The Wonk Room

Obama: ‘It’s Hard To Say’ Why Critics Of Clean Energy Accuse Him Of Socialism

This afternoon at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President Barack Obama challenged the nation to explore the “new frontiers” of the “clean energy economy of tomorrow.” He praised Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for working on legislation to make our energy system “more efficient, far cleaner, and provide energy independence for America.” But Obama challenged critics “whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action,” saying the status quo “endangers our prosperity” and the “only purpose” of those who question climate science “is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary”:

The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized. But I think it’s important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we’re engaged in. There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary. So we’re going to have to work on those folks.

Following the speech, the Wonk Room asked President Obama why such critics accuse the president of socialism. Obama replied:

You know, it’s hard to say. Maybe if you have an answer to that, you’ll let me know.

Watch it:

Among the critics of President Obama’s clean energy agenda who say it will destroy the economy are Glenn Beck, Marc Morano, Fox News, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and even Democratic candidate for the governor of Virginia, Creigh Deeds. Beck believes the White House energy and environment adviser Carol Browner is a socialist. Morano, Inhofe’s former blogger, argued limits on global warming pollution is the “biggest threat to freedom” at the Accuracy in Media conference today. Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer calls the regulation “cap and tax.” Inhofe warns of a “global tax” from the United Nations. And Deeds is now running ads claiming the “cap and trade bill” would “hurt the people” of Virginia.

The reason Obama’s critics accuse him of socialism is because, for reasons of “interest or ideology,” they support a system of economic inequity based on an unsustainable fossil-fuel economy. The current system has reaped great rewards for the ultra-wealthy and the industrial polluters at the expense of the health and welfare of their fellow Americans. To avoid blame for their malfeasance, they must paint Obama as the villain, and his essential reform agenda as even scarier than the status quo, with language that taps into the darkest fears of the American public.

Obama Plants Monsanto And CropLife Officials In Key Agriculture Posts

Our guest bloggers are Kathy Ozer, the executive director of the National Family Farm Coalition, and Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, PhD, the senior scientist at the Pesticide Action Network North America and a lead author on the UN-sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

Roger Beachy

Lobbyists “won’t find a job in my White House,” President Obama assured us upon inauguration. And yet he just nominated to two key posts “Big Ag” industry power brokers, who come straight from the chemical pesticide and biotechnology sectors. While they may not be registered as lobbyists, both men come from organizations representing powerful agribusiness interests, which every year spend millions of dollars in lobbying to advance their companies’ chemical and transgenic products.

Obama has tapped Roger Beachy, long-time president of the Danforth Plant Science Center (Monsanto’s nonprofit arm) as chief of the USDA’s newly created National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Created by the 2008 Farm Bill, NIFA is the new means of awarding the USDA’s external research dollars. As the director of NIFA (a nomination that doesn’t require congressional approval), Beachy will oversee the distribution of nearly $500 million in grants and other research funding. Sustainable agriculture initiatives are likely to suffer, as research dollars are awarded to projects that promote Beachy’s vested interests in biotechnology.

Islam Siddiqui

Islam Siddiqui, currently the VP of Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife USA, was nominated to the post of Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. Why the president would nominate someone from the group that infamously chided the First Lady for refusing to use pesticides on the White House garden is a bit of a mystery. This critical position is designed to use free trade agreements to open up foreign markets for U.S. agriculture goods — in the past, mostly to promote chemical-intensive, genetically modified products that undermine local food cultures in developing countries.

It’s crucial that the Senate Finance Committee hears from public witnesses while investigating his past roles. At CropLife International, Siddiqui led an initiative to weaken restrictions against fertilizers and pesticides, as part of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations. He also served as the senior agricultural trade adviser during the Clinton administration, and pressed for getting genetically modified crops and seeds approved for commercial use in the United States.

Now the United States will continue its efforts to export the worst aspects of U.S. agriculture to other countries, many of which are deeply wary of genetically modified seeds and the impacts of toxic pesticides on their communities. Mirroring those concerns, a comprehensive United Nations and World Bank- sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has said that one of the best ways to feed the world is to increase investments in agro-ecological science and farming.

We don’t need more genetically modified seeds. What we need is enforcement of antitrust laws to break up monopoly control of the global food system, and fairer — not “freer” — trade arrangements to overcome poverty and hunger around the world.

The Obama administration has made tremendous strides towards encouraging the growth of the local food movement, and its connections to human health and ecological impacts. The White House organic garden and the farmers market spearheaded by Michelle Obama are important symbolic gestures, as is the USDA’s new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative.

However, these latest appointments of industry insiders to two of the most influential offices that will shape U.S. food and agricultural policy at home and abroad call into question just how committed the Obama administration is to promoting sustainable agriculture and reducing hunger in the developing world.

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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First Stop Oslo, Next Stop Copenhagen

Our guest blogger is Andrew Light, Senior Fellow and Coordinator of International Climate Policy, Center for American Progress.

Barack Obama is now the third sitting president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This is an enormous honor, awarded in part for “playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting.” The timing on this for those following the future of a new international climate treaty could not be more critical. The Peace Prize is presented in Oslo on December 10th. The UN climate talks, where the agenda will feature decisions on replacing the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012, start in Copenhagen on December 7th. The expectation that President Obama will now go for at least part of the UN climate talks is enormous as he’ll already be in Scandinavia.

Remember that Al Gore went immediately to the UN climate meeting in Bali after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Gore’s speech at the Bali meeting, and closed door sessions with climate negotiators for two days following, is credited by some as having saved those talks from failure. Before Gore arrived the EU was about to walk out over protests that the US was holding up progress on the “Bali Action Plan,” the document that set the parameters for what success at Copenhagen is supposed to look like this December. It’s hard to imagine a more directed appeal for President Obama to come to Copenhagen and achieve a similar success.

Text Of Obama’s Remarks To The United Nations On Climate Change: ‘The Time We Have To Reverse This Tide Is Running Out’ »

This morning, President Barack Obama delivered his first major address on climate change, speaking before the United Nations Climate Summit:

No nation, however large or small, wealthy or poor, can escape the impact of climate change. Rising sea levels threaten every coastline. More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent. More frequent drought and crop failures breed hunger and conflict in places where hunger and conflict already thrive. On shrinking islands, families are already being forced to flee their homes as climate refugees. The security and stability of each nation and all peoples – our prosperity, our health, our safety – are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out. And yet, we can reverse it. John F. Kennedy once observed that “Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man.” It is true that for too many years, mankind has been slow to respond to or even recognize the magnitude of the climate threat. It is true of my own country as well. We recognize that. But this is a new day. It is a new era. And I am proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history.

Obama announced that the EPA has started “tracking how much greenhouse gas pollution is being emitted throughout the country,” a critical first step in “slashing our emissions to reach the targets we set for 2020 and our long-term goal for 2050.” He called for an international agreement “that will allow all nations to grow and raise living standards without endangering the planet.”

Below is the full text of President Obama’s remarks, as prepared for delivery: More »« Less

Cultivating A New Generation Of American Family Farmers »

Our guest blogger is Sheilah Goodman, co-founder of Cedarbrook Farms, a diversified organic farm located near Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. Sheilah can be found every Thursday until the end of October 2009 at the Cedarbrook Farm stall at the FreshFarm Market near the White House, and on Sundays throughout the year in Dupont Circle.

Michael Pollan wrote “An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief” in October 2008 arguing that food policy will and must play a central role because it affects so many other national priorities: energy, health care, climate change, and even national security. Pollan advised the yet-to-be-elected president that one way to bring about the needed changes — local sustainable farming instead of subsidized agribusiness — would be to use the power of the White House as example. Pollan said the president would be wise to choose a White House chef who was “committed to cooking simply from fresh local ingredients”:

Besides feeding you and your family exceptionally well, such a chef would demonstrate how it is possible even in Washington to eat locally for much of the year, and that good food needn’t be fussy or complicated but does depend on good farming.

This week a new FreshFarm Market opened by the White House. Every Thursday afternoon through the end of October there will be 18 vendors just steps from the White House offering milk, cheese, flowers, meats, baked goods, and even yarn. As with all FreshFarm Markets, the vendors must produce what they are selling from the land that they farm and they must be local—no more than 150 miles from downtown Washington, D.C.

Our farm, Cedarbrook, is one of the vendors at the new market. Starting any new market is exciting, but this one is even more so. This market has a high profile, and it can help hasten the demise of the old model of conventional, subsidized industrialized food production by showcasing local, sustainable agriculture. Hopefully the market’s visibility will help create a new generation farmers. The challenges of operating a small sustainable farm are numerous, but a little creativity and perseverance will take them a long way. Here’s a primer to help them get started: More »« Less

Obama Admin: The Twitternomics Of CBS Correspondent Declan McCullagh Is ‘Flat Out Wrong’

Yesterday, libertarian blogger Declan McCullagh, a senior correspondent for CBSNews.com, made the incendiary claim that the Obama administration was suppressing Treasury Department documents detailing the true cost of limiting greenhouse gases. After CBS published the story, “Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year,” Republicans claimed this was a startling admission, since it has officially estimated an average household cost in 2020 of $80 to $175. It turns out, however, that the $1,761 figure was constructed by McCullagh himself, not the administration, using a new form of economic analysis, Twitternomics:

Here’s one more math formula: McCullagh Twitternomics ≠ Obama Administration Analysis. Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan Krueger responded simply that the CBS “reporting” was “flat out wrong“:

The reporting on the Treasury analysis is flat out wrong. Treasury’s analysis is consistent with public analyses by the EIA, EPA, and CBO, and the reporting and blogging on this issue ignores the fact that the revenue raised from emission permits would be returned to consumers under both administration and legislative proposals. It is time for an honest debate about how to solve a long-term challenge and deliver comprehensive energy reform – not for misrepresentations of the facts.

In a follow-up piece, McCullagh quotes the response from Treasury, but somehow failed to include the lines where his reporting was called for being “flat out wrong” and using “misrepresentations of the facts.”

McCullagh is on the fringes of the right-wing Koch-Exxon pollution machine, writing for the Cato Institute (founded by David Koch and funded by ExxonMobil) and Reason Magazine (part of the Reason Foundation, funded by David Koch and ExxonMobil). Koch Industries’ revenue last year was estimated by Forbes to be $98 billion — in McCullagh’s Twitternomics, a tax on American families of $863. ExxonMobil’s record 2008 revenue was $442.85 billion — a McCullagh tax of $3,902.

McCullagh’s anti-government libertarianism sometimes reaches absurdities, as when he argued in 2004 that “Keynesian economists who believe in activist government intervention in the economy” were “fooled by the Soviet Union.” Further, McCullagh — who exaggerated his position at CBS — is an old hand at ascribing outlandish headlines to liberals that he actually made up himself. His real claim to fame is for establishing the false meme in 1999 that Al Gore made an “improvident boast” about inventing the Internet.

But none of this should come as a surprise, as McCullagh’s CBS blog is titled, appropriately, “Taking Liberties.”

CBS’s Declan McCullagh Promotes Another False CEI Attack On Clean Energy Reform

According to Declan McCullagh, a libertarian blogger who works for CBS Interactive, secret Obama administration documents reveal that the cost of clean energy cap-and-trade legislation would be $1,761 per household — despite official estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Congressional Budget Office, and the Energy Information Administration of about a postage stamp a day. Based on Treasury Department documents acquired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), McCullagh claims that “a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent“:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

This is pure twaddle. McCullagh is confabulating a “disclosure” out of whole cloth:

Obama’s Plan Would Have Established Tax Cuts For Working Families. In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a green economy plan that would create a $100 to $200 $80 billion carbon market and use the money raised from polluters for middle class tax cuts.

Congress Did Not Adopt President Obama’s Plan. The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) is comprehensive clean energy legislation, coupling the carbon market with national renewable energy and energy efficiency standards. Unlike Obama’s plan, the ACES Act would establish a more limited carbon market, distribute most permits for free to polluting industry, with provisions that compel utilities to pass along their value to ratepayers, and provide further assistance for low-income consumers. One can’t use an analysis of Obama’s proposal to calculate the economic benefits of the legislation now being considered.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act Builds A Clean Economy For A Postage Stamp A Day. The EPA estimates a net cost of about $100 per household per year, which would be fully offset for lower-income consumers. The Congressional Budget Office — which did not consider the energy efficiency measures or the cost of inaction — determined “that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or about $175 per household.”

The American Clean Energy and Security Act Cuts Electricity Bills And Dependence On Foreign Oil. The EPA has found that Waxman-Markey cuts household electricity bills by seven percent by 2020. The EIA found the legislation would save Americans $5,600 per household in reduced dependence on foreign oil.

To come up with false claim that Obama’s plan was “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent,” McCullagh ignored where the money would come from — polluting industries with billions of dollars in annual profits — and where the money would go — tax cuts for working people.

In reality, President Obama’s proposal would have amounted to tax cuts worth hundreds of dollars for working families, with the added benefits of greatly reduced dependence on toxic oil and coal, billions of dollars of investment in clean energy, and the avoidance of catastrophic climate change.

McCullagh argues that his so-called “disclosures” will “probably not aid the political prospects of the Democrats’ cap and trade bill,” and quotes CEI’s Chris Horner: “It’s nice to see they’re not spinning each other behind closed doors.” Horner, who filed the FOIA request, runs global warming denial blogs for CEI and the National Review. In June, McCullagh breathlessly promoted CEI’s other “scandal” of a global warming denier economist who works for the EPA.

Opponents of clean energy reform are inflating the costs of action by 1,000 percent, while minimizing that the threat of climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. Ironically, these lies may actually aid the political prospects of action, as the American public grow more disgusted with the unethical tactics of polluters and their right-wing allies.

Joe Klein Compares ‘Left-Extremist’ Van Jones To ‘White Supremacist,’ ‘Nazi’

Joe Klein, the prominent Time Magazine liberal columnist, has embraced the right-wing assault on Van Jones, the White House green jobs advisor who resigned this weekend. Stung by a successful boycott for calling the president a “racist,” Glenn Beck led a campaign against Van Jones as a “self avowed communist” who is a “danger to the republic.” Yesterday, Klein said “good riddance” to the “too-angry blowhard” Van Jones, comparing him to a “white supremacist” and a “Nazi”:

Anyway, Jones: He has, in recent years, done some valuable work trying to steer green jobs into poor communities…but there is a bright line in American political life: Self-proclaimed “communists” need not apply. Communism is too odious and foolish a philosophy for anyone reasonable to believe in, or even to use as red-flag hyperbole, as Jones did after the Rodney King riots of the early 1990s, when he said that he’d been a [black] nationalist, but was now a communist. It’s sort of like a Republican President appointing someone who had said, “I used to be a white supremacist, but now I’m a Nazi.” So, good riddance. The work of this presidency is too important to be side-tracked by a too-angry blowhard spouting foolish radicalism.

In the past decade, Van Jones has been at the vanguard of a green capitalism that combines progressive and conservative ideals, “focusing on job, wealth and health creation” in poor and minority communities while healing the planet. His work has helped establish the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, the Green Jobs Act, and community partnerships for job training and retrofit programs in cities across the nation.

Before becoming a leading green capitalist, Jones was a progressive leader in the Bay Area. The “communist” smear hinges on a 2005 interview with the East Bay Express, in which Jones described how he had “renounced” his radicalist politics of the 1990s, when he participated in STORM, a utopian, anti-racist peace collective in Berkeley, CA that drew from Marxist teachings. Jones was radicalized by the 1992 Rodney King trial, in which four LAPD officers were acquitted of police brutality although their beating of Rodney King was caught on videotape. While acting as a legal observer for a non-violent rally in San Francisco protesting the trial and its aftermath, Jones was caught in a mass arrest for which the city later apologized.

Klein’s comparison of Jones to a “Nazi” “white supremacist” is both repugnant and ironic, considering Jones’s record of fighting racism and embracing compassion for all people. Following the Rodney King verdict, Jones worked effectively against police brutality, establishing first the Bay Area PoliceWatch and then the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Ella Baker Center successfully campaigned against San Francisco police officer Marc Andaya, who led a team of cops in beating Aaron Williams, “emptying three cans of pepper spray into his face, and hogtying him in an unventilated police van where he died.” With its “Books Not Bars” campaign, the Center also stopped the construction of the Alameda County “Super Jail for Kids” in 2001.

Klein — a compelling writer who has argued for legalizing marijuana, a war crimes tribunal for the Bush administration, and the same green-jobs vision as Van Jones — should be the last person to promote a McCarthyite purge of “left-extremists” from the Obama administration.

Van Jones Seeks A ‘Healing For Our Politics’: ‘Let’s Be One Country’ »

White House green jobs advisor Van Jones is under attack from Fox News as an “avowed radical revolutionary communist” and from ABC News as a “truther” with a “history of incendiary and provocative remarks.” In an attempt to assassinate the character of Van Jones, the right-wing media are distorting his past political activism and cherry-picking Jones’s critiques of the pollution and injustice that still haunt this nation. However, Jones’s true record is one of turning away from anger and finding hope, abandoning division and seeking consensus.

Speaking at the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 in Las Vegas this August, Van Jones argued that “for all of the battleground politics that’s going on,” energy policy should be “the one place that should be a safe harbor for all of us.” Van Jones praised the “bipartisanship” of Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who as a representative from Los Angeles succeeded in getting “the first president ever to sign into law a green jobs act, President George W. Bush.” He recognized that the summit participants came to find a “healing for our politics” in a “common ground agenda”:

Many of you have taken chances to start companies, you’ve written books, you’ve been grassroots champions for the change that we need. And I think you’re seeking not just a healing for our economy or a healing for our planet, but a healing for our politics. And I want to acknowledge that many of us are here because we are seeking something deeper. This is the common ground agenda. It should be the common ground agenda. We should be able to come together as a country on this one. Finally.

Watch it:

Jones then explained that “the values that underlie this clean energy conversation” are “the common ground values of America.” Underlying the call for clean energy is the value that “clean air is better than dirty air for the health of our children.” Underlying the call for energy efficiency is that value that treating our country’s resources “with wisdom and respect is more important than wasting them.” And “if we have the opportunity to fight both poverty and pollution by putting people to work in these new industries, we would be wise as a country to do that.”

To extended applause, Van Jones explained that the Obama administration has committed $5 billion to improving the energy efficiency of low-income households because the same investment “that cut unemployment and cut an energy bill and cuts greenhouse gases is also going to cut asthma, and take asthma inhalers out of little girls’ and boys’ pockets.”

Jones discussed in further detail how President Obama’s clean energy agenda tears down traditional ideological divides by “asking questions progressives like” but “giving answers that conservatives should like”:

We’re asking questions progressives like but we’re giving answers that conservatives should like. We’re asking questions about how to move the needle on poverty and pollution and how we create more economic opportunity especially for people in the lower part of our economy. But the answers are answers that conservatives should like. We’re not talking about expanding welfare, we’re talking about expanding work. We’re not talking about expanding entitlements, we’re talking about expanding enterprise and investments. We’re not talking about redistributing existing wealth, we’re talking about reinventing an existing sector, and creating new wealth by unleashing innovation and entrepeneurship. This should be common ground. We should be able to stand together and be one country on this.

Jones concluded by again making the call for us to “be one country” and connect “the people that most need work” to the “work that most needs to be done”:

There is so much work that needs to be done in this country to retrofit America, to cut these energy bills. And there are so many people who need work. This is our opportunity as a country — and it comes around very rarely — to take the people that most need work, and connect them to the work that most needs to be done, to fight pollution and poverty at the same time, and be one country. Let’s be one country.

During the applause at the conclusion of Jones’s speech, prominent Republican oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens — who in 2004 funded the Swift Boat attacks on Sen. John Kerry — turned to Jones and shook his hand.

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Stung By Boycott, Beck Channels McCarthy: There Are ‘Communists’ Advising The President

On Tuesday night, Glenn Beck invoked the red-baiting of a bygone age, making the claim that there are “Communists in the United States government.” Beck’s McCarthyite rampage came during an extended screed attacking White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones, a former Center for American Progress senior fellow and the co-founder of Green for All, an environmental-entrepeneurial organization. After renouncing his “rowdy black nationalism” in 2000, Van Jones “has emerged as the perhaps the nation’s chief proponent of using business-based solutions to create jobs and clean up the environment.” However, Glenn Beck is convinced that Van Jones is a Communist sleeper agent in the White House:

I know there are good decent people, left and right, Democrats and Republicans that watch this program! How much more evidence do you need that we have radicals in the White House? Oh, we haven’t even begun. If you think you need more — We need to at least start having the necessary conversation of: Do we really want Communists in the United States government as special advisors to the president? To be honest with ya, and maybe it’s just me, I don’t even want Communists having lunch with our president. When Putin was having an hour with the president, I know he had to do it, but I wasn’t comfortable with it! Barack Obama did not campaign on openly changing the whole system.

Watch it:

In fact, Obama did campaign openly on a message of change. And hope.

Evidently, Beck is attacking Van Jones to divert attention from his accusations that President Obama is a “racist” who “hates white people.” A successful boycott by Color of Change, an organization co-founded by Van Jones in 2005 but with which he has had no active involvement since 2007, has led to 57 advertisers abandoning Beck’s show.

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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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

Obama: Global Warming Is A ‘Potentially Cataclysmic Disaster’

Speaking bluntly on the international stage on World Environment Day, President Barack Obama said this morning that the world has to “make some tough decisions” to forestall the “potentially cataclysmic disaster” of global warming. Obama made the remarks during a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Dresden, Germany before traveling to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Obama made it clear he believes the Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation will allow the United States to to retake the lead on global warming:

In terms of climate change, ultimately the world is going to need targets that it can meet. It can’t be general, vague approaches. We’re going to have to make some tough decisions and take concrete actions if we are going to deal with a potentially cataclysmic disaster. And we are seeing progress in Congress around energy legislation that would set up for the first time in the United States a cap and trade system. That process is moving forward in ways that I think if you had asked political experts two or three months ago would have seemed impossible. So I’m actually more optimistic than I was about America being able to take leadership on this issue, joining Europe, which over the last several years has been ahead of us on this issue.

Continuing, Obama explained that the “large carbon footprints” of the United States and Europe — 25 tons of greenhouse gases per person and 10.6 tons respectively — make it difficult to convince the developing world to take action:

As I told Chancellor Merkel, unless the United States and Europe, with our large carbon footprints, per capita carbon footprints, are willing to take some decisive steps, it’s going to be very difficult for us to persuade countries that on a per capita basis at least are still much less wealthy, like China or India, to take the steps that they’re going to need to take in controlling carbon emissions. So we are very committed to working together and hopeful that we can arrive in Copenhagen having displayed that commitment in concrete ways.

China and India’s carbon footprints, by way of contrast, are 5.7 and 2.2 tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent per person, according to the Yale Environmental Performance Index.

Sotomayor’s Environmental Wisdom

Our guest blogger is Reece Rushing, director of regulatory and information policy at American Progress.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s selection to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, is likely to be solid on the environment, based on her record on the Second Circuit of Appeals. In 2007, she authored the decision to strike down an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Water Act rule that had been corrupted by the Bush White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on behalf of energy companies. Georgetown law professor and American Progress affiliated scholar Lisa Heinzerling, now senior counsel for the EPA, explained at the time that Sotomayor’s Riverkeeper v. EPA decision was a “huge victory“:

In a huge victory for fish and other fans of the Clean Water Act, the Second Circuit last week ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency may not use cost-benefit analysis in setting standards for cooling water structures used at existing power plants around the country. . . .

The court ruled that the Clean Water Act does not permit the use of cost-benefit analysis in setting these standards or in allowing deviations from the standards. Quite reasonably, the court held that the agency could engage in a form of cost-effectiveness analysis in setting standards, by identifying the level of protection afforded by state-of-the-art technology and then allowing use of cheaper but equally effective technologies in meeting the standards. But the court clearly ruled out OIRA’s favorite technique for undoing regulatory advances, cost-benefit analysis.

As OMB Watch explained in 2002, EPA originally “sought to require the 59 largest plants in the most ecologically sensitive areas to meet the performance achievable by a closed-cycle cooling system, which reduces fish kills by up to 98 percent by recirculating or reusing water.” But by “ignoring the requirements of the law” and applying corporate-friendly cost-benefit analysis to the question of the “best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact”, OIRA “embraced alternative, less protective measures urged by energy companies — including Cinergy, Edison Electric, and Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G), among others.” Riverkeeper noted that this weaker rule “would allow existing plants to kill 20 to 1000 times more fish” than the stronger proposed mandate.

This April, Sotomayor’s decision was wrongly struck down by the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the 6-3 opinion to uphold Bush’s activist interpretation of the Clean Water Act, with Souter, Ruth Ginsberg, and John Stevens in dissent. Scalia’s decision reversed not only the Second Circuit decision but earlier Supreme Court precedent. Scalia effectively ruled that Congressional silence equals consent, writing that the Clean Water Act’s “silence is meant to convey nothing more than a refusal to tie the agency’s hands as to whether cost-benefit analysis should be used.” As Justice Stevens wrote in his dissent:

Section 316(b) neither expressly nor implicitly authorizes the EPA to use cost-benefit analysis when setting regulatory standards; fairly read, it prohibits such use.

If Sotomayor’s record on the Second Circuit is any guide, she will hold with Justice Souter’s example of putting science and the law above the interests of corporate polluters.

Download the Second Circuit opinion.

Download the Supreme Court decision.

Obama Nominates Superfund Polluter Lawyer To Run DOJ Environment Division

GM cleanup of the Bedford Superfund site.

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws. On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“:

Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create.

This February, General Electric lost an eight-year battle to “prove that parts of the Superfund law are unconstitutional.” One of the 600-person DOJ environmental division’s “primary responsibilities is to enforce federal civil and criminal environmental laws such as” the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund.

Before General Electric, Moreno worked as a corporate attorney at Spriggs and Hollingsworth. Moreno’s name is found in the Westlaw database as an attorney defending General Motors in another Superfund case, the GM Powertrain facility in Bedford, Indiana:

Historical uses and management of PCB containing hydraulic oils and PCB impacted materials has contaminated on-site areas as well as the sediment and floodplain soil within Bailey’s Branch and the Pleasant Run Creek watershed.

Although General Motors entered into an agreement in 2001 with the EPA to clean up the site, a number of local residents whose land has been contaminated by polychorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have sued for damages in Allgood v. GM (now Barlow v. GM), in a contentious and caustic dispute over cleanup, monitoring, and lost property values.

During the Clinton administration, Moreno was involved in another controversial case, unsuccessfully defending the Secretary of Commerce’s decision to weaken the dolphin-safe tuna standard. In Brower v. Daley, Earth Island Institute, The Humane Society of the United States, and other individuals and organizations brought suit against the United States government for actions that were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law,” winning their case in 2000.

At His Slush-Fund Think Tank, McCain Attacks Obama’s Cap And Trade As A ‘Giant Government Slush Fund’

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has been widely regaled as a “green” conservative for his plan to limit global warming pollution, today attacked President Obama’s clean energy plan as an “irresponsible, ill-conceived and distorted version of a cap-and-trade system.” Speaking at an energy forum convened by the Reform Institute, McCain reserved particular vitriol for Obama’s “proposal of auctioning 100 percent of the carbon credits“:

The president’s proposal of auctioning 100 percent of the carbon credits is bad economic policy that would cost businesses billions of dollars and allow for little-to-no transition into a low carbon system. I am a supporter of a strong cap-and-trade system, but I will not and cannot align myself with a giant government slush fund that will further burden our businesses and consumers.

In fact, full auctioning of carbon credits is needed to avoid polluter windfall profits. The principle is simple: Pollution permits have a dollar value, and giving them for free to covered emitters is equivalent to pork-barrel subsidies for the polluters. Economic modeling of cap-and-trade systems has found that permit giveaways do not reduce costs for consumers — they only increase polluter profits. McCain has claimed, “I oppose subsidies. Not just ethanol subsidies. Subsidies.” For some reason, this principle is being thrown out the window when it comes to subsidizing global warming pollution from the coal and oil industry.

Ironically, the Reform Institute — founded by McCain after his failed presidential bid in 2000 — is itself a slush fund, accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from corporations with business under McCain’s jurisdiction, employing McCain campaign staffers between his presidential runs.

Rep. Bob Latta: With Cap And Trade, Obama ‘Has Declared War On Ohio And Indiana’

Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH)

First-term congressman Bob Latta (R-OH) believes that President Obama’s energy reform policy means that Obama “has declared war on Ohio and Indiana.” Latta, who won his seat with the support of $34,250 in oil and gas money, claimed that setting standards for global warming pollution is tantamount to a military invasion of his state:

We could lose manufacturing jobs left and right. It kind of looks like the Obama administration has declared war on Ohio and Indiana. I’m concerned because we’ve got to keep people working. We want to keep people here.

Even using the industry’s own worst-case scenarios for the economic effects of cap and trade legislation, Ohio’s citizens would gain thousands of jobs and enjoy healthy economic growth. In 2007, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation commissioned a report on the economics of mandatory carbon reductions, using pessimistic assumptions about the flexibility of the economy to use renewable energy and energy efficiency. An analysis by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of NAM/ACCF’s study of cap and trade finds:

– According to the ACCF/NAM “high-cost case,” Ohio’s economy would grow 59%, while carbon emissions would fall by 36%.

– Under the ACCF/NAM high-cost case forecast under a carbon cap program, in 2030 average Ohioans will be about 58 percent richer than in 2007.

– With the increase in state revenues over time, Ohio could reduce the average classroom size in school system by 20 percent, and still increase support for all other state and local services by 54 percent.

– Under the ACCF/NAM high-cost case forecast, 6.31 million people will have jobs in 2030, an 11.8 percent increase.

“This forecast takes no account of the increased job opportunities that will result through investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy,” the PERI authors note. “Clean energy investments produce roughly 3.5 times more jobs per dollar than spending on oil, coal, and natural gas, because they require relatively more spending on people and lesson equipment, and because they require fewer imports.”

These jobs would come from companies like First Solar of Perrysburg, Great Lakes Window of Walbridge, Northwest Ohio Wind Energy of Grover Hill, and American Ag Fuels of Defiance, among many other innovative green-economy manufacturers in Rep. Latta’s district.

The Bush-Cheney pro-pollution economy, by contrast, has been devastating for Ohio: more than 1,087 companies shut down or had mass layoffs, costing 180,264 Ohioans their jobs, even as Ohio was hit by severe droughts in 2002, 2005, and 2007 — as well as 2007’s catastrophic flood.

Perhaps Rep. Latta meant to say that President Obama’s clean energy plan is declaring war on Ohio’s economic struggles.