So far, successfully fending off GOP efforts to promote something lame.

E&ENews PM (subs. req’d) has a long story on the effort by House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Joe Barton (R-Texas) to push a weak CAFE amendment to House energy legislation. The story of what Barton tried to do, and what the Democrats plan to do on both CAFE and energy, is rather involved, so I’ll just repost the whole story below the fold:
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The first rule of Carbon Offsets is, you do not talk about Carbon Offsets.

Just kidding. This isn’t Fight Club, but I do aim to pick a fight with those overhyping offsets.

If a smart company like Google can seriously think it can go green by burning coal and then buying offsets – and if a smart company like PG&E is bragging about a new program that allows customers to offset their electricity emissions by planting trees (a dopey program I’ll blog about later) — then something is very wrong about the general understanding of offsets.

For those who want a basic introduction to offsets, Wikipedia has an excellent entry. I believe the more you know about and think about offsets, the less appealing they are, as these articles make clear.

No rules of the road exist for offsets. Until now. In subsequent posts, I will offer my own rules based on dozens of discussions over the past decade with environmentalists, energy experts, corporations, and would-be offsetters. I’ll post the first rule tomorrow, but it can be summed up in two words: No trees!

As ABC did last month, NBC reported last night not on the book, but on the painful twin reality of terrible wildfires (along with heatwaves) and flooding hitting this country at the same time.

[flv http://images1.americanprogress.org/il80web20037/ClimateProgress/flv/2007/06/ExWeather.320.240.flv]

No mention of climate change — this is the mainstream media, after all — but ABC did note the rain fell in Texas “in almost Biblical amounts,” as much as 19 inches in 24 hours — just the kind of deluge scientists expect to become more common thanks to global warming.

Who knew John Dingell (D-Michigan) would channel Al Gore (D-Earth)?

Greenwire reports (subs. req’d), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said of the climate bill he is working on:

We should set ambitious goals and targets for that legislation. It should stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at levels that will avoid or avert large-scale climate change consequences. That will require a reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions of between 60, and perhaps as much as 80, percent by 2050.

The rest of the story is below the fold:

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