Related Links:

Annie Leonard misses the mark in her new video, “The Story of Cap-and-Trade”

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

On ‘climategate’

Related Links:

Annie Leonard misses the mark in her new video, “The Story of Cap-and-Trade”

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Related Links:

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles

Seven reasons for optimism about the Senate climate bill

Remember how Mitt Romney joined with the other GOP presidential candidates in appearing to support California in its quest to gain a waiver from the U.S. EPA to allow it to regulate vehicle CO2 emissions? How Romney said, and we quote, "I side with states being able to make their own decisions, even if I don't always agree with the decisions they make"? Well, the Mittster, a fervent Big Auto supporter, has flip-flopped clarified his position: he favors state regulations for some pollutants, but that list does not include carbon dioxide. "It makes more sense to have one set of federal rules to address CO2 emissions from vehicles rather than a patchwork of different state regulations," he said in a statement. Well, at least his inconsistency is consistent.

Related Links:

December 19—the day after COP15

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Related Links:

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles

N.Y. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand answers Grist’s questions on the Kerry-Boxer bill

John McCain has won the Florida Republican primary, a race that pundits prophesy may decide the GOP nominee for president. Environmental issues may have played a part; McCain got a boost in the state when he was endorsed by popular and climate-conscious Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. In pre-race campaigning, McCain took heat from main rival Mitt Romney for his pro-environment policies -- but while that strategy worked in Michigan, it didn't play out in Florida. Read up on McCain's environmental platform and record in this fact sheet, and check out his interview with Grist.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Related Links:

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles

U.S. pushes for compromise in Copenhagen climate talks

Related Links:

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles

George LeMieux (R-Fla.)

In his victory speech after triumphing in the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, Barack Obama called on Americans to come together to make "energy cleaner" -- but environmental issues weren't a notable factor in the state's contest. Green concerns are more visible in Florida, where Republicans are currently duking it out in advance of Tuesday's primary there. On Sunday, campaigning in the state, Mitt Romney bashed John McCain's Senate climate-change bill, claiming it would put a "financial burden" on Americans and kill 300,000 jobs. But McCain got a boost this weekend when he won the endorsement of Florida's popular and climate-conscious governor, Charlie Crist. "I'm honored and privileged," McCain said. "And I intend to work very closely with [Crist] on the issues. ... We are going to have to work together to save the Everglades and other great environmental treasures of this state." McCain sounded less green in last week's GOP debate, in which he double-talked his way through an explanation of his climate bill.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

Related Links:

Annie Leonard misses the mark in her new video, “The Story of Cap-and-Trade”

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles

Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama to win the Democratic caucuses in Nevada on Saturday, getting 51 percent of the vote compared to Obama's 45 (and John Edwards' dismal 4). The economy was the top concern among Nevada voters surveyed, but the environment may have played a role too. Clinton tried to gain an edge in the state by touting her pledge to shut down the embattled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site, which is under construction 90 miles from Las Vegas. Obama too opposes Yucca Mountain, but Clinton raised questions about his commitment by pointing out that he's gotten a number of campaign donations from employees of Exelon, a major nuclear company that supports the waste dump. (Of course, Clinton's got nuclear industry donors of her own who also want Yucca's doors open.) Now it's on to South Carolina, where the Democratic primary will be held on Jan. 26.

The Republican primary in South Carolina came a week ahead of the Democratic one, and John McCain took the prize, besting second-place finisher Mike Huckabee. In Nevada, Mitt Romney was the decisive victor of the GOP caucuses. The next important Republican contest is the Jan. 29 primary in Florida, where green issues are big with voters (just ask the state's governor, Republican Charlie Crist).

Find out more about the presidential contenders' environmental stances in Grist's special series, "How Green Is Your Candidate?"

Related Links:

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Mitt Romney won Michigan's Republican primary on Tuesday, after whacking John McCain for supporting tougher fuel-economy regulations and promoting "radical climate change legislation." Romney portrayed himself as a defender of Michigan's floundering auto industry and said the automakers shouldn't be burdened with having to produce more fuel-efficient cars. McCain also got broadsided by an anti-environment front group, the American Environmental Coalition, whose members include many people with close links to the Romney campaign. Said an AEC co-chair, "When it comes to climate change, John McCain and Al Gore are far too much alike for my comfort. John McCain has been sponsoring legislation for the past several years that would give Al Gore much of the regulatory control and power he sought when he and Bill Clinton tried to get America to sign on to the UN's Kyoto global warming treaty." The Michigan outcome was a big blow to McCain after his New Hampshire win last week, in which he seemed to get a boost from talking about fighting climate change.

Update: George Landrith, co-chair of the American Environmental Coalition, says neither he nor his organization made the statement comparing John McCain and Al Gore.

Related Links:

For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow

John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles

Carl Levin (D-Mich.) [UPDATED]

Related Links:

Carl Levin (D-Mich.) [UPDATED]

Health care, climate, and the progressive movement

Michigan to Granholm: We want clean energy

John McCain and Mitt Romney have been sparring over fuel-efficiency standards lately (among other things) as the two seek to position themselves to win tomorrow's Republican presidential primary in Michigan. Recent polls have forecast a close race between the two in the state. For his part, McCain has been vocal about supporting the new vehicle fuel-efficiency standards that were passed by Congress and signed into law late last year. "I have great faith in the automobile industry that they'll be able to meet these CAFE standards," McCain said. Romney, who has been trying to cast himself as a champion of the auto industry, criticized McCain for supporting the tougher standards, saying they would handicap the industry. "Look, you can't keep on throwing anvils at Michigan and the auto industry and then say, how come they are not swimming well?" he said. The two campaigns have also been feuding over SUVs, with McCain's camp accusing Romney of supporting a tax increase on SUVs while campaigning for governor of Massachusetts.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Update: Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race on Feb. 7, 2008.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney isn't convinced humans are a big contributor to climate change, but he supports efforts that would cut greenhouse-gas emissions while pushing America toward energy independence. As governor of Massachusetts from January 2003 to January 2007, he got off to a promising start on a green issues, but then repeatedly angered the state's environmental community [PDF].

Watch Romney talk about energy independence and climate change on CNBC on Feb. 8, 2007:

Watch Romney answer a question about mandatory caps on carbon emissions at a town hall meeting in Iowa on May 31, 2007:

What did we miss? Tell us below in comments. We'll update this page as the presidential campaign continues.

Todd Hymas Samkara and Kate Sheppard contributed to this fact sheet.

Related Links:

Health care, climate, and the progressive movement

Franken win means another likely Senate vote for climate action

Los Angeles rejects solar plan, still likes solar power

Related Links:

Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!

George LeMieux (R-Fla.)

Saudis want aid if world cuts oil use

Related Links:

Health care, climate, and the progressive movement

Franken win means another likely Senate vote for climate action

Los Angeles rejects solar plan, still likes solar power

Related Links:

‘I’m not a historian’

Romney believes McCain would allow drilling in ANWR

Romney out

A handful of Massachusetts legislators are maneuvering to get their state into the most ambitious U.S. effort yet to fight global warming, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, launched in late December. If they succeed, it'll be a smarting wallop for Gov. Mitt Romney (R), who is widely expected to run for a spot on the GOP's 2008 presidential ticket.

The pact, commonly called RGGI ("Reggie"), commits seven Northeastern states -- Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont -- to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2019. Massachusetts was supposed to be among them, but in mid-December Romney abruptly pulled the state out -- despite the fact that several staffers in his administration had spent two and a half years and more than half a million dollars negotiating and shaping the deal. Rhode Island Gov. Donald L. Carcieri (R), an ally of Romney's, quickly followed suit.

Gov. Mitt Romney may not get his way on the Northeast climate pact.

Massachusetts State Sen. Pam Resor (D) and Rep. Frank Smizik (D), who head up the legislature's Joint Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture, plan to introduce legislation in the next few days that would attempt to circumvent Romney's move. "We are proposing language that would call on the Department of Environmental Protection to adopt standards and a regulatory process that would effectively put Massachusetts in compliance with RGGI," Resor told Muckraker. "We can't legislatively order the governor to sign it, but we are hopeful that this language would pave the way for him or the next administration to become a signatory."

Given the leftward tilt of the Massachusetts legislature -- 169 of its 200 members were Democrats in 2005 -- a RGGI bill could be expected to have a strong chance of passing. Even if Romney were to veto it, the legislature might be able to drum up a two-thirds majority to override.

Failing that, environmental advocates in the state hope Romney's successor will embrace the pact. The governor has announced that he will not seek reelection this November. Both of the Democratic candidates in the running for his position support the pact. Lieutenant Gov. Kerry Healey, the leading Republican contender, has in the past voiced support for RGGI, but more recently backed Romney's move to withdraw.

State Rep. Jim Marzilli (D), a longtime supporter of RGGI, told Muckraker he was confident that Massachusetts would renew its commitment to the climate agreement through a combination of legislative action and new gubernatorial leadership. "Many in the Massachusetts legislature see Romney's abandonment of RGGI as a total embarrassment, not only to our state but to the country," he said. "I was in Montreal at the Kyoto conference just when Romney was indicating he would pull the plug. It came as a total shock to the international leaders attending. The European Union sees RGGI as the last best hope for a binding commitment to reducing greenhouse gases in the U.S."

Romney had until last month been an advocate and architect of RGGI, which includes a market-based trading system that will let big fossil-fuel power plants buy and sell the right to emit carbon dioxide. As recently as November, he was publicly talking up the agreement: "I'm convinced it is good business," he told a clean-energy conference in Boston. "We can effectively create incentives to help stimulate a sector of the economy and at the same time not kill jobs."

But in December Romney started demanding that the pact cap the amount of money power plants would have to pay if they exceeded emissions limits, arguing that without such a limit, energy bills for both businesses and households could rise by more than 10 percent and weigh down the state's economy. When he and leaders from the other states couldn't come to an agreement on the cap issue, Romney jumped ship.

"New England has the highest energy rates in the country, and [the pact] would cost us more," Romney told The Boston Globe by way of explaining his decision.

His move perplexed and angered people close to the project, including some of Romney's own staffers.

"Massachusetts and New York were the leaders on shaping this pact," said Marzilli. "Romney instructed his most senior cabinet member, Douglas Foy, to play a principal role in the long-running RGGI negotiation process, and then he turned around and repudiated it."

Dale Bryk, a senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council, said that Foy and Sonia Hamel of Massachusetts' Office for Commonwealth Development, which Romney created to promote sustainable development, analyzed the agreement's potential impacts and determined that it would have a negligible effect on energy prices. "Their economic models for RGGI even showed possible economic benefits for end users," said Bryk. "RGGI is designed to funnel strong investments into energy-efficiency programs that could save the average household between $30 and $50 a year."

Neither Foy nor Hamel would agree to be interviewed for this story. Romney's spokesperson also did not return Muckraker's request for comment.

Observers say Romney's about-face has everything to do with his yearning for the presidency. In fact, his rejection of RGGI came on the very same day that he announced he wouldn't run for governor again -- a move widely seen as clearing the way for him to seek the Republican presidential nomination.

Some suggest he wanted to distinguish himself from other Republican hopefuls -- namely New York Gov. George Pataki, who spearheaded the RGGI effort, and Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.), all of whom have tried to position themselves as leaders in the fight against climate change.

Chicago Sun-Times' columnist Robert Novak wrote that Romney's rejection of the deal may give him "a leg up in coal-producing states" and help him attract "interest from automakers and other industries that oppose mandatory CO2 limits."

Bryk put it more bluntly: "There seems to be no logical explanation for Romney's rejection of RGGI other than that he wanted to capture the support and campaign dollars of the coal and utility industries."

She and other critics say he appears to have buckled under aggressive lobbying pressure from out-of-state energy and extractive companies, including Dominion Energy, a coal company headquartered in West Virginia, and Entergy, based in Louisiana. This even though RGGI has had plenty of support from Massachusetts-based coalitions and companies such as the utility National Grid, KeySpan Energy, Staples, Genzyme, and the Energy Consortium Inc.

"Romney blatantly prioritized out-of-state industry power players and Midwestern coal interests over the concerns of his constituency," said Seth Kaplan, director of the clean-energy program for the Conservation Law Foundation, a New England environmental organization. "He then went on to spin a bogus public message that tackling climate change is bad for the economy."

The Massachusetts governor, who earned green kudos early in his term, now seems to believe he'll benefit from being on the same side of the climate issue as President Bush.

Enviros think that's a grave miscalculation. "Ironically, Romney slammed Kerry in 2004 for being a flip-flopper," said Cindy Luppi of Clean Water Action's Massachusetts program. "Well, Romney's handling of RGGI is the ultimate flip-flop."

Said Kaplan, "The bigger picture here is that RGGI is laying the groundwork for a national policy on climate change, one that is quickly gaining currency at both a state and a federal level."

Resor and her cohorts in the Massachusetts legislature want to be on the leading edge of that trend, as do leaders in a growing number of other states. Pennsylvania, New Mexico, California, Oregon, and Washington have expressed interest in studying and possibly joining the RGGI pact. And this past week, a bill was introduced in the Maryland legislature that would require the state's seven largest coal-fired power plants to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions 10 percent by 2018, an apparent reaction to Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich's (R) refusal to join RGGI.

"It's not a question of whether the United States adopts a climate strategy, but when," said Kaplan. "It's an increasingly heated and visible issue, and I predict that come election year [2008] Romney will discover that he's on the wrong side of it."

Related Links:

WWLD: What Would Lincoln Do?

Obama energy speech contained few policy specifics, but shaped forward-looking narrative

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, champion of the environment and clean energy, dies at 77

Northeast greenhouse-gas pact delayed

The long-negotiated and much-anticipated -- by us climate geeks anyway -- cap-and-trade climate pact among nine Northeast states, originally set to be announced this week, has been delayed. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has extended negotiations, saying that with recent spikes in energy prices, the plan would raise the cost of electricity too much for end users. Romney wants price caps set on what power-plant operators would have to pay to exceed their pollution allowances under the agreement. New York and New Jersey argue that customers would be fine without price caps, and that such controls would undercut incentives to move to cleaner energy. If it ever gets off the ground, the pact would be the first such regional cooperative action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions -- and a major challenge to the Bush administration's "What, me worry?" stance on climate change.

Related Links:

E.U. pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen