The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has announced today it has reached an accommodation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to see documents requested in January — and subpoenaed on April 2 — which “relate to EPA’s decisions on global warming emissions regulations for vehicles, and on the agency’s ruling on the risks of heat-trapping pollution to public health or welfare.” The announcement:

Under the agreement, the EPA will allow the Select Committee access to the documents in a timely fashion, but to not interfere with the current regulatory deliberations currently underway within the administration. The Select Committee will not withdraw the subpoena still outstanding against EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson.

The “regulatory deliberations” are the EPA’s work on issuing an Advanced Notice of Proposed Regulations (ANPR), a gambit to delay action first suggested by the Heritage Foundation.

Essentially, the committee is agreeing to all of the terms the EPA made in an April 16 offer but one — that it withdraw the subpoena in return for limited access to the documents. The EPA offered to “make the requested documents available to the Select Committee for review at the time the ANPR is published later this spring or in any event no later than June 21.” Global Warming Committee spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder tells the Wonk Room that the committee accepted these terms, including the June 21 deadline — over five months after the initial request and nearly three months after the subpoena. Burnham-Snyder added, “I don’t know exactly what the access level will be” to the documents in question.

Rich and thin is pass©. What’s hot now is rich and dirty.

Why is a smart energy and climate policy so elusive for this country? In three words — money, money, money.

The nation’s energy bill is now about a trillion dollars. That means the super-rich fossil fuel companies have enormous profits they can spend on lobbying to ensure their continued dominance. How much? Jeff Goodell has the answer here:

In the first quarter of 2008, Big Coal’s new front group, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, spent a record-breaking $1.9 million in federal lobbying expenses. To put that in perspective, in the same period, the Solar Energies Industries Association spent all of $75,000….

Individual coal companies have been even more generous to our nation’s cash-starved policymakers:

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Goldman Sachs analyst Arjun Murti predicted the recent spike in oil prices, so it’s worth looking at his recent interview in Barron’s (subs. req’d):

IN 2004, ARJUN N. MURTI, A TOP ENERGY ANALYST AT GOLDMAN SACHS, published a report predicting “a potentially large upward spike in crude oil, natural gas and refining margins at some point this decade.” It was a controversial call, with crude around $40 a barrel at the time. But it was right on the money.

Four years later, crude is trading around 139.

Murti sees energy in the later stages of a “super spike,” in which prices rise to a point where demand drops off. In a note last month, he wrote that “the possibility of $150-to-$200-per-barrel oil seems increasingly likely over the next six to 24 months”….

Barron’s: What do you make of Friday’s big surge in oil prices?

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[UPDATE: Link fixed. Picture is frame capture. It does not go to a video.]

I just want to draw your attention to a new website, www.coal-is-dirty.com. You can find an extensive overview on “clean coal” by Jeff Goodell (here).

And if you get bored or have some non-progressive friends, send them to www.coal-is-clean.com.

And while we are talking coal, Sean Casten at Grist has a very good (and long) discussion explaining that “coal is no longer cheap.”

In remarks to his campaign staff Obama said (see video here):

Those of you who are concerned about global warming? I don’t care what he says, John McCain is not going to push that agenda hard.

Given McCain’s increasing lameness and doubletalk on the issue, his obsession with costly nuclear pork and his weak climate plan compared to Obama’s (see earlier posts below), I couldn’t agree more.

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