, China has a concurrent program of shutting down small, inefficient coal plants:

The National Energy Administration said Thursday that since 2007 it had closed 54 gigawatts of coal- and oil-fired power plants as part of the cleanup plan. That would amount to about 7% of China’s current electricity-generating capacity.

According to the Associated Press, this capacity translates to a closure of “7,467 generating units, meeting a previously announced goal 18 months ahead of schedule.”

These reports come a few days after Greenpeace China released a report entitled “Polluting Power: Ranking of China’s Power Companies,” which analyzes China’s ten biggest power companies across various metrics such as coal consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and share of renewable power. In sensationalistic fashion, Reuters tried to put an unhelpful gloss to Greenpeace’s report by proclaiming in a headline “Emissions of 3 big China power firms exceed UK,” conjuring images of ecological apocalypse. The Guardian has a similar headline.

No doubt, China’s reliance on coal makes it a leading carbon emitter, but this is hardly news. To say that “greenhouse gas emissions from the three biggest Chinese power firms in 2008 were higher than those of the entire United Kingdom” is rather meaningless without context.

We need to ask — how big are these firms? It is certainly not the case that China’s biggest three power plants are matching the entire UK in carbon emissions. China’s three biggest utility companies, with fleets of hundreds and hundreds of power plants accountable for 30 percent of the entire power supply for China and its 1.3 billion people (30 percent x 1.3 billion = 390 million), match the carbon emissions output of the entire economy of the UK and its 61 million citizens. Viewed in that light, China isn’t doing that badly.

The Greenpeace report is actually much more balanced and hopeful than the Reuters and Guardian headlines indicate. It rightfully points out the challenges that China’s biggest power firms face in terms of carbon emissions and environmental costs, but it also recognizes China’s achievements in increasing coal combustion efficiency and increasing renewable energy share in certain circumstances, in addition to its active program of shutting down plants.

Sensational headlines conveying half-truths can do much more harm than good. If we are to actively engage China in international energy and climate cooperation, we need to have an accurate understanding of what’s really happening there on the ground.

Don Blankenship Proposes New Foreign Policy: Coalocracy

Don Blankenship, the A.T. Massey coal baron rebuked by the U.S. Supreme Court for buying West Virginia judges, believes that coal breeds freedom. On his personal Twitter account, Blankenship wrote today, “If you support democracy in developing countries, you must support coal“:

Blankenship has called opponents of his coalocratic worldview “communists,” “atheists,” and “greeniacs.” In reality, dependence on coal breeds the same kind of economic instability and injustice seen in petrodictatorships. Fossil fuels, requiring capital-intensive extraction and rewarding centralized control of distribution, reward oligarchic power structures that are profoundly anti-democratic. Furthermore, when the costs of pollution are borne by society instead of the coal and oil corporations, the divide between the economic costs and benefits grows wider.

The coal-dominated economy of West Virginia is a troubling example of the cruelty of coalocracy. Despite $118 million in coal-mining annual income, West Virginia has the nation’s lowest median household income, worst educational services, worst social assistance, the highest population with disabilities, and nearly a quarter of West Virginia children in poverty. A recent study by West Virginia University found that the “human cost of the Appalachian coal mining economy outweighs its economic benefits”:

The coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region. But, they put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at — by a most conservative estimate — $42 billion.

If Blankenship, who sits on the board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also tweeted that a cap and trade system is a “Ponzi scheme.” If Blankenship truly believed in the power of the free market and cheap energy to lift up democracies, he would support closing coal pollution loopholes — putting a true value on the majesty and diversity of Appalachia’s mountains instead of blowing them up, and putting a price on the carbon pollution that is destabilizing our climate. Instead, he and his fellow right-wing coalocrats are the Charles Ponzis of the entire planet.

O’Reilly ‘Would Be Stunned’ If The Senate Passes ‘Cap And Con’ »

On Fox & Friends Thursday morning, hate-radio and right-wing television personality Bill O’Reilly argued that clean energy legislation is a “cap and con” on behalf of “fat cat corporations.” He singled out General Electric — parent of MSNBC — and Goldman Sachs for his outrage against the carbon cap-and-trade market that is part of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act. O’Reilly continued to question the science of climate change, claiming only “the deity” knows why the planet is getting hotter:

Nobody knows why the earth is warming except the deity, so I’ll leave it to him or her, okay? But once you get into a system whereby the American worker is going to get hurt and the fat cat corporations are going to make money, and it’s not going to make much of a difference to the earth’s atmosphere, then you have to say, “This is not good!”

Watch it:

In reality, the effect of burning billions of tons of fossil fuels on our atmosphere is unequivocal, and only rapid and concerted action by the United States will prevent planetwide catastrophe. The United States is both the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the only major nation not to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. And as the European Union has proven, a carbon cap-and-trade system is an effective means for ensuring real reductions in greenhouse gases while securing the economy.

O’Reilly, who makes $10 million a year from the multinational News Corporation conglomerate, is probably not the most reliable advocate for the “little guy.” Organizations and activists not beholden to ExxonMobil or the corporate right, however, from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities to the NAACP, from the AFL-CIO to the League of Women Voters, support strong climate action. Our pollution-based economy hurts the “little guy” to the benefit of “fat cat corporations,” and clean energy reform is a critical step to redressing that injustice. And as venture capitalist John Doerr testified yesterday, only by joining the rest of the world with a plan to tackle this threat will U.S. workers have a shot in the 21st century economy.

O’Reilly concluded that he would be “stunned” if the bill “gets through the Senate,” because “you’re going to be able to, in the next election, hold these people accountable.” If the American public believes his lies, then he may be right.

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Alexander Seeks ‘Presidential Leadership’ To Oppose President Obama’s Energy Plan

Today, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the chairman of the U.S. Senate Republican Conference, called on President Obama to figure out how to make Alexander’s pipe dream of “100 new nuclear power plants in 20 years” actually work, because he hasn’t been able to figure it out. Alexander’s “blueprint” is part of what had been billed as “new climate change legislation” from the GOP, an alternative to the Democratic American Clean Energy and Security Act recently passed by the House of Representatives. The Wonk Room attended Alexander’s unveiling of the blueprint at the National Press Club. As it turns out, Alexander’s “plan” for how the United States would double the number of nuclear power plants in twenty years was really just to ask President Obama to make it so:

What is needed boils down to two words: “presidential leadership.”

Watch a compilation of Alexander pleading for President Obama to make his dreams into real live policy:

As he described his attempt to devise a nuclear-dependent energy policy, Alexander complained, “I wish I didn’t have to do that. I think the president should be doing that!” When a reporter said he was “still confused what you want the government to do,” Alexander’s big idea was to have President Obama “direct the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to give him a plan.”

Alexander seemed genuinely baffled that President Obama is choosing to implement the clean energy and climate plan Obama promoted as a presidential candidate, instead of Alexander’s “nuclear plant in every backyard” plan, more than twice the number of plants promoted last year by losing candidate John McCain (R-AZ).

When not begging Obama for help, Alexander argued the American Clean Energy and Security Act should be “junked” because it is a “$100 billion a year job-killing national energy tax that will create a new utility bill for every American family.” In fact, non-partisan analyses show the legislation supported by Obama would lower utility bills, reduce coal and oil dependence, and clean up the planet at a cost of a postage stamp a day.

Even though Alexander claimed that his new-nukes plan would lower utility bills, he later admitted that all the cost of building 100 new $7 billion nuclear plants should be paid for entirely with “ratepayers’ money” — in other words, a “new utility bill” of $700 billion. The reason Obama isn’t jumping on the Alexander-McCain-nuclear lobbyist bandwagon is because Alexander’s plan boils down to one word: dumb.

Swimming Upstream Against Public Opinion, NRCC Running Anti-Clean Energy Ads Laced With Misinformation

The NRCC, the Republican Party campaign committee tasked with electing more House Republicans, announced today that it will be running television and radio ads against Democratic members of Congress who voted for the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation passed last week. The ads erroneously state that the bill will “destroy jobs” and “cost middle-class families $1,800 a year.”

Media Matters Action has noted that both of these claims are patently false. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, clean energy economy legislation will create 1.7 million American jobs while simultaneously addressing climate change by capping carbon dioxide emissions. The $1,800 figure used by NRCC is also made of whole cloth. The Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill and found that by 2020, the annual cost would be about $175 per household — about a postage stamp a day.

Not only does the NRCC stand in defiance of reality, it is going against the tide of public opinion. A new Pew poll found that a super majority of 78% of Americans want the U.S. to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide that cause global warming and 72% of Americans support the core principles underlying clean energy legislation. The same poll found that even 66% of Republicans want the U.S. to curb carbon emissions.

One of the targets of the NRCC ad campaign is freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA). Perriello’s district already contains at least ten businesses in either the clean energy or energy efficiency industry. Not only would clean energy economy legislation realign market incentives to help these businesses expand, it will new spur investments and bring more jobs to the area. Virginia is projected to gain at least 45,000 jobs and a net increase of $3.9 billion in clean energy investments.

While NRCC strategists assume they can dupe Perriello’s constituents with fear mongering ads laced with lies, the right-wing base is harnessing the same NRCC misinformation to demonize Republicans who also voted for the bill. A recent post on the popular right-wing blog Red State calls upon readers to burn Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), one of the 8 House Republicans to support clean energy legislation, in effigy. Organizers of the anti-Obama tea party protests are also coordinating a harassment strategy — in similar fashion to their treatment of Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) — against the 8 House Republicans.

As the NRCC suppresses the truth in a vain attempt to elect more Republicans, they could be fueling more defections from the party.

What John Salazar And Mike Pence Need To Learn About The Climate And Clean Energy

As green economy legislation moves closer to a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, a number of members continue to express opposition to passing clean energy reform. Republicans and Democrats alike from states across the country are calling for the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) to be weakened or killed.

Rep. John Salazar (D-CO): “Depending on what comes out in the end, we might be able to support a bill. Right now, as it currently stands, I don’t think I could support it.”

Rep. Tom Rooney (R-FL): “Unfortunately, the reality is this cap and trade plan would slow economic growth, penalize employers, reduce job opportunities and ultimately increase taxes for every single American.”

Mike Pence (R-IN) and Fred Upton (R-MI): “In the midst of a deep recession, Democratic leaders want to impose higher fuel bills on all of us and relocate American jobs overseas in pursuit of an unproven environmental agenda.”

Bob Latta (R-OH): “We could lose manufacturing jobs left and right. It kind of looks like the Obama administration has declared war on Ohio and Indiana.”

Tim Holden (D-PA): “Absolutely not going to vote for it. Besides my concerns about agriculture, I’m from the coal regions of Pennsylvania. I have more cogeneration plants than anywhere else in the country. Even if all this is fixed for our agriculture concerns, I don’t see any way I could vote for it.”

Marsha Blackburn (R-TN): “You are addressing climate change as if it’s the Holy Grail. What we’re trying to help you with is constituents and taxpayers who are saying someone needs to put some roadblocks, some timelines and checks and balances in this legislation.”

The chairmen of coal-fired utilities Dominion Resources, American Electric Power, and Duke Energy, speaking on behalf of Rick Boucher (D-VA): “In particular, the proposed emission targets for 2020 are too aggressive and outpace expected technologies, and the time of transition to a full auction of allowances should be extended. Boucher agrees that these two elements will greatly control costs without sacrificing environmental gains.”

Fortunately for these representatives from Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia, the Environmental Defense Fund has assembled fact sheets on the threat of climate change and the opportunity for clean energy jobs in their states. The EDF fact sheets compile a wide array of resources:

– The EDF Less Carbon, More Jobs national map of clean-energy businesses

– The Pew Charitable Trusts Clean Energy Economy report on clean energy job creation in all fifty states

– Global boiling reports from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, University of Maryland, National Wildlife Foundation, and others

– Other state- and industry-specific reports from the Department of Energy and McKinsey and Company

EDF plans to add more states to its site. One has to hope Congress is paying attention.

Big Oil Releases Report Exposing Continued Refusal To Invest In Renewables

A new report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute (API) focuses on their finding that of $132.9 billion invested by US public and private sectors in greenhouse gas-mitigating technologies from 2000 to 2008, $58.4 billion came from the oil and gas industry. While API called the oil and gas industry’s investment “pretty impressive,” their report just reinforces that Big Oil has all the wrong priorities:

Kyle Isakower, API’s director of policy analysis, called the oil and gas companies’ $58.4 billion investment a “pretty impressive” number when put in context. “Our members’ primary responsibility is to be able to provide the fuels our country needs,” Isakower explained.

Let’s put this investment into context. The claim that the oil and gas industry invested $58.4 billion in clean energy technologies from 2000 to 2008 is overstated — about ten times over. API lumped in spending on renewable technologies with other “alternative” energies to exaggerate their purported commitment to renewable energy. In fact, the oil and gas industry spent only $6.7 billion on “non-hydrocarbon technology” including ethanol, wind, and solar. $21.1 billion of the $58.4 billion, or more than a third, was invested in liquefied natural gas, yet another fossil fuel. Another $30.6 billion went “mostly to energy efficiency.” Their total investment in renewable energy was little more than a tenth of the $58.4 billion “investments to cut greenhouse gases.”

The oil and gas industry has long invested only a small percentage of their profits in renewable and alternative energy ventures. The API-commissioned report from T² and Associates and the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas leaves out any accounting of total oil and gas profits, which totaled over $100 billion in 2008 for the top five companies alone. Analysis from the Center for American Progress showed that these top five oil companies — BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — committed just 4 percent of their total profits to low-carbon investments in 2008. Exxon-Mobil, the biggest of the big oil companies, made more than $45 billion in net income in 2008 — and invested less than 1 percent of its profits in renewable energy. In fact, the API report reveals that the entire oil and gas industry is as bad as or worse than Exxon when it comes to under-investing in renewable energy:

Big Oil Invested Less Than One Percent Of 2000-2008 Profits In Renewables. The top five oil companies raked in $656 billion from 2000 to 2008, meaning that the $6.7 billion investment by the entire US oil and gas industry in renewable energy represents just 1 percent of the profits of the top five oil companies alone. [API, CAP]

Other examples of Big Oil’s attempt to inflate their commitment to renewable energy include multi-million dollar investments in advertising and “green-washing” campaigns, despite investing heavily in organizations that question the existence of global warming. In 2007, Exxon-Mobil spent $100 million on advertising, producing ads that focused on global warming, efficiency, and alternative energy. Chevron has created an “I Will” ad campaign in spite of its record of investing only 5 percent of its $23.9 billion in profits in renewable energy in 2008.

GOP American Energy Act: Impact Of Global Warming ‘Shall Not Be Considered For Any Purpose’

A Republican energy plan launched with great fanfare attempts to deny the threat of global warming out of existence. Today, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), the leader of the Republican “American Energy Solutions Group” and a prominent denier of climate change science, unveiled the latest repackaging of Bush-era dirty energy policies. The “American Energy Act” confronts the problem of greenhouse gases head on — by prohibiting their regulation:

The Republican response to our dependence on fossil fuels and their pollution is to give billions of dollars in new tax breaks and subsidies to the oil, coal, and nuclear industries, while rolling back environmental protections, despite the claims of their Orwellian talking points.

Further following George Orwell’s principles of Newspeak, the GOP website that trumpets this dirty legislation as an “all-of-the-above solution” attempts to erase the climate threat from existence by leaving out mention of global warming in the bill’s talking points document and summary. Unfortunately for Pence and his climate denier colleagues, they haven’t figured out how to rewrite the laws of physics as well.

USGS: We’re Not The ‘Saudi Arabia Of Coal’ »

The claim made by politicians from George Allen to Barack Obama that the United States is the “Saudi Arabia of coal” is based on a “wildly overconfident” estimate of the nation’s recoverable coal reserves. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Energy Information Administration estimate that the United States has a 240-year supply of coal uses a baseline established in 1974, now grossly out of date. Last year, he “U.S. Geological Survey completed an extensive analysis of Wyoming’s Gillette coal field,” which supplies one-third of the nation’s coal, “and determined that less than 6% of the coal in its biggest beds could be mined profitably, even at prices higher than today’s”:

“We really can’t say we’re the Saudi Arabia of coal anymore,” says Brenda Pierce, head of the USGS team that conducted the study. No one says the U.S. is facing a coal shortage. But the emerging ranks of “peak coal” theorists argue that current production levels may be unsustainable and, if anything, create a false sense of security.

The “Saudi Arabia of coal” slogan emerged during the oil shocks of the 1970s, when the coal industry and politicians promoted the use of the Nazi-era technology of turning coal into a gasoline substitute:

J. Allen Overton, Jr., president of the American Mining Congress: “You and I know that America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and the more we extract it the less we’ll have to keep bowing to Mecca for oil. Perhaps in the long run nuclear fusion or solar power or some other esoteric form of energy will ride to our rescue. But, between then and now, we need a resource that will bridge the gap. And the name of it is coal.” [Oil & Gas Journal, March 26, 1979]

Vice President Walter Mondale: “We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We’ve got lots of it, but we’re not using it like we should.” [Associated Press, June 26, 1979]

President Jimmy Carter: “America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, blessed with enormous reserves … I would rather burn one ton of Kentucky coal than see our nation become dependent by burning another barrel of OPEC oil.” [AP, July 31, 1979]

The industry-promoted metaphor has enjoyed popularity to this day, adopted by Republican and Democratic politicians alike to justify a continued dependence on this dirty and dangerous fuel, instead of true energy reform: More »« Less

Morning Joe: The Time To Build A Green Economy Is Now

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski discussed the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) with guests Tom Brokaw and Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins of Green for All. The table agreed that the passage of clean energy jobs legislation could be the one “silver lining” of the current economic devastation, allowing the United States to rebuild its economy to be greener, stronger, and more competitive in the 21st century. Scarborough asked the key question:

We’re really at a reset right now. The opportunities that we have, it seems like America is restructuring its entire economy. So why don’t we restructure it in a way that prepares us for the next generation?

Watch it:

Ellis-Lamkins asked, “Will we be a country that imports its batteries from China and oil from the Middle East, or will we be a country that creates its own energy?” Brokaw related how both Henry Ford and Lee Iacocca missed the boat in the 1970s on energy efficiency and safety for automotives, stuck in the smug complacency of past success. “This is a generational thing,” Donny Deutsch remarked. “Kids today, it’s in their DNA. And that’s what’s going to save us.”

Scarborough concluded:

I can’t state this any more clearly. This is our best chance economically to reengage and once again be leaders. If we take the lead in the green economy, we’ll be economically in good shape.