The Wonk Room

Pollution Industry Says ‘It’s Scary’ To Think Of Waxman In Charge Of Climate Legislation»

This week, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) announced his intent to replace Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) as chair of the House Energy Commerce & Committee, which has jurisdiction over global warming legislation. On Thursday, Dingell told WJR Radio’s Frank Beckmann that Waxman is an “anti-manufacturing left-wing Democrat” with a “serious lack of understanding of people in the auto industry and manufacturing generally.”

Representatives of major greenhouse gas-emitting industries have also recoiled at the prospect of Waxman being in charge instead of Dingell.

R. Bruce Josten, the top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “took issue with the idea of a Waxman-led committee given the Californian’s support for far more aggressive greenhouse emission limits compared with Dingell,” telling E&E News, “It’s scary, isn’t it?”

The Chamber’s public comments reinforce the anonymous “refining industry insider” who told E&E News “all hell will break loose legislatively” if Waxman won.

The coal lobby has also weighed in on this dispute. Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association, told Bloomberg News that Waxman likely would be “a very slow learner on the importance of coal for affordable energy. It would have been problematic in the best of times to have Mr. Waxman’s views prevail.”

Climate Progress’s Joe Romm responds, “If actually trying to prevent catastrophic global warming is ’scary’ then all I can say is ‘Boo!‘”

Digg it!

UPDATE: Josten and Popovich are the top figures in the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth, the front group formed in 2001 to promote the Cheney energy bill.

UPDATE 2: In 2006, the New Republic’s Bradford Plumer wrote this review of Dingell’s impact on clean-air legislation during his 50-year tenure: More »

McCain Calls Offshore Drilling ‘Alternative Energy’»

This morning, CNBC’s Larry Kudlow asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) what his plan was “to create some recovery in the stock market.” McCain replied:

Keep taxes low, cut spending, create jobs with alternative energy including nuclear power plants, including drilling offshore, wind, tide, solar, free us from our sending $700 billion or whatever it is across to countries that don’t like us very much, free up credit.

Watch it:

Even though the term “alternative energy” is vague, under no rational interpretation does the entirely conventional practice of offshore oil drilling qualify. As the ExxonMobil website describes the offshore areas that were formerly covered by the 27-year moratorium lifted this month, those reserves are “conventional“: More »

Is There Anything Palin Doesn’t Like ‘Tapping Into’?»

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) gave a speech on energy policy at a solar energy company, in her words, “in a manner with much substance.” She repeatedly went off the script of her prepared remarks (as Jed Lewison and Ana Marie Cox have noted), using many of her favorite locutions. One of her most common rogue phrases was a call for tapping into various sources of, well, just about anything. Her approach exposes the conservative ideology that all forms of energy are created equal; that details like cost, pollution, and long-term consequences are immaterial.

Watch it:

For those watching at home, here’s the list:

Of that list, only natural gas is a resource that can be literally “tapped into.” Palin’s use of an oil industry metaphor to describe all forms of energy and innovation is consistent with the mindset of supply-side exploitation, a dangerously simplistic approach to energy policy that only considers the short-term profit interests of energy corporations. Some of her off-script “tapping” remarks had some policy “meat,” such as her attack on solar energy:

We have many many alternative sources that have not yet been tapped into and allowed to become economic and reliable. That’s the key, of course, is the reliability of these alternative sources.

This false attack on the unreliability of renewable energy is one both she and McCain have made before.

The Prepared Text For Sarah Palin’s Love Letter To Big Oil [Updated]»

UPDATE: At Climate Progress, Joe Romm notes that Palin’s prepared remarks make it unambiguous that McCain won’t regulate global warming pollution.

UPDATE II: We’ve updated the text with her speech as delivered. Jed Lewison notes one of her more amusing revisions. Gristmill’s David Roberts calls the speech “bizarre.” Ana Marie Cox describes the travails of the teleprompter operator.

UPDATE III: Former vice president Al Gore will be delivering a true energy policy speech tonight, in a live webcast at 8:30 PM as part of the Energy Action Coalition’s Power Vote campaign for youth climate activism.

Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) just completed a “major” speech on energy policy, in which she offered no new policy, nor recognized the existence of global warming. She delivered her speech at the headquarters of the Xunlight Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, a producer of flexible thin-film photovoltaic solar panels — despite her earlier mockery of such technology:

Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.

This hypocritical choice is just following the lead of her running mate. In May, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a speech on global warming at the U.S. headquarters of a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, after decades of opposition to the domestic renewable energy industry.

Below is the text of her prepared remarks — a half-hour love letter to Big Oil. Please note, however, that Palin went off-script repeatedly, throwing in such catchphrases from the campaign as “Drill, baby, drill,” “He’s got the scars to prove it,” “Maverick of the Senate,” and several digs at journalists.

UPDATE: Palin’s off-script remarks are in red.

Thank you all very much. I appreciate the hospitality of Xunlight Energy, and all the people of Toledo. The folks at Xunlight are doing great work for this community and our country. I’m so excited about this, Thank you for your hospitality, again doctor, thank you. Good, good things being said about this corporation as you’re progressing with the solar panels and understanding alternative energy sources. So necessary as a piece of the puzzle that we’re working on. I know my state of Alaska is certainly working on this. All that we can do to put the pieces together to allow our nation to become energy secure.

More »

Sununu’s Newfound Opposition To Big Oil»

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) is a longstanding supporter of big oil companies, and they have been kind to him. During his career, he received $265,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests. To obscure his support for ExxonMobil and friends, Sununu brags about his opposition to big oil subsidies. In a debate on October 21st with former governor Jeanne Shaheen, Sununu said, “We also repealed tax subsidies for oil companies, which I supported.”

But seconds later he was forced to admit he supported tax breaks for big oil before he opposed them. He gave a tortured explanation for filibustering a bill that would have closed oil tax loopholes last December:

I was the deciding vote . . . I voted to take a large tax package off a conservation bill because it would have killed the bill. You’re correct about that vote, but it was on the legislation to raise fuel efficiency standards for cars, something I supported and wanted to see signed into law. If that tax package had stayed on the bill, it would have been dead, killed, vetoed, no conservation measures, no improvement in fuel efficiency standards.

Watch it:

Sununu’s record on breaks for big oil is clear — it’s identical to Bush’s policy. Here are the facts. In 2007, Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) made three attempts to eliminate billions of dollars of big oil tax breaks. And three times, Senator Sununu voted “Nay”: More »

McCain’s Opposition To Energy Independence»

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In the third and final presidential debate on October 15, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said one of his goals is that “we become energy independent and we will create millions of jobs in America.”

However, he conclusively demonstrated that he advocates policies that will achieve neither “energy independence” nor “millions of jobs.”

Plank #1: Nukes, Baby, Nukes

Sen. McCain said that to achieve “energy independence…. We have to have nuclear power.”

Building 100 new nuclear plants, as he has proposed, will do nothing to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Nuclear power generates approximately 20% of U.S. electricity, while oil produces less than 2%, and only 2% of oil use goes to producing electricity.

Nuclear power will not lead to energy independence because the U.S. must import over 90% of its uranium, with nearly one-third coming from Russia. If we double the number of nuclear plants, as McCain has called for, we would become even more dependent on countries that, in McCain’s words, “don’t like us very much.” More »

How Deregulation Killed The Wild West»

Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, a documentary filmmaker whose film, “A Snow Mobile For George,” is being featured tonight in Washington, D.C., by Reel Progress.

Back on January 13, 2004, when I left Los Angeles loaded down with cameras, winter gear, and a threadbare credit card, few, if any heads would turn at the mention of “deregulation.” Head movement would be limited to a nod, as in “nod out.”

Wall Street’s wipe out changes that. Now we realize that we let the fox into the hen house, and now the fox wants to be reimbursed for the chickens he ate. But, when I set out to make “A Snow Mobile for George,” a film about environmental deregulation, the concept of deregulation was too abstract for most viewers. That’s why I picked the environment because the effects of deregulation had no place to hide. My drive across America, trailing my two-stroke snowmobile, looking for tales of environmental deregulation, didn’t turn up a lot of joy. The reason why should not have surprised me. Simply put, the same deregulation that mangled the environment, also ruined people’s lives. Watch the trailer:

This discovery hit us hard out on a snow-covered ridge in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. A tall cowboy told us his land had been invaded by oil companies. They had come onto his land, uninvited, looking for natural gas — “Coal Bed Methane.” The companies drilled four wells every 80 acres, built roads, installed pipe lines, pumped away his water supplies, polluted his top-soil, installed noisy pressure stations, damaged the natural vegetation, and he had almost no say in the matter. He has been virtually forced off his own private land. More »

Repower America? ABC Says No»

Since September, Al Gore’s We Campaign has been running their Repower America advertisement that criticizes the “hundreds of millions of dollars” that big oil spends on lobbyists and ads to keep Americans “stuck with dirty and expensive energy.” Coverage of the presidential race by the corporate media has been fueled by this dirty money — CNN is sponsored by the coal industry, and CBS by Exxon Mobil. And following Tuesday’s presidential debate, ABC aired one of Chevron’s greenwashing “Human Energy” ads. But ABC refused to air “Repower America.”

A spokesperson for the Alliance for Climate Protection, the We Campaign’s parent organization, sent the Wonk Room ABC’s excuse:

Per our Guidelines, national buildings may be used in advertising provided the depictions are incidental to the advertiser’s promotion of the product or service. Given the messages and themes of this commercial, the image of the Capital building is not incidental to this advertising. Please replace the image with one that is not of another national building or monument. Thank you.

Here’s the offending image, on screen for one second:

While running ads calling for conservation and depicting happy children and unspoiled nature, Chevron was simultaneously expanding its operations in the tar sands of Alberta, Canada and oil fields of the Niger Delta, and lobbying to lift the offshore drilling moratorium.

Cathy Zoi, CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection, sent the following message to the 1.6 million members of the We Campaign:

I sent a letter asking ABC to reconsider their decision and put our ad on the air, but still we haven’t heard back more than a week later. I think they need to hear from all of us. Can you help? Please send a message to ABC and tell them to air the Repower America ad this Friday on 20/20. Just click here:

http://www.wecansolveit.org/ABC

We’re working to get 100,000 public comments to ABC before 20/20’s next airing.

Our Repower America ad has a clear and simple message — that massive spending by oil and coal companies on advertising is a key reason our nation hasn’t switched to clean and renewable sources for our energy.

UPDATE 10/10/08: Cathy Zoi writes:

In just 24 hours, more than 100,000 folks sent messages to ABC in support of airing our Repower America ad. But we still haven’t heard from ABC.

Sierra Club Helps Promote Pickens Plan On Debate Night»

At 10 PM tonight, the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope and right-wing oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens began a live-streamed chat that had been advertised across the Internet as an “e-rally” in response to the presidential debate. Pickens and Pope previously met in a discussion moderated by Center for American Progress Action Fund president John Podesta, in which the three found common ground on the question of getting off our dependence on oil.

Under the banner of the Pickens Plan to increase wind and natural gas use, Pickens and other natural gas titans are fueling a major campaign to support Proposition 10 in California, which would give $5 billion in taxpayer money to natural gas companies. Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a Pickens company, has spent $3.8 million directly pushing Prop 10.

Although the Sierra Club opposes Prop 10, it has raised no money to block the measure, according to state records.

At the Huffington Post, Josh Nelson notes that Pickens met with Sarah Palin last week and said, “she gets this energy situation.” As the Wonk Room has pointed out before, this is an absurd claim. Pickens’ early emphasis on wind power has faded to a message primarily pushing natural gas. Sadly, like Palin, Pickens also refuses to accept that man-made global warming is a crisis. He has refused to work with Al Gore, saying “global warming is on page two for me.”

The “e-rally” site allows visitors to send an endorsement of the problem-filled Pickens Plan to the presidential candidates.

UPDATE: On the Sierra Club’s Wild Blog, Matt Kirby wrote this July about Pickens:

He has no interest in conservation and no interest in greening our energy supply. He’s merely interested in energy independence and if that involves renewable energy, not to mention if he can make billions off of it, then so be it. He made it clear that he wants more domestic drilling than even John McCain. In his own words: “McCain says, ‘OK off the east and west coast.’ I say east, west coast and ANWR—get it all!”

So let me get this straight. We can’t drill our way out of this problem, but we should drill everything anyway? Could there perhaps be some lingering vested interests for T. Boone?

Palin’s ‘Safe’ And ‘Environmentally Friendly’ Drilling: Millions Of Gallons Of Oil Spills»

In the vice-presidential debate last week and on the campaign trail today, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — the person McCain has tapped as his “energy expert” — is repeating the absurd claim that oil and gas drilling is “safe” and “environmentally friendly.” Watch it:

But saying it’s so don’t make it so. Normal drilling operations cause significant pollution, environmental damage, and of course have tremendous global warming impacts. And frequent oil spills caused by global-warming-fueled storms mean that drilling is anything but “environmentally friendly.”

A new analysis by the Associated Press shows that Hurricane Ike “destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines,” resulting in: “At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marches, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas.” The Coast Guard has responded to more than 3,000 pollution reports. “At times, a new spill or release was reported to the Coast Guard every five minutes to 10 minutes.”

Ike’s enormously destructive wreckage adds further proof that conservatives’ claims regarding the safety of offshore oil drilling are totally false. With the “drill, baby, drill” chant, conservatives repeatedly insisted that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “didn’t spill a drop” of oil. Even the Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, claimed that during Katrina and Rita, “there was not one case where we had a situation with oil or gas being spilled in the environment.” This is a lie: Those hurricanes caused 595 different oil spills, totalling 9 million gallons.

Sadly, the clear evidence of Ike’s environmental damage comes just days after House progressives caved to conservative pressure and allowed the ban on offshore oil drilling to expire, potentially clearing the way for hundreds of new rigs to be built — and for just as many opportunities for new oil spills to be created. As Palin might say, “Spill, baby, spill!“

Palin’s Bad Oil Math»

In tonight’s debate, Palin suggested that the “$700 billion” the U.S. spends a year on imported oil (the figure is actually closer to $536 billion) could be replaced by domestic sources. She further claimed that Alaska’s “energy” supply (by which she means only oil) is helping America on the path to energy independence.

But the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler points out that “various government agencies” have concluded that “crude oil production could be increased at most between 1 and 3 million barrels per day, on top of the 5 million barrels a year already produced domestically. The United States currently consumes about 20 million barrels annually, so an expansion of domestic drilling would make barely a dent in that amount unless consumption also is reduced.”

On Energy, Exxon Advises Palin, Palin Advises McCain»

On behalf of the oil and natural gas industry, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) has opposed federal protections for the polar bear, whose existence is threatened by drilling operations and their global warming pollution. A new report from the Guardian reveals that the “science” Palin relies upon to claim all is hunky dory in Alaska comes from notoriously right-wing flaks funded by Big Oil. It has been previously revealed that Palin suppressed the work of her state’s staff scientists. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington explains Palin’s use of climate change skeptics:

In official submissions to the US government’s consultation on the status of the polar bear, Palin and her team referred to at least six scientists who have questioned either the existence of warming as a largely man-made phenomenon or its severity. One paper was partly funded by the US oil company Exxon Mobil.

Palin’s complaint to the Department of Interior cited the pre-publication Exxon Mobil paper — “Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change” — six times, and even attached a copy. “Polar bears” was eventually published by the obscure Journal of Ecological Complexity, with funding not only by Exxon Mobil, but also the American Petroleum Institute (Big Oil’s lobbying shop), and the Koch Industries money machine:

This paper was authored by Alaskan scientist Markus Dyck, Timothy Ball, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, and David Legates. All but Dyck are notorious climate skeptics with extensive ties to the Exxon-Bush right wing machine. As polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher told the Alaska Daily News, “I would venture to guess that, beyond Markus Dyck, none of them had ever seen a polar bear.”

Palin, McCain’s Energy Czar: ‘Weaning Ourselves’ Off Of Oil By Using More»

Written with Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has handed to Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), his running mate, the responsibility of handling his “energy independence” agenda — much as George Bush did with Dick Cheney. On NPR this morning, McCain expressed his devotion to her, saying, “I’ve already turned to Governor Palin particularly on energy issues.” In an interview last night with Katie Couric of CBS, Palin — who McCain claims “understands the energy issues better than anybody I know in Washington, D.C.” — outlined her plan for America’s energy future. What she says she wants to do is inarguable:

We need to make sure that our nation’s taking those steps to become energy independent. . . I support all that we can do to reduce emissions and to clean up this planet.

However, the steps McCain-Palin would take to “become energy independent” and “reduce emissions” would in fact achieve the exact opposite.

PALIN PLAN #1. ‘Weaning Ourselves Off The Hydrocarbons’ By Drilling For More.

And it’s why we should have started ten years ago tapping into domestic supplies that America is so rich in. Alaska has billions of barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas onshore and offshore. . . Of course ramping up supplies domestically is a key to that. But so is weaning ourselves off the hydrocarbons.

FACT: Oil and natural gas are hydrocarbons. Weaning ourselves off them, by definition, means using less, not more.

PALIN PLAN #2. Energy Independence By ‘Tapping Into The Nuclear.’

Also tapping into the nuclear, the clean coal, to biomass, geothermal, tides, waves, all those things that we have as alternative energy sources, it’s gotta be an all-of-the-above approach to energy independence.

FACTS: The U.S. imports over 90 percent of the uranium used in nuclear plants. Russia is the number one uranium supplier to the U.S. And key components for new plants are only built overseas. More »

Colbert Parodies Big Oil’s Greenwashing Propaganda»

In last night’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert eviscerated the Drill, Baby, Drill hoax (”last week, the Democrat Congress voted to lift the 26-year ban on offshore drilling, thereby ending our dependence on foreign oil by one percent ten to twenty years from now”) before training his sights on Big Oil’s greenwashing propaganda. After airing clips from advertisements of Exxon Mobil, Valero, and Chevron, Colbert asks:

A lot of people talk about loving the earth. But how many of them actually penetrate it?

Watch it:

The parody promotional video Colbert airs in this segment is from Prescott Oil, part of the fictional Prescott Group corporate conglomerate that Colbert has used to skewer pharmaceutical industries.

The fossil-fuel industry is on track to spend one billion dollars this year propagandizing oil, coal and natural gas. As the Public Campaign Action Fund found, “In the first half of 2008, the major industry players, American Petroleum Institute, BP, Chevron Texaco, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Hess Corporation, and Royal Dutch Shell, spent $92.2 million on broadcast and cable advertising; $14.9 million on radio advertising; $57.5 million on print advertising in magazines and newspapers; $5.3 million on Internet advertising; and $4.0 million on other media.”

Green Jobs Now, Or Newt’s Two-Cent Solution?»

In a new video, Green Jobs Now compares Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” propaganda to the Green Jobs Now green recovery agenda. Newt fares poorly. Watch it:

The Green Jobs Now Day of Action is this Saturday, September 27. Thousands of Americans will be calling for investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and job training for people who are ready to get to work building a more just and sustainable economy.

Newt Gingrich’s “Solutions Day” is this Saturday, September 27. He’ll be calling for more drilling, privatizing health care and Social Security, and slashing corporate taxes.

Who will you join this weekend?

UPDATE: Adi at 1Sky reports: “We’re up to 558 events in all 50 states!” At SolveClimate, David Sassoon writes: “And the coalition now has a secret weapon: Patrick, and his caulk gun. Shock and Awe has met its match.”

Pipeline Palin’s Crusade Against Polar Bears»

Our guest blogger is Deborah Brennan, a journalist in Southern California.

Drowning in the gaps left by melting Arctic ice, the polar bears of Alaska have become one of the first creatures to make the endangered species list because of global warming. This was a double blow to Big Oil, as the industry’s pollution is responsible for climate change, and the polar bear seas are sitting on billions of dollars worth of oil and gas. So Gov. Sarah “Pipeline” Palin (R-AK), literally married to the oil industry, is facing down the half-ton carnivore in her legal sights — proving herself more environmentally extreme than Texas oilman Bush.

When the Bush administration reluctantly proposed listing the polar bear as a threatened species early this year, Pipeline Palin sided with the oil and gas industry and countered with a New York Times Op-Ed opposing the federal listing and then, once the administration went through this May, with a lawsuit against its implementation.

Now, it’s hard to believe that anyone not holed up in a militia compound could adopt a position more unfriendly to the Endangered Species Act than Bush and Cheney, but Palin made it clear that the administration was going a bit soft and green on the matter. What’s more, she maintained:

My decision is based on a comprehensive review by state wildlife officials of scientific information from a broad range of climate, ice and polar bear experts.

When University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner sought a copy of that review, the Anchorage Daily News reported, he was informed that the documents he requested would cost $468,784. (Apparently the cost of photocopies has gone up since the Freedom of Information Act was enacted.) Steiner subsequently obtained e-mail records indicating that Alaska state biologists actually supported the listing. He told the Anchorage Daily News:

Even the petroleum-loving Bush administration couldn’t find a way around the science on this issue.

The clear scientific evidence of global warming’s effects was airily dismissed by Palin as “uncertain modeling of possible effects.” In a June, 2008 interview with conservative pundit Glenn Beck, Palin maintained that polar bears are “very, very healthy,” and that “the number of polar bears has risen dramatically in the last 30 years.” In fact, Congressional testimony on the polar bear cites a 17 percent drop in the Southern Beaufort Sea populations since the 1980s, with reductions in skull size, cub survival and adult male weight.

Those declines coincide with the catastropic loss of sea ice on which the bears live — a direct result of climate change, which Palin also dismisses.

In August, Pipeline Palin sued the Fish and Wildlife Service over the polar bear listing. It appears that the person Sen. McCain (R-AZ) plans to put in charge of government reform has pulled a page from the Bush playbook — when faced with findings unfavorable to Big Oil, simply deny the data, silence the scientists, and jam up the courts.

This post was submitted through our Blog Fellows program. Make your own contribution — and get paid for it — by clicking here.

Meet The Bloggers Meets The Wonk Room: Big Oil Against The Future»

This week on Meet the Bloggers, journalist and author Simran Sethi will be the special guest to discuss the environment, sustainability, and Big Oil. Joining Sethi will be bloggers Kevin Grandia (DeSmogBlog.com), Kate Sheppard (Gristmill), and yours truly, who will discuss energy, environment, and the economy. Watch it live now:

Revolting: GM Executive Bob Lutz Denies Global Warming, Trashes His Company’s Car»

General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz, on the 100th anniversary of GM’s founding, appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show last night, and embarassed his company. Lutz, unfortunately for this aging industrial giant, is a Luddite, supporting the most extreme crackpot denials of the science of climate change and attacking the Volt — GM’s next-generation hybrid automobile that can run entirely on electricity for trips of 40 miles or less — as a weak, unattractive car. His extremism was barely matched by Colbert’s parodic statements:

Colbert: Why not just call this the Chevy Gore? You don’t believe global warming is real, you’ve said so.

Lutz: I accept that the planet is heated, but I, like many noted scientists, I don’t believe in the CO2 theory.

Colbert: Exactly! I just think that people are leaving their toaster ovens open. [Or] it’s just sun-spot activity.

Lutz: In the opinion of about 32,000 of the world’s leading scientists, yes.

Watch it:

Lutz’s “32,000 of the world’s leading scientists” nonsense is taken from press releases by the right-wing industry-funded Heartland Institute, amplified by right-wing blogs and radio shows. This is a zombie lie, which was begun in 1998 by the right-wing industry-funded Oregon Institute. The National Academy of Sciences, whose name was misleadingly used, issued this warning on April 20, 1998:

The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science.

One might think Lutz was merely joking along, but this February, Lutz called global warming “a total crock of shit.” General Motors deserves better leadership, particularly when its economic future depends on escaping the suicidal oil-based economy that has driven the company to the brink. As Max Gladwell writes:

The irony is that Lutz and his ilk are buying this Big Oil propaganda. Meanwhile, his company’s cozy relationship with Big Oil has lead them to the verge of bankruptcy, unless American taxpayers come through with a bailout. The supreme irony is that the bailout is to help GM meet efficiency standards that it needs to achieve anyway to stay competitive with foreign automakers. When will they learn?

UPDATE: The Seminal’s Josh Nelson notes, “On their website, GM claims to be concerned about the environment. They even specifically address their greenhouse gas emissions:”

There is no question that our products and manufacturing facilities have an impact on the environment. Not only do internal combustion engines produce emissions and greenhouse gases, but in the process of building millions of vehicles per year, our manufacturing facilities emit CO2 and greenhouse gases as well. The good news is that GM is hard at work trying to reduce our impact on the environment.

We Campaign Takes On ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Propaganda Machine»

Last month, the Wonk Room reported that the oil and coal industries and their conservative allies are spending two million dollars a day “to influence public opinion and public policy” this year. Most visible in this lobbying, advertising, and campaign donating machine has been Newt Gingrich’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign, which has successfully driven the energy debate onto the false shoals of expanded drilling.

Evidently, Al Gore and the We Campaign have had enough. They’ve released a new ad, which they hope to run on national television, directly attacking industry propaganda and making reference to the recent sex, drugs, and oil scandal rocking the Bush administration.

Watch it:

The policy goal underlying the “Drill, Baby, Drill” message — lifting decades-old protections on America’s lands and waters — would help only Big Oil’s already obscene profits. But the primary political goal has been to prevent Congress from enacting genuine change, by killing climate legislation, blocking renewable energy investments and standards like those called for by the We Campaign, demonizing biofuels, and corrupting the media — drilling us deeper into the pollution economy just when we need to build our way out.

Today, Center for American Progress Action Fund fellow Bracken Hendricks is testifying before the House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming about the Center’s plan for a Green Recovery. You can watch watch the webcast live at 1:30 pm.

The Green Jobs Now Day of Action, on September 27, is now little more than a week away.

Transcript: More »

Exposing The Big Oil Lie: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’»

Even as the sordid details of the Drill, Baby, Drill sex, drugs, and oil scandal in the Minerals Management Service are revealed, conservatives continue to press their drill-drill-drill agenda in Congress. They continue to repeat the Big Oil lie that opening America’s coasts to further drilling would lower gas prices, despite the clear finding by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) that lifting the offshore drilling moratorium would not affect oil prices.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the news media has mindlessly amplified that lie. The hundreds of broadcasts on “proposed drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive zones in the United States” almost completely ignored the EIA report:

CNN — whose news coverage is sponsored by the coal and oil industry — was particularly egregious, talking about the drill-drill-drill agenda 139 times but mentioning the EIA’s debunk only once on August 7 (actually, I was able to find one other mention that same day).

From the American News Project comes a telling video report on how conservatives are “just lying to the American public” by promising lower gas prices from expanded drilling. Climate Progress’s Joe Romm is interviewed, and he explains the dirty money connection:

It is conservatives who get ad campaigns and who get contributions from the oil companies. The oil companies get bigger profits when oil prices are high. So it is not surprising that conservatives have for twenty-five years opposed higher fuel economy standards. And it is not surprising that conservatives have steadfastly opposed alternative energy and renewable energy. They don’t want people to get off of fossil fuels and traditional energy because conservatives get paid by those companies.

Digg It!

Watch it: More »

The Drill, Baby, Drill Scandal»

Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

During the Republican National Convention, delegates repeatedly demonstrated their obsession with offshore oil drilling by chanting “drill, baby, drill!” It turns out they were literally describing the relationship between Department of Interior royalty collectors and the oil industry.

Multiple reports released on September 10 by the Department of Interior Inspector General found that the Mineral Management Service officials responsible for collecting royalties from oil and gas producers are accused of accepting gifts, trips, and special favors from producers. The report described “A culture of ethical failure… [and] a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity.” These government overseers also abused alcohol and cocaine with officials from energy companies that they were supposed to collect royalties from, and “had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

The MMS employees are responsible for collecting royalties from producers for oil and gas produced on public lands, which can be paid in cash or “royalty in kind.” The latter allows the producer to pay its royalties by delivering oil and gas to the federal government, which is either stored in government reserves or sold on the open market. The total royalty tab is about $10 billion annually, and is one of the largest sources of federal revenue aside from taxes.

The DOI Inspector General previously found that the Department under collected billions of dollars of revenue owed the U.S. taxpayer from oil companies that produce and sell oil and gas from public lands and waters. The IG found that DOI provides mediocre oversight of oil and gas companies to ensure that they are paying the full royalties owed to the U.S. treasury. The result was billions of dollars of uncollected royalties owed to the federal government. These officials, in effect, helped subsidize oil companies already engorged with record profits that averaged $236 per driver over the past year.

This “sex, drugs, and oil” agency is the same one that would oversee the expansion of offshore oil drilling into protected ocean areas. No wonder coastal businesses that depend on clean beaches and ocean are so worried about the potential for harm from expansion of offshore oil drilling from Malibu to Miami to Maine. The federal watchdogs are in bed with the oil companies that they are supposed to oversee.

Palin Isn’t An Energy Expert — She Doesn’t Even Unde