In September, I wrote a post “Newsweek gets duped by Big Oil -- for real -- in worst Big Media story of the year.”   The Newsweek piece by Rana Foroohar was titled “Big Oil Goes Green for Real” with greenwashing lines like “So how should we take the spate of new green announcements from the world’s major oil firms?”  Not.

What I didn’t realize is that Newsweek was not getting duped by Big Oil -- it was getting cash from the American Petroleum Institute in return for “access,” as journalism and ethics experts told E&E News (subs. req’d).

Newsweek since 2007 has sold advertising packages to the oil industry’s biggest influence group that included the right to co-host forums on energy issues, including two where members of Congress sat side-by-side on panels with the association’s president.

American Petroleum Institute ranks among advertisers that have reached a spending threshold that allows them to attach their name to a Newsweek event and have their top executive as a panel speaker. API President and Chief Executive Jack Gerard was the sole industry speaker joining Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Reps. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) and Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) at an “executive forum” the magazine and API held at the U.S. Capitol in March.

Newsweek and API have teamed on four forums so far and are planning another -- “Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?” -- for Dec. 1, when the Senate could be holding a floor debate on climate legislation. An invitation sent yesterday to lawmakers’ offices said Gerard again would be a panelist and that requests to speak were “currently pending confirmation with notable members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.” Lawmakers receiving invitations included Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

I urge all lawmakers to shun this event.

TPM Muckraker also has a good story on part of this, “Newsweek And Oil Lobby Team Up To Host Climate Change Event With Lawmakers,” which noted:

In February 2008, the news weekly and the oil lobby held a panel discussion on “Globalization Trends and Energy and the Growing Competition for Resources.” That event featured Foroohar, the author of the recent Newsweek story lauding big oil, as well as Tony Emerson, the managing editor of Newsweek International, API’s then-CEO Red Cavaney, and an energy specialist for the Chamber of Commerce. Emerson, moderating, described API as “an advertising partner.”

Remember, the API is spending millions to spread disinformation about the climate bill (see here) and create fake grassroots campaigns against it (see “Leaked memo: Big Oil manufacturing ‘Energy Citizen’ rallies to oppose clean energy reform“).

The E&E story, “API’s partnership with Newsweek raises ad cash and ethics questions,” is so shocking that I will excerpt the rest of it at length below:

Newsweek said it imposes ethical safeguards for the events, including that industry sponsors have no say in who is invited as panelists or what questions will be asked by the moderator, usually a Newsweek editor. API has no direct contact with the magazine’s newsroom, which sometimes covers the forums, said Mark Block, the magazine’s director of external relations. Outside media are invited and attend, and everything said is on the record for publication.

“There’s absolutely no conflict of interest, because they’re not driving our editorial” content, Block said. “These events are transparent. They’re on the record. They’re inclusive of media. They’re inclusive of people that might disagree. There’s no concern of appearance of impropriety because it’s an open and transparent process.”

But journalism and ethics experts decried the arrangement.

“You’re selling access,” said Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. “Newsweek is using its reputation as a great news organization to convene these officeholders to talk about public policy. Then it’s renting out a space at the table for one of its customers who would not be at the table if not for giving money to Newsweek.”

John Watson, associate professor of communication law and journalism ethics at American University in Washington, agreed.

“You’re enticing them to buy these ads to get this thing of value,” Watson said.

And they aren’t just selling access to lawmakers, they are selling access to journalists.  Hence the green-washing story I critiqued, “Big Oil Goes Green for Real.”

Newsweek has had the co-presentation partnerships with advertisers since at least 2003, Block said. The relationship with API started in May 2007, when API and the magazine teamed up for a forum called “Progress on Energy Legislation in the 110th Congress.” At that forum, like the one earlier this year, API’s president had the stage along with members of Congress. Panelists were then-API President Red Cavaney, Rep. Jim Matheson (R-Utah), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and a Newsweek representative.

Newsweek under the program also has held events sponsored by petroleum company BP, a question-and-answer session in 2007 and a Q&A and roundtable discussion in 2008 on “the Future of Energy.” BP chose not to have an executive appear as part of either one, although it was eligible to do so. Newsweek has teamed with Ricoh and Lufthansa Airlines on more expansive leadership conferences that featured two to three 45-minute discussions. There are partnerships with others, as well.

About 20 to 30 advertisers reach the spending level where they are “afforded the opportunity to co-present an event with Newsweek,” Block said. The majority chose not to do so, he said, because they either don’t have an issue that would work with a forum or don’t want the publicity.

Block declined to reveal the level of advertising required, but said that, “they’re all at a very high level that they’d be offered that opportunity.”

Newsweek develops the content of the events, with no input from the advertising partner, he said. Of the advertisers, he said “what they are allowed to do, they will have their most senior person take part in the discussion. That is the extent of their participation.”

The person chosen to speak “must be credible and must be accredited,” Block said. He described Gerard and his predecessor Cavaney as meeting both criteria because “they’re speaking on behalf of a lot of people.”

… Newsweek and API also united for an event in February 2008 called “globalization trends and energy and the growing competition for resources.” Cavaney, API’s president at the time, spoke at that along with Karen Alderman Harbert, who at the time had just left her job as Department of Energy assistant secretary for policy and international affairs. There was another event in May 2008 at Stanford University on energy research innovation.

At the Washington events, Block said, Newsweek invites outside media, lawmakers, and people from think tanks and schools.

“The panel is very objective and does not have the editor speaking directly with the panelist before the event,” Block said. “It’s not influencing A. how Newsweek covers the story, B. how the moderator asks questions, or C. how the audience” responds and asks questions.

“There’s absolutely no conflict of interest because they’re not driving our editorial” content, Block added.

So then it was just a coincidence that, as TPM wrote (linking to me):

In September, Newsweek ran a story by Newsweek International editor Rana Foroohar entitled “Big Oil Goes Green For Real,” which infuriated environmentalists by asserting that oil industry investments in alternative energy were no longer just green-washing, but rather were “the real deal.”

Yes, as TPM notes, Newsweek has written some tough-minded stories on Big Oil, but nothing can compare to their September Big Wet Kiss to Oil [Note to self:  That is one mixed metaphor!].

Back to E&E’s story:

Asked whether the events give API and other advertisers access to lawmakers, he said that “Jack Gerard and API are sophisticated and organized enough that they have the ability to reach these people without Newsweek.”

The safeguards Newsweek puts into place at the events don’t negate the conflict, said Watson with American University.

“There should be an impenetrable wall between media fundraising, which is what advertising is, and the newsroom,” Watson said. Rules put into place “after the fact,” he added, are “bandages to cover a gaping ethical wound.”

“The firewall is there not only to prevent the quid pro quo but the appearance of quid pro quo,” Watson added. Journalists must be considered credible to convey information readers trust, he said.

“As soon as there’s any connection between income and newsroom employees, you’ve stepped off the precipice,” Watson said.

As the Old Media’s business model dies, more and more publications are selling access.

Newsweek is not the only publication that holds events sponsored by industry. Atlantic Media and the Wall Street Journal are among those that accept corporate funding. Criticism of Newsweek’s arrangement with advertisers comes not long after the magazine’s parent, the Washington Post Co., suffered a major ethical black eye.

The Washington Post this summer had planned to have a series of off-the-record dinners at the home of its publisher, Katharine Weymouth, where corporations, lobbyists and interest groups could pay $25,000 for private access with public officials and journalists. The series of “salons” was canceled after a flier on it slipped out and Politico reported the plan.

That scandal, and the partnerships that Newsweek and others have with industry, come as newspapers and magazines suffer plummeting circulation. Most media companies are looking for new sources of revenue.

“This is a crisis period for journalism,” Watson said. “Everybody is looking for a new market paradigm. The danger is that everything else of value to journalism is at risk because you have to stay alive.”

… Atlantic Media surpasses Newsweek in terms of number of events with industry. So far this year, it has hosted 54 sessions alongside corporations, advocacy organizations and sometimes nonprofit groups, said Zachary Hooper, a spokesman for the company. There are usually multiple sponsors for each event, he said, and they are “people who have a particular vested interest in a topic.” Many of those same people are advertisers, he said.

Companies sometimes directly help fund conferences, Hooper said. Other times, they buy ad packages that include funding a conference.

Last week, Atlantic Media held an event on water as an environmental concern. Agriculture and biotechnology company Monsanto Co. and Black & Veatch, an engineering, consulting and construction company, sponsored the gathering. Monsanto Co.’s CEO Hugh Grant and Dan McCarthy, president and CEO of Black & Veatch Water, spoke during a panel discussion during the event. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Anne Castle, Interior assistant secretary for water and science, also spoke at the summit.

Atlantic Media with the Aspen Institute co-sponsors the Aspen Ideas Forum and its D.C. counterpart, Washington Ideas Forum. Corporate sponsors of the 2009 Aspen Ideas Forum held in July included Altria, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, Ernst & Young, Philips, Shell, and Thomson Reuters. Atlantic Media and the Aspen Institute charge admission for the Aspen festival.

“I don’t really think there is a conflict” of interest, Hooper said. “These are structured as an open dialogue. These are all on the record.” Outside media can attend, he said, adding “the panels are structured to encourage debate and not focus on any one particular agenda.”

The Wall Street Journal holds six forums a year that are sponsored by companies as part of an advertising package, said Robert Christie, vice president of communications for Dow Jones & Co., which owns The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones sells tickets to the events that are restricted to certain people. To attend the chief executive officer council, for example, one must be the head of a large enough company.

The events are open to outside media, Christie said, and are covered by Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. The newsroom side of the company handles the content of the events, and “they meet the same standards as the stories that go into the Journal,” he said.

All of the events have members of Congress attending, Christie said. He rejected the idea that companies at the events have special access to those lawmakers.

“All of our conferences are public, whether you attend or you just view on WSJ.com,” Christie said. About the lawmakers who attend, he said “most of them just make a speech and leave.”

Again, it doesn’t matter that the conferences are public or the dialogue is on the record.  As I’ve said, the access to big time reporters is as valuable as anything else Big Oil is buying.

Media watchdogs remain vigilant to expose these cash-for-access stories, stories that were, ironically, once the stock and trade of Big Media itself.

Kudos to TPM and E&E for breaking this important story.

Related Links:

Science historian Weart on global warming

Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science

“Many , including us,  find deniers’ claims irresponsible.”

A version of this post was originally published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity and is reposted on Grist with CPI's kind permission.

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It is said that borders don't matter to the atmosphere -- all nations have to work together to tackle the problem of climate change.

But the forces that seek to block that effort likewise know no national boundaries. They're rallying coal miners in Appalachia, stirring up aluminum workers in Australia, and slowing renewable energy in China. They're using their exalted position in Indian society to discourage the government from making international commitments. In Brazil, they're not giving up free rein over rainforest land without a fight.

Their handiwork will be evident as negotiators from 192 nations gather in Copenhagen this December to forge the most important environmental treaty ever. There is no question negotiators face a daunting task: to reduce the pollution from the burning of oil, coal, and gas that has fueled economic development since the Industrial Revolution. But their difficult job has been made overwhelming by the tactics wielded the world over by powers rooted in the economy of the past.

In the United States, there has been the well-orchestrated rallying of "grassroots" opposition to climate legislation. Coal millionaire Don Blankenship, chief executive of Massey Energy, is an outlier in the public debate as a vigorous global warming denier.  But his message at a West Virginia rally he organized, that "environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs," is a real factor on Capitol Hill. ­­The Senate bill now in play has no hope of passage without winning votes in the economically struggling coal states and coal-dependent industrial Midwestern states.

The message is strikingly similar in an Australian port town known both as a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and a smokestack industry haven. Russian aluminum billionaire Oleg Deripaska, with a big stake in a refinery there, has lobbyists battling that nation's climate change plan as "destructive for jobs, destructive for new and existing investment." Such arguments helped defeat climate legislation in the Australia in August.  The business lobby has to be strong to slow climate policy in the hottest and driest inhabited continent, amid a years-long drought that contributed to deadly wildfires while it watches its climate-stressed tourism jewel, the Great Barrier Reef, on course to be "functionally extinct."

Pressure from old-line business interests may be more transparent in the United States and Australia, but forces also are determined to put on the brakes in the developing world. In China, for instance, wind turbines rising against Xinjian Province mountains have become an iconic image of a growing clean energy commitment. The government's goal is to achieve 20 percent renewable power by 2020, on the road to which it has doubled its installed wind power in each of the past four years. But China is also building coal plants so fast that it still gets just 1 percent of electricity from wind. Only one of the top 10 power companies-all state-owned enterprises-will meet the government's interim goal of 3 percent renewables by 2010. The power company executives, all quasi-governmental officials, have resisted proposals to help renewables by raising the price of coal. "There don't need to be ‘lobbyists' when discussions can happen directly through the Party," says Beijing-based political commentator Zhao Jing.

The approach is less subtle elsewhere. For example, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently offered to reduce the pace of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest -- one of the world's most important natural absorbers of carbon dioxide -- by 80 percent by 2020.  But Carlos Minc, Lula's environment minister, has faced an onslaught from the agriculture industry and its allies in elected office who balk at curbs on land use. One governor even threatened him with rape. "Many of those industries talk about zero deforestation, but when we press them they want to kill us," he says. "They call me to speak in the Senate or the House and I stay for five hours under a massacre. They're favorable to zero deforestation, provided it doesn't affect ... their own land."

The 1997 Kyoto treaty on climate change was marked by the decision that developing countries, where millions of people still lived without electricity, would not have binding obligations to reduce emissions. The burden of making cuts would fall first, instead, on the countries that grew wealthy in fossil-fueled economies. But the way Kyoto dealt with the rich-poor divide remains a political stumbling block in the United States. And since the International Energy Agency projects that 97 percent of the increase in global emissions between now and 2030 will come from developing countries, hopes have been high that negotiators of the successor treaty at Copenhagen would find a new way to bridge the gap between past and future engines of the climate problem.

But the principle that developing countries shouldn't have binding treaty obligations is dearly held by businesses that have the ear of government in those nations. In Delhi, India, Bharat Wakhlu, resident director of the powerful Tata Group -- that nation's largest business conglomerate with nearly 100 companies from power generation to autos -- says the company recognizes it has a role in addressing global warming. But, he added, "We believe in a ‘common but differentiated' approach, as we have to retain our competitiveness as well as ensure the planet is safe." In United Nations climate change lingo, "common but differentiated" is a shorthand reference to just one key differentiation -- only wealthy nations have obligations.

Juan C. Mata Sandoval, Mexico's top climate official and a negotiator for Copenhagen, is frank that one of the business lobby's chief concerns has been that his nation remain a "non-Annex 1" country-one without required emissions cuts. "We need to communicate with them constantly," he said. "The private sector also wants a voice and an opinion on how much is Mexico going to put on the table."

But in its own way, Mexico-like China, India, and Brazil -- is addressing climate change. Mexico has a national climate change plan with 86 specific goals it says will slow the growth of its carbon emissions. In absolute terms, Mexico's carbon output would still rise in the short term, but the country also has mapped out a long-term pathway to reduce its emissions-if it receives technical and financial support from developed countries.

Many see these types of developments as cause for optimism, even while conventional wisdom says the Copenhagen talks are on a path toward stalemate. "All the major economies are prepared to lay down significant low-carbon development plans," U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern said at a recent U.S.-India energy forum in Washington. "This is big news. It's never happened before. It's important stuff."

But that headline hasn't registered. Instead, the prevailing view is much more likely to be that of Brian Flannery, climate guru for energy giant ExxonMobil. "The only way to get to these low [emissions] levels is for the whole world to act together with common targets and a common carbon price," he said in an interview at run-up negotiations in Bangkok in October, where he was a registered observer for the International Chamber of Commerce. "We're not going to have everyone with the same target, the same price on carbon ... It does raise fundamental questions about whether the negotiating process should aspire to unachievable targets and work in an area of confrontation and dismay, or try to work towards achievable targets."

It's hard to tell how much lower the targets need to go for fossil-fuel stalwarts. No developed country has set an unconditional goal of reducing emissions 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 -- the short-term target the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said would be necessary to achieve stabilization.

Given the power of industry lobbying, advocates for climate progress see their best hope as the growing number of businesses that support action. Dan Reicher, director of energy initiatives at Google, who was a member of President Barack Obama's transition team, is confident a plan can gain support in the U.S. Congress, if it has plenty of business flexibility and opportunity. But he is under no illusions it will be easy. At a recent conference in Washington on energy efficiency -- a pursuit Google aims to advance by providing people real-time home electricity information -- Reicher summed up the climate change politics succinctly: "This is going to be an epic, epic struggle."

This story is part of The Global Climate Change Lobby, a project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ICIJ correspondents Christina Larson in Beijing, Fernando Rodrigues and Marcelo Soares in Sao Paulo, Marian Wilkinson in Sydney, and Kate Willson in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Related Links:

Actions Speak Louder Than Words: U.S. Climate Justice Activists Mobilize just before U.N. Talks

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Copenhagen climate summit (part 1): the expectations

Photo: AMagill WASHINGTON -- When it comes to the debate in the United States over what to do about climate change, cash has clouded the issue.

Lobbying groups for both the energy and environmental sides have boosted their spending this year, but the energy sector is still vastly outspending the greens.

Science and specifics are hard to find in the barrage of ads and messages about green jobs, alternative energy, and the dangers of pollution.

Energy-sector groups spent a total of $300 million through the third quarter of 2009 and were on pace for a record spending year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbyist spending.

From January to September, some of the biggest energy-lobby spenders included oil and gas ($120.7 million), electric utilities ($108 million), and alternate energy, which showed a 40 percent boost over last year with $23 million.

Environmental groups, which tend to press for reforms that the energy sector opposes, were far outspent at $16 million during the same period, a 14 percent increase from last year.

And the difference is apparent in the size of the lobbyist armies that descend on Capitol Hill each day. Overall, energy-related companies hired 2,225 lobbyists so far this year, compared to environmentalists who hired just 465.

Washington is blanketed with energy advertisements in the bus stops and Metro subway, from big oil companies touting individuals who conserve energy in small ways to dire warnings from green groups about the dangers of doing nothing.

One advertisement that ran on television in October proclaimed that "C02 is Green," denying its effects on global warming and calling carbon dioxide "Earth's greatest airborne fertilizer."

Leighton Steward, a retired Texas oil man who is spokesman for the group that ran the ads and set up a website to support the claims, said his aim was to stop U.S. lawmakers from implementing costly regulations.

"We are getting ready to spend a couple of trillion dollars to try and reduce atmospheric [carbon] dioxide which I don't believe is having any significant effect on climate change," he told AFP.  "It is clear, it is odorless, it is tasteless, it is a total benefit," he said, adding that "thousands of research papers have been written on the benefits of additional carbon dioxide."

A coalition of environmental groups led by the Alliance for Climate Protection, which was launched in 2006 by former vice president Al Gore, is launching its own ads this week along with an online "wall" where people can express their support for clean energy.

"We believe that this effort, with nearly 200 organizers in 23 states, as well as the wall, will obviously have an impact in showing the support for action now and in the near term," said the group's president, Maggie Fox.

"This is intended to move us forward in the broadest sense."

The group's appeal for support reads: "I support clean energy policies that will create millions of jobs and solve the climate crisis."

However, there is no mention of the stickier concepts that have bogged down lawmakers, such as a cap-and-trade system to punish polluters, or how to capture carbon emitted by the coal industries that produce cheap energy.

There's a reason for the vagueness of the lobby-fueled debate, according to Bob Perkowitz, president of consumer research group EcoAmerica, which studies mainstream Americans' beliefs on environmental issues.

"When they hear 'cap and trade,' they think of baseball. If you ask them what alternative or renewable energy means, they can't describe those," Perkowitz said. "The way most Americans are with global warming, they end up getting superficial information from different sources and forming some sort of vague opinion about it."

Related Links:

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Paul Krugman had a post the other day on the "aura of inevitability" and how it finally seems to be working for progressives instead of against them. I think he's on to something.

Summer was brutal for greens. "Cap and tax" attacks were bouncing around the Foxosphere. House Dems were getting killed back home for voting yes on Waxman-Markey. Conventional wisdom said that Pelosi had blundered by forcing them into an unpopular vote for a bill that could never pass the Senate, where health care reform was imperiled and clean energy legislation a forlorn dream.

Since then, however, greens have had one good break after another. And this isn't like 2006, when Al Gore's movie came out and for a while every magazine published a green issue. Those were pop culture events. These latest dramas have taken place inside the hothouse of the Beltway political world, where legislators and political operators take notice.

Good enemies

Start with the dirty energy Keystone Kops, shooting themselves in the foot.

First there was Big Coal's PR arm, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, formerly seen as a lobbying juggernaut that succeeded in putting all of DC in its thrall. Then came the astroturf fraud in August, as Bonner & Assoc. -- working for the coal industry -- got busted sending fake letters from civil rights and women's groups to legislators. ACCCE dropped Bonner like a hot potato, and Bonner blamed ... a temp. Rachel Maddow ripped them a new one. (This story isn't gone, either; a House hearing at which Bonner will testify was recently postponed and will happen later this month. Expect more embarrassing headlines). To boot, ACCCE saw high-profile defections from Duke Energy and Alcoa.

Then there was Faces of Coal, a new astroturf group whose faces turned out to be ... iStockphoto clip art. That one got ripped by Maddow and Stewart.

Then there's the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has bumbled its way into ignominy in record time. First companies began leaving it over its intransigence on clean energy legislation. Then it demanded a "21st Century Scopes Monkey Trial on the science of climate change." Then more companies left. Chamber chief Tom Donahue, oblivious to the changing political winds, bumbled around, at first defiant, then incoherent, then confused, then defensive. Then it emerged that the CoC's membership numbers were wildly inflated -- not 3 million business, but more like 200,000. Then the Yes Men came along and ganked them so successfully with a fake press release and press conference that Reuters got punked, making national headlines and completely eclipsing the launch of the Chamber's goofy PR campaign. Maddow ripped that one too. Then the White House joined in and started pummeling the Chamber, which has spent almost $35 million just in the third quarter of this year lobbying against Obama's initiatives. The Chamber is now in complete disarray, having become, almost overnight, a national symbol of yesterday's news: old, out of touch ideologues in hock to old, out of touch industries.

And finally there are the authors of Superfreakonomics, whose best-seller muddling the science of climate change and advocating for hail-mary policies like geoengineering seems mainly to have served to rouse the progressive intelligentsia to climate science's defense, and to a greater awareness and engagement on the climate issue. I haven't seen this many posts about climate change and climate policy in the progressive mediasphere in ... ever.

Good friends

Meanwhile, there are more and more Faces of Clean Energy, and they ain't clip art.

A huge group of businesses lobbied for legislation on the hill recently. A coalition of religious groups called Day Six is now lobbying for legislation. Operation Free, a group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, is on a Vets for American Power bus tour -- "mission: secure American with clean energy" -- lobbying for legislation. (For supporting "cap and tax type policies," Penn. State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe [R, needless to say] called these vets "traitors" and "Benedict Arnolds." Again: you really couldn't ask for enemies this clueless.) A group of 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations just sent a letter [PDF] to the Senate reaffirming, in blunt terms, the scientific consensus on the nature and urgency of climate change.

This Saturday will mark Climate Action Day, with hundreds of events across the nation and the world. A string of recent polls has shown that Americans of all political stripes, including those in conservative Dem districts and especially young Americans [PDF], want clean energy, support Obama on the issue, and want legislation from this Congress. They aren't falling for the "cap and tax" hysteria.

Remember the Senate clean energy bill that could never pass because it couldn't get bipartisan support? It has bipartisan support now, and Lindsey Graham coming aboard has pushed Murkowski, Byrd, and Voinovich into the maybe column. The road to 60 votes, while far from easy, is clearly visible now.

And that's before the administration has fully engaged. Obama will give a speech at MIT on Friday supporting the legislation. The same day, Lisa Jackson will release the EPA's analysis of the bill. Next week, the Environment and Public Works Committee will begin hearings, and among the first witnesses will be Jackson, DOE's Steven Chu, the Interior's Ken Salazar, Transportation's Ray LaHood, and FERC chair Jon Wellinghoff. This kicks off what's expected to be a full court press from the administration to get the bill done.

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In short, at least for the moment, greens have the Big Mo. There's a self-reinforcing cycle of positive stories happening. Deniers and delayers are on the defensive.

It feels good! Yes, it's certain to change, and change again, over the course of the long fight in the Senate. But confidence is everything. Greens aren't used to being the ones with muscle and momentum, but now that they've got them the thing to do is get a little swagger. Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing is more powerful in politics than the aura of inevitability.

Related Links:

Approaching Copenhagen with a Portfolio of Domestic Commitments

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

SuperFreak Dubner embraces ClimateGate conspiracy theories

Cross-posted from Earth Island Institute.

A recent article in the New York Times pointedly asked whether NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen still matters. The subtext to the story was, has Hansen been too vocal and too unconventional in his criticism of Washington’s response to climate change to be taken seriously?

Hansen, dubbed by some as the “father of global warming,” has been connecting the dots between science and politics since his groundbreaking 1988 testimony to Congress about the greenhouse effect. In the last year, however, Hansen has gone far beyond talking about climate change. He’s now taking direct action to stop it.

I began talking with Dr. Hansen when he took part in the Capitol Climate Action, a protest by more than 2,500 people last March at the coal plant that provides heating and cooling for congressional buildings. What struck me most about Hansen was that after more than 30 years of working within “the system” to solve the climate crisis, he felt driven to protest. When a man who knows more about the science of global warming than almost anyone risks arrest to get attention for the issue, perhaps it’s time for the rest of us to take heed.

Young people certainly are. Hansen’s relevance may be in question among some reporters, but to the youth who are spearheading the climate movement, he is a heroic force. When Hansen announced that he would attend the Capitol Climate Action, it doubled the number of young people who signed up on the action’s Web site. While Al Gore and Thomas Friedman question why young people aren’t doing more to stop global warming, Hansen is in the streets, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, so that the task of protecting future generations isn’t left to them alone.

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What was your dream job as a kid?

When I started university, my goal was to be an astronaut, and a scientist astronaut. That’s why I was particularly interested in NASA as a graduate student. Then I got so wrapped up in science that I never got around to becoming an astronaut.

You’ve been called the father of global warming. What does that mean to you and is it actually true?

Of course it’s not true, in the sense that global warming goes way back into the 1800s. The first really good discussion was in the 1860s by John Kendall, who was a British physicist. He speculated that the climate changes from glacial to interglacial were related to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that turned out to be right. We’ve only in the last several years realized and proven that about half of the temperature change in the glacial to interglacial changes is in fact due to changes of greenhouse gases -- mainly carbon dioxide.

So it’s not accurate to say I’m the father of global warming. I think where that misimpression comes from is the fact that the public didn’t pay much attention to this science until the 1980s, when it became much more widely noticed in part because of the testimony I gave in 1988 [to Congress].

What would you say has made you different than many of the climate scientists who came before you?

I guess what seems to have made me different is that I am willing to say a little more bluntly what a lot of scientists are already beginning to think but are a bit reluctant to say publicly or at least not in a clear enough way that the public recognizes what they’re saying.

“You’ve got to cut off the coal source. Not only does Waxman-Markey assure that we will continue to run these coal plants, but it actually gives approval for additional coal plants. That simple test tells us that this bill is not adequate.”

One of the places most recently where you’ve been rather blunt is on the proposed Waxman-Markey climate bill. How would you summarize the problems that you see?

You can summarize the problem and prove that the bill is inadequate in a very simple way. You just look at the geophysical constraints on the problem and you look at how much carbon there is in oil, gas, and coal. And you see that the oil and gas is enough to get us into a dangerous zone for atmospheric carbon dioxide but not so far that we couldn’t solve the problem. But if you add coal and put that carbon in the atmosphere, then there is no practical way to solve the problem. So you just have to look at the proposed policy and see if it allows coal to continue to be used and emit the CO2 in the atmosphere.

You’ve got to cut off the coal source. Not only does [Waxman-Markey] assure that we will continue to run these coal plants that we have but it actually gives approval for additional coal plants. That simple test tells us that this bill is not adequate.

The basic point -- the fundamental problem -- is that because of government policies, fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy. They are not made to pay for the damages they do to human health and the environment. As long as fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy, they are going to be used. That’s why I say you have to address the fundamental problem and that is put a rising price on carbon emissions.

You’ve been an advocate for a carbon tax instead of cap-and-trade. Why do you think a carbon tax is not getting much traction?

It’s partly because of the poor choice of words. I have a new description and that is “deposit and return.” Either a carbon cap or a carbon tax affects the price of energy and so they’re qualitatively not different. And so it’s kind of a mistake to call one a “tax and dividend,” and the other a “cap,” as if the cap does not increase the price of energy. If it doesn’t increase the price of energy, then it’s not going to be effective.

We have to begin to move to the sources of energy beyond fossil fuels. And the way you do that in a way that is economically sensible and beneficial is to do it gradually but continually. The public and the business community need to understand that the price of carbon will continue to rise in the future, and then we would begin to move more rapidly to the post-fossil fuel era.

So would it be fair to characterize the Waxman-Markey bill as business-as-usual, or is it even worse than business-as-usual?

Well, it’s a small probation of business-as-usual. It’s worse, in my opinion, than almost no policy because it does lock in, it does give approval for, some new coal-fired power. It puts a ceiling on the reductions that will occur. If you put a price on carbon emissions so that the competitors, the energy efficiency and the carbon-free energy sources, can begin to have the competitive advantage, then once you reach a certain point, things will move very rapidly and we will begin to leave the coal in the ground.

That’s what the coal companies are afraid of and they have been enormously effective in their impact on the politics, even though the truth is it’s not that big an industry and the total number of employees is not that large. But they are very powerful in terms of the number of senators and representatives they are able to influence, and apparently even the administration. It doesn’t make sense from an overall national perspective to give them such tremendous political clout. It is not in the best interest of the nation or the public.

You’ve had more experience than anybody in trying to translate the connection between science and policy. How do you feel President Obama is doing on the climate?

Well, I am disappointed that he has not become a little more involved. He seems to be letting the politics just play out, and perhaps planning to be a judge in the compromises. But it’s a case where we clearly need leadership. And he is still our best hope in achieving that.

What is clear is that we have to phase out the coal, and the place you would start is to say we are going to have a moratorium on any new coal-fired power plants. Because when you look at the science, what we’ve shown is that if you phase out coal emissions within 20 years, then you can keep the peak CO2 at something between 400 and 425 ppm. But that is critically dependent on phasing out the coal emissions on that sort of timescale. If you’re going to do that, you would not build any new coal-fired power plants.

But to put a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants, Obama would have to contend with the coal state senators and the coal lobby.

Yeah, it’s a nontrivial task. But he could do it, and he is the only one who could do it. Without that, it is just going to be this horse-trading that we’ve seen. And you just keep adding more and more bad things to the bill.

But anyway, you should have a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. That is very clear. And mountaintop removal [coal mining], which I understand is only about seven percent of our coal, obviously should be the place you start. I had hoped that the new administration would recognize this and would ban this practice. But again, they seem to be in a position of compromising, of making it a little more difficult but allowing the practice to continue. If [Obama] decided to exert leadership on this, he could. He is articulate enough to explain that to the American public. But so far he is not doing that.

I want to turn to your recent role in some big civil disobedience climate protests: the Capitol climate protest in D.C. last March, and the protest this past June in West Virginia against mountaintop removal coal mining, where you were arrested for the first time. How did somebody who has worked inside the system for so many years get to a place where you decided that you not only had to be out in a protest but that you were going to get arrested?

I prefer the phrase “civil resistance” rather than “civil disobedience” for reasons that Gandhi gives.

When I give a talk on this, I show that the three options for getting the actions that are obviously needed are through the democratic process, influencing the elections of the administration and Congress; secondly, the courts; and then thirdly, civil resistance.

The first at the top of the list, the democratic process: Well, we’re trying that and you have to continue [trying]. It’s very disappointing that the democratic process ends up with the same old politics, which is exactly what Waxman-Markey is. It does not do the job and it is selling short young people and future generations. And that has gotten to be very frustrating to many people, including me.

And so, you look at these other things, the courts and civil resistance. The courts: In my talks, I draw attention to the fact that it has long been a basic tenet in our democracy that the current generation is using nature and the property that we have inherited from our parents in what Thomas Jefferson described in his letter to James Madison as “in usufruct.” Meaning that it’s in trust, it’s property that belongs to future generations, and we’re obligated to deliver it in equally good condition as we received it from our preceding generations. Jefferson was thinking especially about the quality of the land and that you can’t degrade the land with agricultural practices that just use up the nutrients and leave nothing for future generations. So that, I think, may provide a basis for the courts coming to the assistance of young people and future generations. But I don’t know how well that will work out.

So then we arrive at [civil resistance]: I think the point is -- just as Gandhi did -- to try to draw attention to what is just and what is unjust. It is kind of a last resort, but the problem is we are running out of time. That is what science has made very clear. It is very hard for people to understand this because the magnitude of global warming is so small in comparison to weather fluctuations, and yet what has become clear in the last few years is that it doesn’t take a very large global change in order to have enormous implications in the long run.

So then we arrive at civil resistance. I think the point is -- just as Gandhi did -- to try to draw attention to what is just and what is unjust. It is kind of a last resort, but the problem is we are running out of time.”

Do you think, then, that more people should start getting involved in civil resistance, in particular when it comes to stopping coal and mountaintop removal mining?

Yeah. We have got to get Obama to pay attention to this because, as I say, I think he is our best hope. But so far, he seems to be forgetting his obligation to young people.

What do you think we can expect from Copenhagen?

Well, it is the same story as with U.S. policies. We cannot let the governments disguise the effectiveness of the actions they propose to take.

So, for example, in the Kyoto Protocol, that was very ineffective. Even the countries that took on supposedly the strongest requirements, like Japan for example -- if you look at its actual emissions, its actual fossil fuel use, you see that their CO2 emissions actually increased even though they were supposed to decrease. Because their coal use increased and they used offsets to meet their objective.

Offsets don’t help significantly. That’s why the approach that Copenhagen is using to specify goals for emission reductions and then to allow offsets to accomplish much of that reduction is really a fake. And that has to be exposed. Otherwise, just like in the Kyoto Protocol, we’ll realize 10 years later, oops, it really didn’t do much.

What would be less fake?

Again, you have to go back to this basic test. Are you continuing coal emissions?

Because we know nobody is proposing that we are going to stop using the big pools of gas and oil. So therefore you’ve got to cut off the coal. If you want a strategic approach, all you have to do is look at the geophysical boundary conditions, how much carbon you’ve got in these different pools. And if you realize that the oil and gas is going to be used, and you can’t capture the CO2, it’s coming out of tailpipes, you have to cut off the coal.

So, based on science, whether we are talking about U.S. climate legislation or international negotiations, the litmus test for success is whether coal is banned or phased out?

Right. If you don’t do that, you can’t solve the problem. To get there, the most effective policy would be a rising price on carbon emissions. But you also have to have alternative technologies, which can be partially accomplished with energy efficiency, which would be encouraged by a [carbon] price.

What keeps you up at night in terms of the climate?

The fact that the solutions to this problem actually make sense -- they add many other benefits -- we just have to make that clear. Of course, there are special financial interests that would be harmed unless they start investing their money differently, but for the general public, it actually makes sense to move more rapidly beyond fossil fuels.

Energy companies, energy departments, not just the United States, just take it as the God-given fact that we’re going to burn all the fossil fuels. In fact, that doesn’t make sense from the standpoint of the public or the planet. We really should leave the larger part of the remaining fossil fuels in the ground, and that means especially coal and unconventional fossil fuels. We just have not succeeded in communicating what I think is clear scientifically. So that’s why I keep working so many hours per week -- to try to help make that clear.

On the flip side, what gives you hope?

Of course, the most recent election in the U.S. gave us all a lot of hope. As I say, we’re disappointed by what’s happened so far, but this is just very early in the Obama administration. He is a smart guy, so I still hope he can realize the interests of young people and future generations above the politics of coal, which is basically the problem right now.

Related Links:

Washington Times: “Obama digs in on global warming”

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Update: This story keeps growing. Since last week...

Original story:

More trouble this week for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the 97-year-old business advocacy group that has been courting controversy by questioning climate change and trying to weaken a clean energy bill.

California’s second-largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., announced it was quitting the Chamber on Tuesday, citing “fundamental differences” over climate change. PG&E is a member of USCAP, a coalition of corporations and environmental groups calling for a comprehensive climate plan. The utility is also a leader in solar energy; this spring, it announced a 500 MW solar-voltaic initiative.

Nike and Johnson & Johnson, while retaining membership in the Chamber, have also let it be known that they're unhappy with the organization's climate position. The old battle line between business and environmentalists is blurring, but the Chamber is still fighting the old war.

PG&E CEO Peter Darbee explained the company's decision to leave the organization:

He’s referring to the Chamber’s recent call for a “21st Century Scopes Monkey Trial” to force the EPA to defend in court its finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health. As David Roberts detailed earlier this month, the monkey-trial fiasco is just one in a string of clumsy steps by the Chamber.

The Chamber can commiserate with another fossil-fuel-friendly group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), which saw prominent members Duke Energy and Alstom Power quit this month. The loss capped an embarrassing summer in which it was revealed that ACCCE had contracted with an Astroturf firm that sent forged letters to Congress, purporting to be from minority and senior-citizen groups opposed to climate legislation. Congress is now investigating the fraudulent letters.

So here’s a question for climate activists: Why not hound companies in the Chamber and ACCCE, demanding to know why they lend their money and their legitimacy to such groups? Companies may decide that membership is a weight around their necks they don’t need.

The Chamber, by the way, doesn’t release names of its members. You’ll have to find out from companies themselves whether they belong.

I’m no activist, but I tried this out two weeks ago when I met Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist, Rob Bernard. Microsoft has never been considered an environmental leader, but it’s got a decent climate policy on paper. It opened an energy-efficient data center this summer that could lead to significant energy savings, particularly if the company finds ways to use the innovations in larger server labs.

Given all this, why is Microsoft a Chamber member? Bernard told me Microsoft takes climate change very seriously and tried to distance the company from the Chamber's climate shenanigans. "The views expressed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce do not reflect Microsoft’s position on climate change and we are not participating in their climate initiatives," he said in a followup email.

It’s not much of an answer. But if people keep asking, that answer might change.

Related Links:

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

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Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

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George Voinovich (R-Ohio) [UPDATED]

As suspected, agribusiness is indeed turning cartwheels over the news that Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln is now chairman of the Senate Ag Committee. The public policy director for the retrograde American Farm Bureau told The Hill, "We couldn’t have handpicked a chairman better than this." The giant sucking sound you're hearing is agricultural reform rushing down the drain.

The headline of The Hill's piece tells you all you need to know:  "K Street welcomes Lincoln as the new head of Ag committee" -- K Street being the center of the lobbying biz. If you read on, however, you'll discover all sorts of lovely little Lincolnian tidbits. Did you know that in 2007 Lincoln tried to exempt agribusiness from toxic waste lawsuits? The fact that Tyson Foods, the nation's largest chicken (and chickensh*t) producer, is based in Arkansas and is a major campaign contributor to her is, of course, a total coincidence.

Oh, and all that oil and gas money she gets is entirely unrelated to her strident opposition to climate change legislation -- opposition that is so strong, The Hill speculated she could single-handedly derail it.

Indeed, there is no good news here. Some (including me) have speculated that Lincoln had little hope of reelection come 2010. But now, with money flowing into her coffers and local industry fully aware that, should Lincoln lose, Michigan's Debbie Stabenow would be in charge of ag in the Senate, Lincoln's reelection propsects have suddenly brightened.

Meanwhile, Lincoln submitted her first bill related to the school lunch program reauthorization scheduled for early next year -- a top administration priority and an area which seemed poised for a significant overhaul. This bill, though minor, offers some insight into exactly how much reform we can expect from her. The answer: Very little.

The bill would require the development of "model product specifications and practices for foods offered in school nutrition programs" such that they meet federal dietary guidelines. I don't know what's more depressing. The fact that many school food programs don't already meet federal dietary guidelines or the fact that even meals that met those guidelines are the opposite of healthy. Either way, it doesn't appear that we can expect much reform from Lincoln on that front either.

And while we can continue to work to get money out of politics so that our politicians have one less reason to listen to corporate interests, the Supreme Court is about to ensure such an eventuallity never happens.

The only hope for reform, as I see it, is to take the favored GOP strategy and wait for the agribusiness over-reach -- in other words, wait for a policy endorsed by the House and Senate ag committees that's so extreme other congressional players decide they have no choice but to act. A hint of how this might work came in the House food safety bill, which the congressional leadership declined to submit officially to the House Ag Committe because they knew those committeemembers would tear it to pieces.

Is it possible that Lincoln and Rep. Collin Peterson -- her counterpart in the House -- can misbehave so badly that it finally causes normally lily-livered representatives on other House and Senate committees to take a stand against agribusiness? I have my doubts. But with agribusiness now as well positioned as they've ever been to get their way on the big issues facing food and agriculture, it's pretty much all we've got.

Related Links:

Will Africa’s farmland become a ‘resource curse’?

Corporate agribusiness divides farmers

Newsweek partners with oil lobby to raise ad cash

Cass SunsteinAfter weeks of sustained attack from the right-wing on issues that are marginal to the job the President asked him to do, Cass Sunstein has emerged from the nomination process bloody but apparently unbowed (here’s yesterday’s roll call). He is now the nation’s “regulatory czar,” Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  

Although Professor Sunstein has been sitting in the Old Executive Office Building for months, he has undoubtedly been preoccupied with his nomination battle. Having survived the occasionally nonsensical trial by partisan and self-serving flight of fancy that was his confirmations process, we hope he will notice that his staff at OIRA has been behaving as if the 2008 election never happened. Having paid careful attention to OIRA over these past few months, in search of evidence of a new outlook, I’m sorry to report that I’ve drawn the strong impression that Bush Administration culture and ideology remain unchanged at OIRA. To deliver change we can believe in, Cass Sunstein needs to convert OIRA from industry waiting room to objective arbiter of inter-agency disputes.

My impression that change has not yet arrived is based in great measure on a chart [PDF] compiled and released today by the Center for Progressive Reform, showing that in recent months, OMB met nine times with outsiders to discuss health and safety regulations, and that eight of those meetings were dominated by industry representatives complaining about proposals under development at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Highway Traffics Safety Administration (NHTSA). For example, tire manufacturers met to discuss NHTSA’s proposals on inflating tires to increase fuel efficiency. The oil industry met to discuss EPA’s rule on the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions. And the airline industry met to discuss EPA’s rule on water discharges from airport de-icing operations. Public interest groups have met with OIRA on only one regulatory matter: amendments to an EPA rule on renewable fuels. That meeting was one in a set of four, with the other three devoted to the views of the American Petroleum Institute, the biodiesel industry, and Shell Oil. 

Now, OIRA may well take the view that when you hold an open house for the neighborhood, you cannot help who drops by. But the history of the office makes that seem like a superficial argument.  For years, and especially during the tenure of Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II, OIRA has served as a backdoor for regulated industries, giving those aggrieved by agency decisions a second, third, and fourth bite at the apple to press their case. Having failed to persuade Congress of their arguments during the legislative process and then the regulatory agency during their deliberations, industry has found a friendly hearing from OMB, and OMB has too often watered down or scuttled regulations afterwards. But even if OMB staff sit silently at the meetings, giving an audience to industry complainants but not otherwise agreeing to overturn agency decisions, the practice is questionable. As experience in the courts since before the nation was founded has convinced us, only by airing all sides of a dispute through balanced advocacy can a wise decision be made.

Even if for some elusive reason we were willing to accept OMB’s “listening post” justification for these meetings, the sad fact is that objective evaluation of OMB’s role is impossible because OMB discloses only the fact of meeting, not its outcome. While this quasi-transparency is better than nothing, it cannot allay suspicions that the regulatory czar’s job is to kill, not improve, regulation.

We look forward to working with Cass Sunstein. And we also promise to stay in his face, making sure he remembers that his biggest challenge is to revive strong government protection of environmental quality, food, drug, and worker safety, and the control of climate change, not working to appease industry. We wish him luck and success. 

This post originally appeared in the Center for Progressive Reform blog.

Related Links:

EU pushes China further after pledge to slow carbon intensity

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

All of us who want to see the world changed for the better struggle with whether it is better to fight for that change from the inside or the outside.

But you can’t fight for change from inside an organization dedicated to stopping change, like, say, the scandal-ridden front group American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy.  You know that a coal-industry-funded group is beyond redemption when one of the largest coal utilities in the country abandons them (see “Breaking: Duke Energy quits coal front group over climate bill — GE and Caterpillar should do the same“).  Duke explained in a statement:

“We believe ACCCE is constrained by influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010.”

Duh.

The Center for Public Integrity’s excellent staff writer Marianne Lavelle managed to get GE on record with a truly laughable defense for their refusal to join Duke (and Alcoa):

But some companies that support climate legislation remain in the ACCCE fold — the largest and most diverse being General Electric. GE spokesman Daniel Nelson said in an email that ACCCE does not reflect GE’s views on climate change legislation, which is that cap and trade would help “drive American technological innovation and competitive leadership… We advocate that view within ACCCE and have and will work to make it the majority view in that organization.”

I feel those monkeys trying to fly out of my butt again….

Seriously, GE?   Even aluminum giant Alcoa, who quit more quietly, wouldn’t offer up such nonsense:

After the Duke story broke, the blog EnviroKnow confirmed that aluminum maker Alcoa had earlier quit the group.

The aluminum maker decided to quit paying dues to the coal advocacy group about a month ago as part of its company-wide effort to reduce costs. “You may have heard of a little thing called the economic downturn,” Alcoa spokesman Kevin Lowery said in an interview with The Center for Public Integrity. So it was an economic, rather than a philosophical decision? “Any kind of economic decision has to have a business case — whether you invest money and make money at the end of the day,” Lowery said.

C’mon GE.  Do you really want to tarnish the EcoMagination brand?  Do you really want to be seen as a have-it-both ways greenwasher? It’s bad enough that one of the members of the uber-disinformer American Petroleum Institute is GE Inspection Services — with a broken link that takes us to GE Energy!

Let’s remember:

General Electric has about as much chance of getting ACCCE to change their position on the climate bill as they do of getting Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) to change his.

Related Links:

Prologue to Copenhagen

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

This story was written by Danielle Ivory.

Lawyers representing the maker of the herbicide atrazine are asking that documents related to the company's lobbying and trade association activities be excluded from a class action lawsuit being filed by some Illinois water utilities.

As the Investigative Fund reported last week, many utilities say they cannot afford expensive carbon filters that would remove atrazine from public drinking water. They are going to court to try to force the Swiss chemical company Syngenta to pay for installing such filtering systems.

In an interview today, the lawyer for Syngenta Crop Protection Inc., Kurt Reeg, said the water districts had requested documents outside of the scope of the lawsuit.

"They're asking what efforts have been made to lobby congress and the EPA with respect to herbicide legislation," Reeg said. "They want to know about all of Syngenta's trade association activities. It's totally out of the realm of this case."

The lawyer for the water utilities, Stephen Tillery, disagreed. "Their main argument is that the EPA has established that atrazine is safe. What the lobbying records will show is that Syngenta and its trade associations were inside the room when the EPA made that decision. They had special access. Environmental groups didn't have that kind of access. The public didn't even have that kind of access."

During yesterday's proceeding in Illinois Circuit Court, Judge Barbara Crowder postponed until Sept. 18 a ruling on a motion from six new Illinois communities to add themselves to the lawsuit. The cities are Carlinville, Fairfield, Flora, Greenville, Hillsboro, and Mattoon.

According to EPA records obtained by the Investigative Fund, weekly tests of the city of Flora's drinking water in 2008 found levels of atrazine above federal safety limits, but the public was never notified.

Atrazine has been studied for its potential link to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and birth defects, and the EPA considers it to be a potential endocrine disruptor. It is banned in the European Union.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

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Time to Speak Out Against the Biggest Polluters

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce can't catch a break these days. When the Waxman-Markey bill rolled out, it did what it always does: pretended to agree with the goal while recommending changes in the means so drastic that they would gut the bill. See this comical letter wherein it wants to "balance environmental objectives with the need for economic growth and job creation" by lowering targets, increasing free allocations, ditching the renewable energy standard, waiting for China and India to act first, completely preempting state programs, and increasing subsidies to fossil-fuel companies. This is standard operating procedure for CoC, a game it knows how to play. It lobbies for the interests of the corporate class.

But in this case, there's a problem: many, many business see enormous opportunities in the shift to clean energy. Many businesses want the stability and predictability ACES would bring. And many of those businesses happen to be members of the CoC. In May, several of them, including Nike and Johnson & Johnson, dealt the CoC a very public smack on the nose, asking it to quit speaking on behalf of "business" when lobbying on behalf of a few dirty-energy industries.

This kind if dissension in the ranks is new and embarrassing for the CoC. Its flailing response rolled out last week: a call for a "21st Century Scopes Monkey Trial" that would force the EPA to justify its endangerment finding in court.

Now, before you start mocking -- we'll get to that -- step back and think about this from a right-wing hack's perspective. The point is not, repeat not, to get at the truth of climate change. The CoC doesn't give a rat's ass about the truth of climate change. It's very simple: when in doubt, distract. Start a circus. Hype "the controversy."

The idea is to propose something that sounds reasonable on the surface, to the casual news reader, so that the EPA looks defensive if it refuses. It gives the right wing something to make hay over (and oh boy, are they). Most of all, it drags out the faux controversy of the existence of climate change.

Normally this stuff has worked well for conservatives, but a) times are changing, and b) this was a particularly ham-fisted attempt.

In comparing his proposal to the Scopes trial, CoC's Bill Kovacs revealed too much. In that case, conservatives had lost in the realm of science, so they relitigated via a theatrical court case in front of a jury with no scientific training. And Scopes lost. He was found guilty. It was less any kind of American triumph than a sad expression of provincial ignorance.

And that's exactly what Kovacs wants another one of.

Still, he came in for so much mockery that he tried to back off on Thursday, in a National Journal post that is, to put it charitably, rather opaque. He now says the Scopes comparison was "inappropriate" and that the CoC "is not denying or otherwise challenging the science behind global climate change." They just question whether it's a danger, despite the clear conclusion that it is contained in ... the science behind global climate change. Oh, and the Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA.

Kovacs goes on to recycle the myth of the EPA "whistleblower," which shows how desperate he is. The EPA has spent a couple years now making a determination, complete with the requisite 60 days for open comment, but Kovacs wants to second-guess the agency staff's conclusion before a judge. Hell, he'd probably like to treat all regulations this way -- in the name of "transparency," you know. But it would be ridiculous. Government would grind to a halt.

I don't know how much the public is really paying attention to this stuff. But I can't imagine this looks anything but buffoonish to the casual news consumer.

Related Links:

On ‘climategate’

What to make of the new climate poll

Newtongate: the final nail in the coffin of Enlightenment thinking

Should Waxman and Markey have kicked off House climate-bill negotiations with a stronger ask?

The bill they introduced was effectively the U.S. Climate Action Partnership proposal, which already reflected years of negotiation and compromise. The idea was that the difficult work of negotiations had already been done -- enviros and business both on board! -- and it would be easy for conservative Dems (and a few Republicans) to sign off on it.

Of course that's not what has happened. Republicans are balking en masse. Conservative Dems have compromised the bill down further, and by all indications will further weaken it in the Senate. Could the bill have ended up in a stronger place if it had started in a stronger place?

The counterargument is that the "green" side just didn't have much leverage. Without sticks, all they had were carrots -- more giveaways, more offsets.

One stick they did have was the threat of EPA greenhouse-gas regulations. There was a lot of talk about this when Dems first won their majorities but very little once negotiations actually got underway. Nobody is brandishing the stick.

Rep. Rick BoucherCould it have made more of a difference? Some recent comments from Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) are intriguing in this regard. In an interview with the Kingsport Times-News, Boucher was candid about his motivation for negotiating with Waxman:

Boucher stressed his interest in climate change has not been driven by a moral belief to control greenhouse gases. [Paging Times-News editors: You awake over there? What is a moral belief to control GHGs?]

What is driving his involvement, said Boucher, is the U.S. Supreme Court determined two years ago that greenhouse gases are pollutants.

“As a consequence of that decision, the Environmental Protection Agency is, for all intents and purposes, effectively required to regulate greenhouse gases,” Boucher said. “The debate about whether or not we will have regulation is over. So the only question is will EPA regulate or ... will we have congressional regulation that does balance economic effect against environmental effect? Given that choice, industry would rather have Congress do this. Industry needs and wants a bill to pass.”

"Industry needs and wants a bill to pass" -- the words of the coal industry's most dogged and effective spokesperson.

So there was leverage. It was used to get Boucher to the table. But once he was there, it went out the window. Not once in the process has industry been forced to face an ultimatum or bargain away a key position. They've been relentlessly wooed, but rarely challenged. They've been able to talk out both sides of their mouths, offering tepid, nominal support while bulldogs like the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, and the Edison Electric Institute attack and weaken the bill.

And Boucher got just about everything he wanted for Big Coal:

The Southwest Virginia congressman said he spent more than six weeks helping to rewrite the draft bill to help coal-powered utilities and coal producers in his district.

He pointed to “four key things” inserted in the bill.

First, Boucher said, was making sure emission allowances were assigned for free and not put up for auction by the federal government.

“That helps to keep electricity prices affordable and strengthens the case for utilities to continue to use coal,” he said.

Secondly, Boucher said the bill now includes 2 billion tons of carbon offsets available to industrial emitters to help them satisfy their reduction obligations.

“That means an electric utility burning coal will not have to reduce the emissions at the plant site. It can just keep burning coal,” he explained.

The third provision is a $1 billion per year special fund to develop carbon capture and sequestration technologies for controlled disposal or storage.

In the fourth provision, there is another special fund created to deploy the carbon capture and sequestration technology.

“Carbon capture and sequestration attached to coal still makes coal the cheapest fuel,” Boucher asserted.

These are the key -- some argue fatal -- weaknesses of the bill. They were put in to woo an industry that "needs and wants a bill to pass."

One other thing to note:

[Boucher] said lawmakers have “no political will” to mandate the EPA to do a cost-benefit analysis on climate change legislation.

Strictly speaking, this is false. The EPA has done detailed cost-benefit analyses of ACES. (It's going to be cheap, they say.) If Boucher is talking about the dipshit lawsuit the Chamber of Commerce is pushing, he's drifting into "death panel" territory.

Related Links:

Prologue to Copenhagen

Soil carbon—a blind spot in the debate on carbon

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

A coalition of more than 300 organizations including faith, human rights, social justice and environmental groups will deliver letters to the local offices of U.S. senators this week calling on them to strengthen climate legislation narrowly passed by the House of Representatives in June.

The effort is part of a broader grassroots initiative that aims to demonstrate support for bold leadership in the fight to solve the climate crisis.

"We're organizing on the ground, in communities around/throughout the country, to mobilize the everyday people who will feel climate impacts, and to defeat the entrenched, polluting special interests in Washington and pass a truly strong bill in the Senate," says JW Randolph of Appalachian Voices, an environmental advocacy group headquartered in Boone, N.C.

Other groups involved in the initiative include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the United Church of Christ Network for Environmental and Economic Responsibility, and the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment.

The push to strengthen the legislation comes as a recent ABC-Washington Post poll found that the majority of Americans -- 57% -- supports the changes to U.S. energy policy being put forth by Congress and the Obama administration. Another 29% oppose the proposed changes, while 14% have no opinion.

In the letter to senators [PDF], the signatories express "profound concern" about the American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which they criticize for containing massive giveaways to polluters and for failing to ensure the fastest possible transition to clean energy. The letter calls on lawmakers to ensure that the Senate version would:

* Reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to 350 parts per million, a level that scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change. ACES is based on a target concentration of 450 ppm.

* Maintain existing Clean Air Act protections against greenhouse gas pollution. ACES strips the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority to regulate such pollution.

* Minimize the use of offsets and other loopholes. ACES creates a system that would allow polluters to increase carbon emissions at one locale if they invest in projects that offset those emissions elsewhere.

* Eliminate polluter giveaways. For example, ACES currently offers generous subsidies to the coal industry in the form of funding for so-called "clean coal" research.

The effort to strengthen the climate legislation comes as polluting interests are stepping up their efforts to fight the existing bill, occasionally using tactics designed to appear grassroots but that are in fact part of a corporate-funded public-relations campaign.

For example, when a group called Energy Citizens announced earlier this month that it would be holding a series of rallies to oppose the climate legislation, the Wall Street Journal exposed the organization as an alliance funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

Also opposing the existing legislation is a new group called the Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security, or FACES of Coal, which claims to be an "alliance of people from all walks of life." But bloggers revealed recently that the group's website is hosted by K Street PR firm the Adfero Group -- and that the people pictured on its website purporting to show average Americans who support the coal industry are in fact stock photos.

Adfero's clients also include Koch Industries, the largest privately owned U.S. oil company whose principals are major funders of efforts to deny the reality of global warming, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is also leading efforts to fight greenhouse gas regulation.

President Obama wants to have the climate legislation passed into law before December, when he and other world leaders will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark to craft a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. An International Day of Climate Action is planned for Oct. 24 to draw attention to the 350 ppm goal.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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In today's Washington Post, David Fahrenthold's front-page story spends its first 15 paragraphs detailing Big Oil's massive campaign against clean energy while incredibly avoiding any mention of one little detail: money.

In fact, to believe the first 15 paragraphs, the reason polluters have such a strong voice in the national debate is because conservation groups are "struggling" and "slow." Not a single mention of polluters' massive money advantage in the first 540 words.

Then, almost as an afterthought, Fahrenthold drops this in as paragraph 16:

Oil and natural gas groups have always had deeper pockets. In the first six months of 2009, the Center for Responsive Politics found they spent $82.1 million lobbying Washington on various issues, including climate policy. In the same time, environmental and health groups concerned with climate change spent about $6.6 million on lobbying and clean-energy firms $12.1 million, according to two other analyst groups, the Center for Public Integrity and New Energy Finance.

But those figures don't even come close to telling the real story of the financial disparity between polluters and conservationists. Exxon Mobil alone - just one of many oil and coal giants - turned a $40 billion profit in 2007. That was the largest profit in the history of the planet (#2 on the list: also Exxon Mobil, 2006).

Of course, that's just profit. Exxon Mobil's annual revenue in 2007 was $404.5 billion. Exxon Mobil alone has an annual budget hundreds of times that of every conservation group put together.

And as we've covered, polluters are using that money not to present facts, but to push distortions, lies, and outright fraud. But again, the Post gives a free pass -- mentioning pro-polluter contacts to Congress without mentioning many of those have been proven to be phony and funded by industry front groups.

People often ask me if I'm disappointed by polls showing six in ten Americans support clean energy & climate legislation. With energy price spikes and a climate in crisis, shouldn't the numbers be higher?

But with Big Oil's big money and free passes like this from the media, my response is that I'm constantly amazed that Americans see right through the lies and misinformation to support what's right for our economy now and for our children's future. I just hope the Senate follows their constituents' lead this fall to pass a strong clean energy & climate bill.

Cross-posted from the National Wildlife Federation's Wildlife Promise

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"This is the truest form of grass-roots there is. We don't charge people to be members of the Citizen Army, so if anything, it's more organic than what some of the environmental groups do. We allow these people to express their own opinions on these issues."

-- Joe Lucas, senior vice president for communications at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (aka Top Coal Lobby Spokesflak), defending the actions of coal lobbyists against accusations of creating fraudulent grassroots support, or "astroturfing."

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Last week saw the launch of a new initiative in the United States, "Energy Citizens," which aims to create a significant lobby against the passage of climate change legislation in the USA and most specifically the recent House bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or "Waxman-Markey" as it is more widely known. "Energy Citizens" kicked off with a well attended rally in Houston last Tuesday, has its own website and is strongly supported by an organization that Shell US belongs to, the American Petroleum Institute. More rallies, events and advocacy initiatives are planned.

Whilst I am not an American, nor do I have any issue with the democratic process in the USA, what is at stake in this debate goes far beyond American shores and will have a profound impact on the global response to climate change for at least a decade and possibly a great deal longer. So, as an employee of the energy sector for nearly 30 years this “world Energy Citizen” also wants a word.

The clutch of EU Directives that were passed last year (ETS Phase III, CCS, Renewables) or are in the pipeline (Buildings) pretty much resemble the totality of what is proposed under Waxman-Markey. The two sides of the Atlantic are learning from each other as they move forward with ambitious plans to address energy use and begin the tough task of managing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A key element in both programs is a GHG cap-and-trade system (a mechanism originally developed and successfully deployed in the USA to reduce sulphur emissions).

Cap-and-trade legislation is now under development or in place in many parts of the developed world (including of course the USA on both counts) and if implemented could cover nearly a third of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions by 2013. In the EU it has been in place since 2005 and although it took a while to establish itself has given rise to a robust and growing carbon market with stakes in many countries through linked projects. It is working, it is beginning to drive change, it is creating new businesses and business models and there is no sign that the EU economy is suffering as a result. New wind projects are appearing across the continent, nuclear power is being given a new life, biofuel investment is rising and there is a major push to bring new technologies such as carbon dioxide capture and storage into the energy mix. A wide range of new financial and service organizations are also being created, including verifiers, (offset) project developers, CO2 consultancies and market participants.

It is also true that electricity prices across much of the EU have risen as a result of the EU-ETS – in the UK this is about 1 pence per kWh (or one and a half US cents) – but equally this is helping drive the new investment that is now taking place. This and the overall hike in electricity cost as a result of generally higher energy prices are also making families more conscious of the need for energy efficiency measures which in turn has led to a wide range of consumer initiatives in response, some developed by government but many created by business to meet that new demand.

I agree that Waxman-Markey is still some way from the right solution, but equally it is not headed in the wrong direction either. For example, it still needs to find a better balance between free allocation and auctioning in the face of international competition, but so too did the EU-ETS as Phase III was thrashed out by the European Parliament last year. There were times last year when stakeholders looked at what was on the table and thought “You must be joking!!”, but reason prevailed in the end and the necessary deals were struck – industry accepted the provisions for trade exposure, the power generators are facing up to the reality of auctioning and individual member states walked away from Brussels happy with the deal they had secured in terms of national burden and state aid provisions. Importantly, the cap-and-trade approach has been shown to be flexible enough to accomodate all of this without underminig the overall environmental goal being sought.

But is the “Energy Citizens” oganization helping the rally attendees and signatories learn about this or recognize the importance of developed countries taking the lead on emissions mitigation?? Probably not – which of course is the unfortunate side of all this.

There have been similar concerns about jobs and energy prices in the EU, but this is a two way street – and that is now being recognized. Whilst there will be some shift in energy prices, the resultant investment in efficiency and new energy infrastructure will have a positive benefit for consumers and in the longer term the new industries that are created should offset any job changes that may occur in existing sectors.

What is really required now is positive and proactive bipartisan engagement by industry and others in the development of this relatively new instrument.

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Here's more evidence that the "Energy Citizens" rallies against climate legislation are anything but grassroots uprisings.  We already knew that the American Petroleum Institute was behind the whole idea.  Now it turns out that even the local organizers of individual rallies are oil-industry lobbyists. 

Grist obtained a copy of API's list of coordinators for the 21 planned rallies, and 15 of them are registered lobbyists, mostly for API or its state-level affiliates.

There have already been three "Energy Citizens" rallies -- in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday; in Roswell, N.M., on Thursday; and in Lima, Ohio, on Friday. Others are planned for cities around the U.S. during the rest of the August congressional recess.

Here's a list of the lobbyists organizing the "grassroots" rallies:

And in Farmington, N.M., rally organizer Wendi Schuur is the director of public and community affairs at Devon Energy, an oil and gas company.

Perhaps "Energy Lobbyists" would be a more appropriate name for the movement?

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I was fully prepared to hate this op-ed from T. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner, mainly because Pickens is kind of shady and I'm generally sick of rich old establishment white guys telling us how to transform our energy systems. However! It turned out to be pretty good -- far better than what you normally see on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

The one sticking point for greens will be the heavy focus on natural gas, a vexed topic that's more and more central to climate policy conversations.

The politics of natural gas are extremely interesting. In a nutshell, the interests of coal utilities and natural gas executives are at odds. To the extent carbon is penalized and coal is phased out, natural gas wins.

Coal has dominated the development of ACES so far, securing tons of free permits and handouts, while natural gas has stood by, quiescent. Ex-senator Tim Wirth addressed a group of natural gas utility execs recently and told them to get off their asses and start lobbying for a stronger climate bill. They seem to be moving in that direction, trying to rally behind some concerted Senate lobbying.

Here, the American Gas Association's Roger Cooper puts a good face on natgas's presence in ACES:

I have no idea how it's going behind the scenes, but at the very least natural gas is a lot more sexy these days. It was the subject of a high-profile Senate hearing recently. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has done everything but carry T. Boone around on a perfumed litter to spread his natural gas evangelism. (Says Reid, "I've been converted. I now belong to the Pickens church." Yeah, I puked in my mouth a little too.)

Randy Udall has argued passionately on behalf of natural gas as a bridge climate solution. So has Robert Kennedy Jr. So has John Podesta.

The question for enviros: Is the enemy of our enemy our friend? Is it worthwhile to ally with the natgas industry to reduce the influence of coal and strengthen the climate bill?

To answer these questions, we need to look at the substantive roles being envisioned for natural gas. Pickens and Turner propose two.

Power plants

First:

Adopting a "cash-for-clunkers" program in the utility sector can save money and reduce emissions right away by retiring the oldest, least efficient and most polluting power plants in exchange for modern gas-powered plants. New coal plants should be required to combine natural gas with the coal they burn, resulting in cleaner emissions, and every power plant should meet strict carbon-emissions standards.

It's good that the oldest coal plants -- built in the 1950s and '60s, grandfathered under the Clean Air Act, and responsible for a substantial chunk of total U.S. emissions -- are back in the news. There was a great Washington Post piece on them (and how some might escape unscathed under ACES) this week. They also play a prominent role in Carl Pope's account of the Clean Air Act's original sin.

It's true, as Sean Casten and Joe Romm have pointed out, that rapidly shifting the nation's power dispatch from coal to gas would be the fastest way to reduce emissions in the short-term. Emissions from the average gas plant have plunged lately as new combined-cycle plants, which emit less than half the CO2 of the average coal plant, come online. (Meanwhile, average coal plant emissions are rising.)

As an added benefit, natural gas plants can be built more quickly than coal or nuke plants, smaller, and closer to load, enabling them to capture and use their waste heat. Natural gas can also be co-fired -- with coal to immediately reduce emissions from coal plants; with biomass, which (with sequestration) could produce carbon-neutral or even negative power; and perhaps most intriguingly, with solar thermal.

Natural gas really does seem like an important tool when it comes to short- and mid-term reductions in the electricity sector. Efficiency -- getting more power from less fuel -- should be the top and overwhelming priority, but natgas can certainly help at the margins.

Vehicles

The second proposal:

In the transportation sector, renewable energy and natural gas can also be deployed immediately. ... We can begin transitioning the nation's fleet of 6.5 million 18-wheelers that run regular routes. It would take just 20 refueling stations along a single highway to get trucks from one coast to the other. Centrally fueled urban business and government fleets also can quickly move to natural gas.

This I'm not so sure about. It's already a considerable walk-down from Pickens' original plan; he has now embraced electricity for light-duty vehicles. But still it ignores that natural gas is vastly more energy efficient burned to make electricity than it is burned in internal combustion engines. And even if compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles produce lower emissions per unit of fuel than gasoline vehicles, there's still an enormous energy penalty in gathering and compressing the fuel, which in the end yields a roughly equivalent environmental situation as gasoline. (Of course, Pickens doesn't care about the environmental situation -- he only cares where the fuel comes from -- but the rest of us should care.)

I get that we're not going to see electric buses or 16-wheelers any time soon, but all told, it seems ill-advised to build large new long-term infrastructure in the name of "transitioning." Better a strategy focused on moving freight to rail while researching advanced biofuels for heavy-duty vehicles; for personal vehicles, there are better batteries and transit-oriented development.

Of course, if U.S. policymakers took both the Turner/Pickens proposals to heart, it would represent a massive increase in demand for natural gas. Is there enough to satisfy that demand?

Supply

It's been conventional wisdom in progressive energy circles for a while now that domestic supplies of natural gas have plateaued and that the bulk of future supplies will come from overseas. But some new developments cast that into question. Craig A. Severance notes that just a couple months ago ...

... the nonprofit Potential Gas Committee industry group, assisted by the Colorado School of Mines, released the results of its 2008 assessment, indicating a total increase of U.S. natural gas resources of 39% since its last assessment, for 2006. The report notes the new natural gas resource estimate is the "highest resource evaluation in the Committee's 44-year history" -- indicating the U.S.has far more resources of natural gas than previously considered.

That's due to new discoveries and new technology that makes it easier to get at unconventional sources like shale. Others say the cost-effectiveness of getting at shale is speculative at best, and no one yet knows how much it will cost. We should have a much better idea of what's available in two or three years.

Of course if domestic supplies don't pan out, we can always revert to foreign sources in the short-term. Severance points out that "liquid natural gas (LNG) imports are being sold at incredibly low prices. With a glut of LNG terminal and tanker capacity, foreign producers now have the LNG loaded and ready to sell, and often are merely trying to cover their marginal costs of operation."

Ultimately, the signs seem to point to plentiful supply and, at least in the short-term, fairly low prices.

Still, what about the environmental consequences of embracing a fossil fuel?

Oh, right, the environment

Many long-time enviros want nothing to do with natural gas. There's worry that natural gas drilling endangers water supplies, in part thanks to the so-called Halliburton Loophole in the Safe Water Drinking Act, which exempts a technique called hydraulic fracturing from the law's provisions. It's the subject of lawsuits in Pennsylvania and protests in Texas right now. New York City has demanded a ban on natural gas drilling near upstate reservoirs, for fear of drinking water contamination. Legislation has been introduced to bring fracturing under federal rules.

As Udall himself admits:

The gas industry has not been gentle on Western landscapes -- but climate change could be worse. So pick your poison. To displace coal with gas, we'd need to complete 30,000 to 40,000 new wells a year for decades to come.

Vastly expanded natural gas drilling would no doubt create more ecological sacrifice zones populated by the poor and powerless. After sitting through sessions on mountaintop removal and New Orleans at a recent conference, I've lost my taste for that kind of "poison."

And of course, insofar as the domestic motherload doesn't pan out, we'll end up importing vast quantities of LNG, with all the vexing environmental issues that raises.

Non-conclusion

This is a lot of words to read for no conclusion, I know, but I'm torn. In a perfect world, we'd be committed to reducing the use of all fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, through efficiency and rapid buildout of renewables. Alternatively, one can envision a U.S. policy whereby natural gas is extracted carefully and used judiciously to carry the U.S. on a slightly slower transition to clean energy.

But as we have surely learned by now, politics is not a precise instrument. Sleep with dogs, wake with fleas. Sometimes you've got the bull and sometimes the bull's got you. Grab a tiger by the tail ... etc. If enviros ally with the natural gas industry, it's hard to know how much they'd ultimately be able to shape the result. Then again, it's not like there are lots of other powerful allies in the fight against coal just waiting in the wings, and it sure would be nice to get a better climate bill in the Senate ...

'Tis vexing. What do y'all think?

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