GM Vice Chair Bob Lutz would be a hard man to like, even if he weren’t a global warming denier (see “GM is full of crocks“). He presumably thinks he and GM Chair Wagoner deserve the credit and the large salaries whenever GM is doing well.

But when the company crashes — that is God’s handiwork. The Washington Post reports:

Singling out Wagoner “is like blaming the mayor of a city hit by an earthquake,” GM Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz said in an interview on business cable network CNBC this morning. Noting the global collapse of demand for new cars and the slowdown in the United States and other major economies, Lutz said that calls for Wagoner’s resignation were “in the category of some sort of sacrifice to the gods,” the reasoning apparently being that “if we punish some of the innocents, things will get better.”

Seriously. Yes, apparently every other car company on the planet is weeks away from declaring bankruptcy.

Maybe the public is right on this one. In the Post‘s poll, 54% oppose the bailout. Wagoner is a career GM man. Let me revise the headline of my earlier post: Dumping Wagoner and Lutz MUST be part of the deal.

A special Climate Progress report from Gainesville, Florida.

Robert Ponzio, art instructor and Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Oak Hall School took to the skies Sunday above Florida’s Kennedy Space Center this weekend in a specially modified, G-FORCE ONE aircraft. Working in a near weightless environment traditionally reserved for astronaut training and scientific experimentation, Ponzio hopes to inspire students to pursue careers in science. He also aspires to forge a stronger, academic alliance between the traditional sciences and the creative arts.

You can follow Ponzio’s adventure on the plane nicknamed the “vomit comet” at his blog, Hardcore Painting. For those CP readers who want to go weightless, it’s about $5,000 a pop. Info here.

“Solving unprecedented problems of achieving energy independence, protecting the biosphere, and mitigating climate change will require visionary thinking, extraordinary innovation, and sometimes, breakthrough technologies. Focusing on traditional academic courses is essential, but not enough,” Ponzio said, noting Daniel H. Pink’s Wired Magazine article, “Revenge of the Right Brian.”

Pink suggests that while the left-brain’s logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs are still necessary, they are no longer sufficient. Pink writes,

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Not much more to report than that headline. PEBO and the VP will meet in Chicago Tuesday to discuss how Obama might use the fight against global warming to stimulate the economy.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson willingly endorsed the Bush administration’s push to put business interests ahead of his agency’s mission to “to protect human health and the environment.” An extended profile of Johnson published Sunday by the Philadelphia Inquirer reveals that the evangelical Johnson is unwilling — or unable — to separate religion from science.

Johnson — not a Ph.D. scientist — received his bachelor of arts degree in biology from Taylor University, “an evangelical, interdenominational covenant community committed to advancing life-long learning and ministering the redemptive love of Jesus Christ to a world in need.” His Taylor adviser, biology professor Timothy Burkholder told the Inquirer that the school teaches a religion-inflected view of evolution:

We would adhere to the view that God is the creator of all things and in charge of our lives, and I think Steve recognizes that and did from the beginning.

When questioned by reporters, Johnson admitted he does not distinguish a “clean-cut division” between religion and science:

It’s not a clean-cut division. If you have studied at all creationism vs. evolution, there’s theistic or God-controlled evolution and there’s variations on all those themes.

Johnson “declined to express his views” further, claiming his understanding of religion’s relationship to science “as a practical matter has not been an issue” at the agency. However, his inerrant faith that he and Bush are God’s servants guided his decisions. Criticism of his corrupt tenure that grew to a maelstrom this spring left him feeling like he’s “in the fiery furnace” and “Daniel in the lion’s den,” but he decided not to resign after a “providential reading” of an inspirational quotation by Abraham Lincoln about God’s will. Read more

This is the draft agreed to by Chairmen Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Barney Frank (D-MA) and the Democratic leaders of both chambers (click here). Looks kinda bland and wimpy (i.e. no fuel efficiency requirments) at first glance. [Greenpeace's statement here.]

Interestingly, the Natural Resources Defense Council is out with a study today that finds Ford, GM Can Meet Nation’s Most Progressive Global Warming Standards, which is to say, the California standard. The study is based on an analysis of the plans Ford and GM submitted in their quest to be bailed out (see “Whose bailout plan is best: Ford drops hydrogen while GM remains confused about ethanol“). NRDC finds:

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The WSJ reports Outside Pressure Grows for GM to Oust Wagoner as part of any bailout deal. Great idea. GM’s Chairman and CEO certainly shares of much of the blame for the company’s collapse.

But I agree with SolveClimate and DeSmogblog, that Bob Lutz should also go. He is GM’s greenwasher and global warming denier (see “GM is full of crocks” and “GM’s Lutz is nuts“). And, of course, he is Vice Chair of Global Product Development (and was chair of GM North America from 2001 to 2005) — so he must have something to do with people not wanting GM products.

Probably the worst of all worlds would be oust Wagoner and promote Lutz. That’d be like impeaching and convicting President Bush. Hmm. Maybe Lutz is Wagoner’s job protection plan….

I couldn’t agree more with PEBO on Meet the Press Sunday: New gasoline taxes aren’t the way to boost the energy efficiency.

Remember, European gas taxes have long been more than $2 a gallon higher than ours, and as of 2002, the average fuel economy of European Union vehicles was 37 miles per gallon, which is just a tad more than what the 2007 Energy Bill requires of new U.S. cars in 2020 (see “Why a carbon cap won’t solve our oil addiction“).

Of course, it would be politically impossible to raise gas taxes even $1 in this deep recession, even if you promised to give all the money back to taxpayers. A smart politician will instead focus his or her efforts on jumpstarting the transition to high fuel economy and plug in hybrids, while leaving higher gasoline prices to the inevitability of peak oil (see “Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? Not if we can find six Saudi Arabias!“).

Obama’s answer to Tom Brokaw’s question is here:

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If you dig ClimateProgress and would like more people to see it, Digg some posts you like (click here). The most popular stories rise to the top of the Digg page where millions of viewers will see them, becoming informed on global warming and ultimately saving the planet from general destruction.

I’m mainly asking you just to Digg posts that have already gained some traction. And the best time to start is now! I have another post rising up on Digg (see “Very warm 2008 makes this the hottest decade in recorded history by far*“).

One does need a lot of Diggs to get noticed on, say, their environment page, but the hottest decade post is currently near the top there and on the front of their science page. Making the front page of Digg itself is very hard, since you have to compete with the likes of “Pamela Anderson came at art show wearing just her underwear.” Still, climate change is more important than whether Pamela needs a clothes’ change, no?

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E&E Daily (subs. req’d) has the story:

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will meet Wednesday to discuss energy and public lands measures that Congress and President-elect Barack Obama can include in a planned economic stimulus package early next year….

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Dec. 10, at 9:30 a.m. in 366 Dirksen.

Witnesses: Steve Hauser, vice president, GridPoint; Joe Loper, vice president of policy and research, Alliance to Save Energy (ASE); Malcolm Woolf, director, Maryland Energy Association; Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow, Center for American Progress (CAP)….

I have already posted CAP’s proposals A Strategy for Green Recovery here and ASE’s proposals in Part 2. I’ll post Bracken’s testimony when it is available, and put up the link to the hearing Wednesday morning.

Here’s the rest of the story:

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A raging debate has emerged as to whether clean coal is claptrap or crap trap.

On the one side are people who think that clean coal means coal plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) for the vast majority of the carbon dioxide they emit (or that coal isn’t clean under any plausible definition of the word “clean”). Since there are no commercial utility-scale CCS plants, that makes clean coal clap trap. This group consists of

• Virtually all enviros, like the the “Reality” Coalition (see “Memo to Gore: Don’t call coal ‘clean’ seven times in your ad“)
• NBC’s Brian Williams (who called clean coal “an oxymoron. Wishful thinking“)
• My boss at DOE (who used to practice saying “clean coal” in front of a mirror so he wouldn’t burst into laughter)
• Most rational people

This group can point to the fact that neither the Bush Administration nor the coal industry took CCS seriously enough to put in sufficient funds to save Futuregen, which “administration officials were calling … a ‘centerpiece‘ of their strategy for clean coal technologies” just a year ago. But then centerpieces are largely decorative, no?

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