We may not be all thrilled that he is a central player in the energy debate, but he is, so his views are worth knowing. He just gave a blunt interview on the subject of climate and energy legislation broadcast on C-Span and available here (you may need to step through some pages to find it — weirdly, C-Span does not seem to have heard of the permalink concept).

Dingell’s sly strategy was reported by E&E Daily in a story titled, “Dingell thumps House climate panel, reveals carbon tax strategy” (subs. req’d):

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) intends to propose major taxes on gasoline and industrial carbon dioxide emissions in an attempt to show Americans would reject paying high costs to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Ouch! The whole story is reprinted below:

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UPDATE: To hear more on this project from Kansas Public Radio, click here.

A few weeks ago, my dad, Marvin Manlove of 360 Architecture (far left), led Governor Kathleen Sebelius (who is one of the many examples of local leadership on energy policy), on a tour of a LEED-accredited county building his firm recently designed. Below is his own account of the building details:

“Governor Sebelius recently toured the Johnson County Kansas Sunset Drive Office Building. In her quest to identify Statewide initiatives for energy conservation and sustainability the Governor found in Olathe, Kansas an outstanding example of stewardship.

“The building is a recipient of USGBC’s LEED Gold certification. The 128,000 square-foot building was designed to deliver a lasting impression yet with minimal environmental impact. It conserves and protects precious water resources. It provides maximum energy efficiency and utilizes smaller HVAC units and distributes air through an underfloor air system. The building was constructed extensively of materials which were salvaged, reclaimed or comprised of significant recycled content.

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One reason I began posting my Rules of Carbon Offsets is a dubious program by the California utility PG&E called ClimateSmart, which is supposed to allow PG&E customers to become “climate neutral.”

This program actually manages to violate Rules 0, 1, and 2 all at once! It really makes clear why offsets are bastardized emissions reductions — and why trees are an especially dubious offset.

This picture graces the “Our Projects” page of the ClimateSmart website. The caption reads “Photo of van Eck Forest, courtesy of Pacific Forest Trust.” Well that burns Rule 1 and 2 — no trees, and certainly not trees in a California forest comprising half your offset portfolio. (This forestry offset is particularly outrageous, as we will see at the end of this post.)

Worse, what PG&E is offering to do is offset customer’s greenhouse gas emissions generated from their electricity purchases and natural gas consumption.

The $64,000 question is — Why doesn’t PG&E just sell renewable power to its customers? Remember Rule Zero of Offsets:

Before you pay others to reduce their emissions on your behalf, you need to do everything reasonably possible to reduce your own emissions first. As the saying goes, “Physician, Heal Thyself” before presuming to heal other people.

How does Rule Zero apply here? Consider what PG&E says:

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Gasoline lines redux? The normally staid Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) warns in a new report:

Despite four years of high oil prices, this report sees increasing market tightness beyond 2010, with OPEC spare capacity declining to minimal levels by 2012.

We need action on fuel economy standards as soon as possible.

The Wall Street Journal (subs. req’d) has an article today summarizing the IEA report today:

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RealClimate once again cuts through recent climate confusion with a couple of great posts.

First, you may have heard of a Science article last week that supposedly said the Greenland ice sheet was more stable than previously thought. That is not, in fact, what it said. RealClimate has a good explication of the article here.

Second, you may have heard that the global temperature measurements are somehow suspect because of supposed flaws in the monitoring stations. Again, RealClimate has the real story.

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has launched a new web site, www.ClimateClassroom.org, to help parents and teachers talk to kids about global warming. Here is how NWF describes the site:

We designed the site via direct communication with over 200 Ranger Rick readers to determine their questions and how they felt about what they were hearing in the media. The site is designed to address two main educational challenges:

a) presenting global warming is a way that doesn’t upset children (particularly very young children) and

b) educating them in accordance with their developmental capacity to absorb complex information.

Its features include: guidelines for parents, proposed new national global warming educator guidelines, age-adapted sources of useful curricula, a downloadable slide presentation for kids, presenter’s guide, and more.