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.”

Transcript:

LEONARD: Good morning. We are a broad base of businesses across America. We represent some 37 states. We touch all aspects of the economy. And we have come together this morning unified in one particular request. And that is that we pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year. We are prepared as business to invest, to innovate, to transform the energy sector of this country and of the world — the way we source energy, the way we deliver energy, the way we use energy.

We want to get America back in the business of exporting technology instead of dollars. In order to do that, we need comprehensive legislation. We need to know what the rules are going to be with regard to energy and with regard to climate, and particularly with what the price on carbon is going to be in the United States, if we’re to move around the world and export technology to other countries. And we need legislation in order to do that.

I’m the CEO of Entergy. We have nuclear plants around the country. We also serve 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. People that have been through Katrina, Gustav, Ike, Rita. You name it, they’ve been through it. Nobody should ever have to suffer through a Katrina.

Last night, I was talking to Secretary Salazar. And he asked me, “What happens to New Orleans when sea level rise is not an inch from thermal expansion but meters, due to land ice melt in west Antarctica and Greenland?”

I said, “Well, we have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen, but we do have some protections, because we’re working on New Orleans. What we haven’t given enough thought to is what happens to everybody else.”

What happens to all the coastal cities. What happens to the East Coast of the US with the slightly tilt of the planet on its axis as we melt those ice caps. There’s no protection for them. And we’re not talking about hurricanes any more, we’re talking about potentially tsunami-type of events like we’ve seen in Asia, like we’ve seen most recently in American Samoa. A completely different set of events than what we’re used to.

Some people say we can’t do this because of the cost.

As business, we all look at in terms of it’s an investment. In this case it’s an investment that by all facts, figures and analysis pays back many times over. It pays back with reduced adaptation costs in the future, reduced repair and damage from these type of events, and growth in the economy through transferring technology around the world and creating jobs at home.

Some people say we can’t do this because there are some things that are uncertain.

But that is in large part precisely the reason that we need to act, because of the uncertainty, not necessarily because of the things that we do know. We do know a lot, as you all know.

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.

We talk a lot about in this issue about “us” and “we.” Just so all you know this is not about us. It’s about our children. It’s about our children’s children. When our children are born, we know at that moment in time, that there isn’t anything in the world that we wouldn’t do for them. And as they grow, we know for certain that we would give up our lives for our children. For some reason we won’t do this. We’re cheating them out of their future, and we’re doing it with our eyes wide open. And that’s exactly how history will judge us if we don’t pass comprehensive climate and energy reform now.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

The idea behind the GREEN Act is incentivizing green construction through a variety of means, including tax credits, lower mortgage rates, and innovative financing techniques. It would also provide for upgrading the energy efficiency of HUD housing and establish grant programs for states and localities to promote their own energy-efficiency programs.

The Wonk Room spoke with Perlmutter today, who explained the economic benefit that he hopes the GREEN Act will have for American households, and particularly those with low- to moderate-incomes:

It helps low- and moderate-incomes. It helps all income levels, because utility costs have been going up for, you know, the last umpteen years. And particularly for low- to moderate-income earners, that’s a big part of their discretionary income, what they have left over at the end of the month, after paycheck and groceries and everything else. So if we can help them control or even shrink utility costs, it’s like a pay raise to those people…We’re hoping to shrink energy costs by 30 percent.

Watch it:

One interesting aspect of the bill is a provision providing for the leasing of renewable energy equipment, such as solar panels or geothermal units, to get around the prohibitive, up-front installation costs that puts this sort of equipment out of the reach of many. In theory, the cost of leasing the equipment would be outweighed by the energy savings:

We have another aspect to the bill which we’ve been working with home-builders on, which is to lease, in effect, your solar or even your geothermal equipment so that people wouldn’t have the big up-front cost to put solar on their roof, but instead they could lease it from the home-builder who’s working with the financial community to put the solar units up on the roof, just like you would lease a satellite dish for your TV.

Watch it:

The GREEN Act is basically a panoply of ways to make greening homes and buildings a bit more affordable and cost-effective, and Perlmutter said that the powerful home-builder’s lobby is as “on-board as you can ever get the home-builders.” The act wouldn’t be a fundamental reorganization of energy policy, but it’s very easy to see how it would do a lot to reduce emissions and energy costs all over the country, when you bundle together the effects of its many parts.

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.

Transcript:

DORGAN: Mr. President, most of us spend all of our day having a better day because of energy and think very little about it. Get up in the morning perhaps and use an electric razor or perhaps an electric toothbrush, go to the kitchen and have some coffee that was made by plugging the coffee maker in, or turning on a stove. Then get in the car and put a key in the ignition and start an engine, and off to work. All the while using all that energy has available to us all day long, never thinking much about it.

Now, we have a serious energy problem in this country in that a substantial amount of the energy that we use, particularly oil, comes from outside of our country. Some of it from countries that don’t like us very much. And so we are about 70% dependent on foreign countries for our oil. And as I indicated, some of those countries are countries in some difficulty and turmoil. Some of them don’t like us much at all. And yet, we’re unbelievably dependent on them.

One of the propositions is should we have more conservation in this country? Shouldn’t we have a plan that makes us less vulnerable and less dependent and improves our energy security and national security? The answer to that is yes.

This is a big old planet of ours, and we stick straws in the planet and suck oil out. Now today — today is a Tuesday — we will take out from these drilling rigs and the pumps and so on where we’ve discovered oil, we’ll take out about 85 million barrels of oil from under the earth. And one-fourth of it needs to be used in this country. We need one-fourth of all the oil that’s produced in the world today. And as I said, 70% of that oil comes from outside of our country. And about 70% of the oil that we use in this country is used in our transportation system.

We have a very serious dependency on oil. It makes us less secure nationally. It creates all kinds of issues. And so the question is what do we do about that? And that’s what I want to talk about for a few minutes. I want to talk about it in the context of some news reports that have said recently that I and several others somehow did not support climate change legislation.

Let me make clear what my position is.

I have said on the floor of the Senate, I don’t support cap-and-trade, quote unquote, around trade. I don’t have any interest in supporting legislation that will consign to a $1 trillion carbon trading securities market, most of it on Wall Street, and having speculators and the big investment banks trading carbon securities on a Monday so we can determine how much energy prices are going to be for us on a Tuesday depending on how that trading went on Monday. I have no interest in doing that.

We’ve seen what happens to the price of gasoline and oil, for example, when the price of oil went from, I believe it was $40 a barrel to $148 a barrel in day trading one day, without — without — any notion of supply or demand changes that would justify the run-up over a number of months of the price of oil from $40 to $148 a barrel. So I’ve already seen these markets. I’ve seen the markets with respect to derivatives and swaps and all the exotic instruments created to be traded on these markets.

I have no interest in the — quote — “trade” portion of cap-and-trade and will not be intending to support that. There are other ways for us to have a lower carbon future.

I do believe that there’s something happening to our climate that we should be attentive to. I do believe a series of no-regret steps at the very least make a lot of sense as we begin to address them. Let me just say that while I have said I do not intend to be supportive of the cap-and-trade approach, especially with quotes around trade, I think there are some things we can, will, and must do to address the issue of climate change and having a lower carbon future.

Having said that, let me say that my hope is that the legislation that we have written already, already passed through the energy committee in this Congress, will be brought to the floor for a debate because it takes significant steps towards addressing climate change. But most importantly, it will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create, therefore, more national security and more energy security for our country by producing more american energy and by incentivizing the kinds of things that conserve, save and create other forms of energy as well.

Let me talk just for a bit about this bill, because some people say, well, we have to bring an energy bill to the floor combined with a climate change bill. I don’t believe that. I think it would be much smarter, in my judgment, to bring an energy bill to the floor that is already completed in the committee, passed out of the committee with a bipartisan vote.

It’s called the American Clean Energy Leadership Act. Bring that to the floor, debate it, pass it, get it to the president for his signature, and do something very significant for our country’s energy future. And then turn, when we have completed that, because that bill itself moves in the direction of climate change and addressing climate change, then turn to the issue of a climate change bill and how we create a lower carbon future.

So here’s what’s in the legislation that we have passed through the energy committee that I hope we will bring to the floor of the United States Senate first. Renewable energy standard. You know, there’s an old saying that if you don’t care where you’re going, you’re never going to be lost. Well, that’s certainly true for a country and a Congress. If you don’t establish standards and say here’s where we aspire to be, here’s what we aspire to achieve, you never know whether you’ve met it or not. A renewable energy standard, for example, of 15% or 20% — the bill has 15%. When we get it to the floor my hope would be we have a 20% combined renewable energy standard which says we aspire to achieve this level by a certain date. Renewable energy standard, the first one in the history of this country at the federal level. Some states have already taken action in this area. but we need a national standard that creates the goal of what we aspire to achieve.

So, a national renewable energy standard, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s in this bill. We could bring that to the floor. That drives additional production of renewable energy. It’s exactly what you need to do in terms of addressing climate change. Wind energy, solar energy, biomass. It’s exactly what this country needs to do. And what we do is we incentivize that additional production.

Energy efficiency. The lowest-hanging fruit by far in energy is to make our buildings more efficient. The Mackenzie studies shows the whole grid of production and conservation, and by far the least cost, most effective, instant way to address energy is building efficiencies. And the efficiencies of our buildings, our home, equipment, appliances, our factories are dealt with in this legislation, promoting much greater movement towards achieving the conservation that comes from billing efficiency. That’s in this bill.

Another thing that’s in this bill is building an interstate highway system of transmission capability. because we can produce a lot of new renewable energy, but if we don’t move it from where it is produced to where it is needed to the load centers, it won’t have done much good to produce it. My home state — North Dakota is number one in wind. The folks at the department of energy call north dakota the Saudi Arabia of wind. We’re almost born leaning to the north west against that prevailing wind. We have a lot of wind. The fact is we don’t need wind power in our state. We’ve got all the power we need.

What we need to do is maximize the production of wind power and move it to the load centers. In order to do that you need a national interstate highway of transmission capability. We’re not able to build it. This legislation will trigger the opportunity to do that. now, we have built 11,000 miles of natural gas pipeline in the last nine years across this country. 11,000 miles to haul natural gas through pipes around this country. During this same period of time, we have built less than 660 miles of high-voltage interstate transmission lines. Why? Because when under the current rules, it is very hard to build it. You almost can’t get it done.

So, this legislation has a transmission piece that I helped write. It gives us the opportunity to say, we’re going to maximize the development of renewable energy, wind energy up through the heartland, solar energy in the south and southwest and be able to produce it where you can produce it and move it to the load centers because we will have an interstate system which we do not have. That would be the huge boost to this country’s energy future and also a significant step towards climate change by allowing the development of clean energy, green energy, wind energy, solar energy, biomass and more.

Now, Mr. President, the bill also includes reducing our dependence on foreign oil by transforming our transportation system. We’re headed towards plug-in vehicles, electrifying the short-haul transportation system is the best way to reduce the role that foreign oil plays in our economy. By electrifying our cars at the same time as we decarbonize electric generation, which I’m going to talk about in just a minute, we not only cut our dependence on foreign oil, but we at the same time address climate change. Plug-in hybrid vehicles, I think, are a bridge to the electric future, integrating the electric motor with gasoline engine. all of this is trying to aspire for a new direction for our country.

I want to say, the most abundant resource we have is coal, and this legislation also addresses the use of coal. Some say, well, it shouldn’t be used in the future. I disagree completely. It is our most abundant resource. What we do is in this bill, we facilitate large-scale demonstration and deployment of carbon capture and storage technology so that we can continue to use coal while capturing the carbon and I either hope through beneficial use, using the carbon for other products or sequestering it. But we can continue to use our most abundant resource and we facilitate those necessary demonstration projects in this legislation.

I might also say that legislation is going to be helpful to hydrogen and fuel cells in the future, which I am a strong supporter of. I believe that’s another generation that we need to work on with respect to the research.

And finally, let me say, I offered an amendment during the energy deliberations on this bill that opens the eastern Gulf of Mexico, including the Dustin Dome for oil and gas development. In other words, I believe we ought to do a lot of everything. Yes, we should develop more, produce more. Yes, oil and natural gas. Yes, find a way to produce coal in a manner that protects our environment, and we will. We should conserve more and save more. We should do all of those things.

But in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, there’s about 3.8 billion barrels of oil and about 21 trillion, 22 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It makes no sense that we are so unbelievably and excessively dependent on foreign oil when we are not producing that which we have in our country. And we should do all of that, mindful of the environment, mindful of all of the protections that are necessary. I understand that. so I offered the amendment that opens up the eastern gulf to the 45-mile buffer zone.

I didn’t offer the amendment, but I will when we get it to the floor, to allow our oil companies as well to compete for production capability in the Cuban waters. The country of Cuba is now interested in leasing oil and gas. So the Spanish are there, the Canadians are there, India is there, China is interested, but our companies are prohibited because of an unbelievable 50-year embargo against the country of Cuba, a 50-year embargo that has been almost farcical in terms of its failure. But we are told, it’s all right for everybody else to go there. We’re told there’s about a half a million barrels a day in those waters, after the production.

And there’s nobody in the country — in the world, i should say — there’s no one in the world that’s better at the kind of ultra — or unconventional deep water drilling than America. We’ve done the research. We’ve done the work to understand that we do that better than anybody else in the world. Yet we are told that our companies are not able to compete for those leases in those Cuban waters. That makes no sense at all.

I think we should do a lot of everything and do it well. and especially as we do a lot of everything — whether it’s conservation or other related issues, producing more, conserving more — as we do that and driving the maximizing of renewable energy, we will step in a giant way towards addressing climate change. It is exactly what we should do.

Now, we are told, well, you have to bring Waxman-Markey or you have to do this or that. What we have to do, it seems to me, is to be smart. And the smart thing, in my judgment, would be a-to-take the legislation that the United States Senate energy committee has produced that does all of the things I’ve just described, almost all of which contribute in a very positive way to addressing a lower carbon future, and all of which address the issue of greater energy security and greater national security by making us less dependent on foreign oil and making us more dependent on American-produced energy.

I mean, why would we not want to have a much greater focus on American energy produced here in this country? And why would we not want to have a much more significant focus on developing national aspirations for what we want to do with renewable energy? You know, it’s just this okay, we kind of walk around and say, well, whatever happens happens. The fact is we can’t consign our future to that.

Now, I have spoken, I suppose, a dozen times on the floor. And let me do again what I’ve done before and say just — just so quickly, that my first car as a very young boy was one my father found in a granary in an old abandoned farm in North Dakota, and I bought it from the guy who put it in that granary for $25. It was a 1924 Model-T Ford, completely rusty, with no wires, no seat covers. All it was was a bunch of metal and a bunch of ruvment as a young boy I lovingly restored an old Model-T. What I discovered when I got it all running, you put gasoline in that Model-T, the same way you put gasoline in a 2009 car. Everything else — everything has changed except that. Cars are computerized. Everything has changed about vehicles, but you still pull up to a gas tank, pull the gas cap off and put gas in a Model-T just like you do in a brand-spangled new Ford. It shows how mired we are in our previous energy policies.

The energy bill that we have passed in the energy committee gets us out of this rut, makes us more secure, strengthens our country, makes us less dependent on others, particularly less dependent on those who don’t like us very much for our energy future. One final point: some several years ago there was a blackout on the East Coast, just like that, all the electricity was gone. And at that moment, almost everyone had to understand what energy meant to them. And we understood its connection to our daily lives. It’s unbelievable. and so the question of reliability of energy for our country, the question of where do we get it, how do we get it, what’s it cost, what does it mean to our climate — all of those are important, interesting, and in some cases important questions.

I hope very much as people start thinking of and talking after whatever happens on health care happens — 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.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and make a point that a quorum is not present.

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.

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.

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.”

Japanese auto makers aren’t the only competition GM will have in the PHEV market. China announced last December it’s new plug-in, the F3DM, which will only cost an estimated $21,000 and has a battery range of an estimated 63 miles. Though it is unlikely that this model meets other U.S. safety standards, it is yet another sign that China wants to dominate the development and sale of clean energy technologies.

General Motors hopes the release of the Volt will signal to consumers the company is heeding the call for a new generation of super fuel efficient vehicles. The Center for American Progress hosted auto industry executives and independent engineers back in 2008 at an event to discuss the future of plug-in electric technology where GM Vice President Jonathan J. Lauckner acknowledged that “the automobile industry can no longer exclusively rely on oil as fuel for our vehicles.”

GM and the Volt may notably affect the electric car battery industry as well. Bob Kruse, GM’s executive director of global vehicle engineering, said on Friday that lithium-ion batteries – the kind that powers the Volt – are expected to come down in price and weight as the Volt is brought into mass production: “Getting the energy density up, getting the weight out, getting the cost out, that’s all part of what we are going to be challenged to do,” said Kruse.

Efforts to design the long range batteries of the future got a boost on August 5th when President Obama announced at a speech in Elkhart County, Indiana that the Department of Energy would invest $2.4 billion in advanced battery research. The funding is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and is expected to save or create tens of thousands of jobs in Indiana.

In addition, investments in a new smart grid will also be pivotal to the full scale deployment of PHEV’s. Britta Gross, General Motors’ manager of Hydrogen and Electrical Infrastructure Development spoke at length in an interview last November about the partnerships GM has built with utility companies such as Duke and Edison and her confidence that these companies are more than prepared for the wide-scale deployment of the Volt.

This announcement by GM is sure to please the White House, considering then-candidate Obama’s pledge last August to put 1,000,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. The Volt and other super efficient cars are an essential element to meet President Obama’s new fuel efficiency standards that the White House believes will “result in savings of 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of vehicles sold in the next five years alone.” Plug-in vehicles like the Volt are essential to cutting our nation’s addiction to foreign oil and reducing global warming pollution. It may just be the “game changer” GM – and America — needs.

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.

Transcript:

MARKEY: If Americans understood that we produce 8 million barrels of oil a day, but we import 13 million barrels of oil a day, and this bill combined with fuel economy standards can reduce by 5 million barrels of oil a day the amount of oil we import, I mean we can tell OPEC we don’t need your oil any more than we need your sand– that’s a big selling point.

If we tell them we can create two to three million new jobs in this sector over the next ten years– that’s a big selling point.

If we tell them we can stabilize countries around the world that are otherwise going to be destabilized by what climate change is going to do to their rivers, to their glaciers, to their deserts– I think that’s a big selling point.

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.

All issues go through three phases: political education, political activation, political implementation. We’re going to need everyone here to make this possible.

Yes, you can find deficiencies in the bill. But 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. And we’re going to need everyone here if we are going to accomplish that. [APPLAUSE]

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.”

Evan Bayh (D-IN): $42,550

Bayh is also a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Indiana is a manufacturing state that relies almost entirely on coal for electricity. Bayh opposed even a low 15 percent Renewable Electricity Standard, and he opposed cap-and-trade last year, saying he wanted to protect consumers.

Charles Grassley (R-IA): $25,000

Grassley is a member of the Senate Finance Committee that will work out the details of emissions allocations. He says he would have voted against the House version of ACES. Grassley’s state is No. 2 in wind power, but he worries about higher energy prices for farmers, and he is skeptical of the trade part of a cap-and-trade program being gamed by Wall Street. He also worries about international competition: “It’s going to be very detrimental to the economy of the United States if we pass a bill an the other counties of the world don’t follow along – and I have my doubts if they will follow along.”

Blanche Lincoln (D-AR): $22,850

Lincoln is a member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, as well as its Agriculture and Finance committees. She supports offshore drilling, has pushed to reduce any national renewable energy standard, and has called the House version of the energy bill “a complete non-starter”.

Arlen Specter (D-PA): $22,499

Specter, who recently switched his party affiliation, is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and comes from a coal-producing state. In the second sentence of his home page’s energy discussion he writes: “Pennsylvania’s strong agricultural, manufacturing and other industrial sectors rely heavily on energy production, and Pennsylvania consumers deserve reliable, affordable energy.” However, he also has supported up to a 20 percent renewable energy standard.

Richard Shelby (R-AL): $20,650

Shelby summed up his opinion of the cap-and-trade policy this way: “That would be the biggest tax you have ever seen.” To cut U.S. reliance on foreign oil, he stands behind the GOP’s all-of-the-above policy, including more drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

David Vitter (R-LA): $19,499

Vitter, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee that is spearheading the climate bill in the Senate, is vehemently against putting a price on carbon emissions. He argues that it would “have a profoundly negative impact on Louisiana’s economy in particular, bringing about significant job loss and increased energy prices – neither of which we need in these trying economic times." Vitter was tied for dead last on the Republicans for Environmental Protection’s 2008 Senate Scorecard.

Robert Bennett (R-UT): $18,500

Bennett, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, believes global warming is a serious issue, but says he worries about the cost of regulation to his constituents.

The top ten Senate recipients of electric utilities-related campaign cash since 1990 who are still in the chamber are:

1. John McCain (R-AZ) $709,391
2. George Voinovich (R-OH), $570,726
3. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), $525,590
4. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), $515,177
5. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), $494,594
6. Max Baucus (D-MT, Finance Committee Chairman), $473,143
7. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM, Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman) $464,909
8. Arlen Specter (D-PA), $452,996
9. James Inhofe (R-OK) $435,967
10. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), $365,000.

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.

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.

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.

Transcript:

CARLSON: President Obama campaigned on the promise of change, but with an energy bill that threatens to cripple American business and a tax on the rich for health care as well, is President Obama delivering the wrong kind of change?

MORRIS: Joining us on is phone is the culture warrior himself, on Fox and Friends this morning, Bill O’Reilly. good morning. So who’s going to profit the most from this climate bill?

O’REILLY: On Monday we broke a fairly significant story that the Obama administration would like you not to know. And that is that the cap and trade situation that they would like to pass into law really isn’t going to do much for global warming. Number one, because India, China, and Mexico won’t participate. And, number two, because you basically have a system which is going to be gamed by big corporations like Goldman Sachs, General Electric. They’ve already bought into companies that are going to do the trades, and on each trade they’ll get a commission.

So Goldman Sachs, for example, paid zero, nothing to the federal government in corporate tax last year, 2008. They made two billion dollars. Where’s Goldman Sachs when it comes to health care? Nothing, zero. They don’t pay in. Okay. So it becomes a con. It’s cap and con. Once you get this into law, the prices for everything are going to go up. Because the companies that have to pay more to admit are going to pass that on to the consumer, so the consumer pays more for electricity, for power in every sense, to heat their home, cool their home, everything, manufacturing, everything goes up. But Goldman Sachs, they make hundreds of millions of dollars, and they’re not paying any taxes. So I’m saying is this change I can believe in? The little guy gets hosed, but the big corporation gets richer? Come on.

DOOCEY: Good point. And you make a good point about India and Mexico and China still able to pump that gunk, whatever it is, into the atmosphere, so whatever we do could completely be marginalized. But do we even know, Bill, whether or not these carbon credits actually can do anything? I mean, it’s an exchange of money . . .

O’REILLY: There have been studies that say they’ll do a little bit. They’ve tried it in Spain and things like that. Look. I think most Americans want a cleaner country and a cleaner planet, all right?

DOOCEY: Sure.

O’REILLY: All right. There are some hard core right-wingers who don’t believe in global warming even though the temperature shows that the earth has warmed in the last 30 years, three times faster than the previous hundred. That’s in stone. You don’t debate that. But there are people that say it’s a big con, nuh nuh nuh nuh.

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!”

…

So I think that the American people are catching on to this, I think . . . I know they’ve caught on to the cap and con. I know that, and I don’t expect that to get passed, by the way. The health care is much more complicated, but we can do it, but we have to do it smart.

CARLSON: All right, well it passed the House after Michael Jackson died, so we’ll have to see what the Senate does with cap and trade as well as health care.

O’REILLY: Yeah, I know it passed the House. But it’s not going get through the Senate. I would be stunned if it does. Because, uh, then you’re going to be able to, in the next election, hold these people accountable.

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.

The report itself is written by FAIR’s Director of Special Projects, Jack Martin, a former U.S. Consular Diplomat with no environmental, scientific, or academic credentials to speak of. In the report Martin uses anecdotes and inferences to connect rising U.S.energy consumption to immigration levels. Without a single citation other than three endnotes included in the back of the report, Martin spends nine pages arguing that energy consumption has little do with how energy is being used and everything to do with the immigrants who are using it. FAIR’s corresponding press release claims:

[The report] addresses America’s stifled immigration policy debate: it finds that America’s massive immigration-fueled population growth was the single largest contributing factor to the nation’s increased energy consumption and carbon emissions over the past 35 years. Even without a massive amnesty for illegal aliens supported by President Obama and congressional leaders, immigration will be the driving factor as U.S. population approaches the half billion mark by mid-century.

King’s argument also invokes xenophobic panic by referencing the fertility rates of Hispanic women. His whole thesis is ultimately based on the dim-witted idea that the entire energy problem would be resolved if immigrants go away, not taking into account that they will also be consuming energy in their home countries.

Aside from basing his findings on flawed logic, King has his facts wrong. When complaining about the unfairness associated with the stringent Kyoto Protocal standards, King claims that immigration is the main reason that the rate of population growth is so much higher in the U.S. compared to Europe and therefore curbing immigration is the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, according to the World Resources Institute, the U.S. is home to 23% fewer people than the European nations of the EU-15, yet still produces 70% more greenhouse gases.

Scapegoating immigrants is easy, actually solving our environmental problems is a lot more complicated. FAIR fails to recognize that energy consumption is driven by a host of factors totally unrelated to population size, such as societal dependence on polluting and non-renewable fossil fuels; utilization of energy-efficient technologies; and the development of mass transit systems that minimize individual automobile use. Along those lines, the McKinsey Global Institute offers a more viable solution to residential energy consumption levels: promoting policies that boost energy productivity — the level of output achieved from the energy consumed — such as building shells, compact fluorescent lighting, and high-efficiency water heating.

FAIR isn’t the only group to blame immigrants for environmental problems — they join the ranks of hate and restrictionist groups like the American Immigration Control Foundation, the Social Contract Press, and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which last month released a report entitled “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the United States.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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:

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL): “When it comes to America’s tried-and-true means of producing energy, Democrats Just Say No. No to developing new oil and natural gas reserves. No to coal, although America is the Saudi Arabia of coal.” [House Republican Conference Radio Address, 7/18/08]

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL): “Look, we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. And we can figure out the technology to make it environmentally sound. I believe in global warming. It is true that the planet is getting warmer and we have to deal with it. But this is America. We figured out how to put a man on the moon in ten years. You can’t tell me we can’t figure out how to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work. We can do that.” [CNN, 9/14/08]

Steve Forbes: “Take what can be done with technology with the shale. It’s just huge. And coal. Technology. If we learn to deal with the emissions when we’re doing a better and better job at it, we are the Saudi Arabia of coal. [Hannity & Colmes, 7/7/08]

Jack Gerard, American Chemistry Council: “Coal is our number one source of electricity, and some people just immediately dismiss it and say, let’s not use coal. But if we use this vast reserve of coal which we have – some have often said the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal, it’s much more significant than that. The BTU capability of the coal in the United States is equal to the entire world oil reserve.” [NPR Talk of the Nation, 7/8/08]

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), House Minority Leader: “We’re the ‘Saudi Arabia’ of coal. Whether it’s coal-to-liquid, coal-to-gas, we’ll let the market decide. But we can use coal in a clean way.” [House Republican press conference, 9/3/08]

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI): “The hard fact of the matter is we are the Saudi Arabia of coal, and we also have an unbelievable dependence upon it. It is the largest source of energy in terms of electrical power generation. And so we have a huge investment, and we happen to have — this is a long-term investment — and we have this as a reliable homegrown source of fuel.” [Washington Post Conference Transcript, 3/20/09]

Sen. John Tester (D-MT): ” I fully agree with the fact that we are going to be burning coal for a long, long time. Montana happens to be America’s version of the Saudi Arabia of coal. [Senate Hearing Transcript, 5/7/09]

George Allen, American Energy Freedom Center: “We’re the Saudi Arabia of the world when it comes to coal.” [E&E News, 6/4/09]

It’s troubling that politicians find the comparison to Saudi Arabia — a dictatorial monarchy that is a breeding ground for religious extremism — so appealing. However, there may be a more apt comparison — Saudi Arabia has done the least to tackle the problem of global warming, with the United States close behind.

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.

– The “Hot Air Tour” promoting global warming skepticism and attacking environmental regulations.
– “Free Our Energy,” a group promoting increased domestic drilling.
– The “Save My Ballot Tour,” a group that pays Joe the Plumber to travel around the country smearing the Employee Free Choice Act.
– “No Climate Tax,” a group dedicated to the defeat of Clean Energy Economy legislation.
– “No Stimulus,” a group launched to try to stop the passage of the Recovery Act.

Notably, AFP was also instrumental in orchestrating the anti-Obama, anti-tax tea party protests in April.

With nearly 70 Republican operatives and former oil industry spokesmen working behind the scenes of AFP’s various fronts and disclosures that point to ever increasing oil and corporate donations to the group, one must wonder, who is guiding this massive front group factory? The answer is Tim Phillips, the President of AFP who has built a long career of inventing fake grassroots causes. In Phillips’ official biography, there appears to be over a 10 year gap — but that period was when Phillips developed his very first astroturf groups to do everything from smearing his opponents with anti-Semitic attacks to laundering money for criminal lobbyists.

Click More To Read The WonkRoom’s Investigation Of AFP’s Tim Phillips

As a Virginia-based political consultant, Phillips got his first big break managing the campaign of Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). After serving as Goodlatte’s chief of staff for four years, Phillips joined former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed in 1997 to create an astroturf lobbying and campaign consulting operation called Century Strategies. The firm promised to mount “grassroots lobbying drives” and explained its strategy as “it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard — and by whom.”

After being recommended by Karl Rove, Century Strategies signed its first major corporate client – Enron. Phillips and Reed were paid $380,000 to mobilize “religious leaders and pro-family groups” to push energy deregulation in Congress and on the state level, a policy shift that led to the energy crisis and economic meltdown of 2001. The Washington Post reported that the pair informed Enron that they had leveraged their relationships with members of Congress and “placed” articles in prominent papers like the New York Times.

Part of Phillip’s role at Century Strategies was to manage the firm’s direct mail subsidiary, Millennium Marketing. In 1998, now disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff hired Phillips’ firm to pressure members of Congress to vote against legislation that would have made the U.S. commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands subject to federal wage and worker safety laws. A federal report “found that Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry.” Nonetheless, Phillips sent out mailers claiming Chinese workers “are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ” while on the islands, and many “are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand.” The mailers then encouraged the recipients to contact lawmakers and ask them to oppose the Marianas labor reform legislation.

The Marianas stealth lobbying effort was not the only time Phillips worked with Abramoff. Reed and Phillips conspired to generate conservative Christian outrage towards gambling at Indian casinos in a cynical plot to encourage those same tribes to hire Abramoff to lobby on their behalf. In some cases, Phillips’ anti-gambling crusade would simply be part of an effort to kill off competition to Abramoff’s clients. And while Phillips and Reed postured to be motivated by anti-gambling Christian values, the pair helped launder lobbying money from an Abramoff Internet gambling client called eLottery.

Though Phillips and Reed are best known in the campaign consulting world for engineering the dual victories of Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Republican Gov. Sonnie Perdue in Georgia (by associating images of Osama bin Laden with the incumbent Democratic senator), the pair can also be credited with the most below the belt tactics ever seen in modern Republican primaries. The duo “spearheaded” the telemarketing and direct mail efforts for George Bush against John McCain in the 2000 primaries. It is widely believed that Century Strategies executed the mass mailers and robo-calls which accused McCain of fathering an illegitimate child with a black woman, using the image of McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh.

Phillips’ brass knuckled hits on fellow Republicans almost prevented the only Jewish Congressman in the GOP caucus from ever being elected. Phillips set up a 527 called “The Faith and Family Alliance,” a group supposedly designed to support conservative and Christian causes. But like his other front groups, Phillips used the Family Alliance to simply slime his political opponents with an organization that appeared to represent a grassroots community. The Richmond Times Dispatch reported that Phillips was hired by State Sen. Stephen Martin to manage his direct mail campaign against State Del. Eric Cantor in the 2000 Republican primary for the Congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA). Phillips used his Family Alliance to blast robo-calls and mass mailers claiming Cantor did not represent “Virginia values” and that his opponent was the “only Christian in the contest.”

Larry Sabato, a political analyst and the director of University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, noted:

A despicable, underground campaign that was unquestionably anti-Semitic nearly beat Cantor in the GOP primary for U.S. House to succeed Tom Bliley in June 2000. Cantor had been heavily favored over state Sen. Steve Martin, but in the end he won by a couple hundred votes. Now the national and state GOP appears grateful for its lone Jewish House member — but the Republican base and some Christian groups almost insured his defeat. I’m amazed that Democrats and even Republicans haven’t raised this matter.

Indeed, after the Phillips’ anti-Semitic attacks, Cantor went from being high in the polls to barely winning the primary by a mere 264 votes. Phillips still holds rallies – under the umbrella of AFP – to boost his old client Sen. Martin.

Phillips managed to escape most of the controversy that eventually embroiled his partners Reed and Abramoff. Working under the slush fund provided by oil baron David Koch – with a salary approaching $300,000 a year and at least a $7 million annual budget – Phillips continues to lead AFP in building front group after front group to advance his radical right wing agenda.