I have a new mini-article in Salon, “A can’t-lose debate strategy for Joe Biden.” It explains how Biden can win the debate and score big points with independents by bringing up clean energy and global warming as much as possible. This may require more message discipline than the Dem VP nominee has. The article ends by noting, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Biden must not screw up.”

[Those who have had enough of CP vs. Shellenberger & Norhaus can skip this post, but I think this is a very important messaging discussion.]

My critique of S&N has elicited from Nordhaus a sentence that encapsulates our differences, cuts through all the “barbs,” and makes clear just how dangerously wrong they are. Ted wrote here yesterday:

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John McCain told NPR this morning that, regarding Governor Palin, he has “turned to her advice many times in the past … particularly on energy issues.” Many?

This would be especially scary when you consider that few people in the country are more misinformed on energy than Sarah Palin, the fungible candidate, a woman

• who continued “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers“;
• who told multiple energy lies in her acceptance speech;
• who the UK Guardian noted used ExxonMobil-funded research and scientists in her “efforts to stop polar bears being protected as an endangered species“; and
• who first said humans haven’t contributed to climate change but since then has come to believe say it “kind of doesn’t matter at this point,” when it kind of does.

Here are John McCain’s full comments:

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Written with Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has handed to Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), his running mate, the responsibility of handling his “energy independence” agenda — much as George Bush did with Dick Cheney. On NPR this morning, McCain expressed his devotion to her, saying, “I’ve already turned to Governor Palin particularly on energy issues.” In an interview last night with Katie Couric of CBS, Palin — who McCain claims “understands the energy issues better than anybody I know in Washington, D.C.” — outlined her plan for America’s energy future. What she says she wants to do is inarguable:

We need to make sure that our nation’s taking those steps to become energy independent. . . I support all that we can do to reduce emissions and to clean up this planet.

However, the steps McCain-Palin would take to “become energy independent” and “reduce emissions” would in fact achieve the exact opposite.

PALIN PLAN #1. ‘Weaning Ourselves Off The Hydrocarbons’ By Drilling For More.

And it’s why we should have started ten years ago tapping into domestic supplies that America is so rich in. Alaska has billions of barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas onshore and offshore. . . Of course ramping up supplies domestically is a key to that. But so is weaning ourselves off the hydrocarbons.

FACT: Oil and natural gas are hydrocarbons. Weaning ourselves off them, by definition, means using less, not more.

PALIN PLAN #2. Energy Independence By ‘Tapping Into The Nuclear.’

Also tapping into the nuclear, the clean coal, to biomass, geothermal, tides, waves, all those things that we have as alternative energy sources, it’s gotta be an all-of-the-above approach to energy independence.

FACTS: The U.S. imports over 90 percent of the uranium used in nuclear plants. Russia is the number one uranium supplier to the U.S. And key components for new plants are only built overseas. Read more

In last night’s Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert eviscerated the Drill, Baby, Drill hoax (“last week, the Democrat Congress voted to lift the 26-year ban on offshore drilling, thereby ending our dependence on foreign oil by one percent ten to twenty years from now”) before training his sights on Big Oil’s greenwashing propaganda. After airing clips from advertisements of Exxon Mobil, Valero, and Chevron, Colbert asks:

A lot of people talk about loving the earth. But how many of them actually penetrate it?

Watch it:

The parody promotional video Colbert airs in this segment is from Prescott Oil, part of the fictional Prescott Group corporate conglomerate that Colbert has used to skewer pharmaceutical industries.

The fossil-fuel industry is on track to spend one billion dollars this year propagandizing oil, coal and natural gas. As the Public Campaign Action Fund found, “In the first half of 2008, the major industry players, American Petroleum Institute, BP, Chevron Texaco, Conoco Phillips, Exxon Mobil, Hess Corporation, and Royal Dutch Shell, spent $92.2 million on broadcast and cable advertising; $14.9 million on radio advertising; $57.5 million on print advertising in magazines and newspapers; $5.3 million on Internet advertising; and $4.0 million on other media.”

Will the Senate really revive the renewable tax credit package back from its House-induced coma? [And by "House" I mean the House of Representatives, not the brilliant but irascible Dr. Gregory House, who certainly might put a patient into a coma to save him or her -- indeed, he himself was put into an induced coma.... But I digress.]

E&E Daily reports:

The Senate has added an extension of expiring renewable energy tax credits and other tax breaks to the Wall Street bailout bill set for a vote tonight….

While the Senate pays for the roughly $17 billion in energy incentives, many other business and personal tax credits now attached to the Wall Street bill are not fully offset in their plan. Nonetheless, Senate supporters of their version of the broad tax bill (H.R. 6049), which passed 93-2, say it would sail through the House if brought up for a vote there.

Here is the rest of the article:

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