EPA administrator “Lisa Jackson has ordered the Great Lakes office of EPA to stop negotiations with the Dow Chemical company — begun in the last days of the Bush administration — over controversial dioxin cleanup in the Saginaw Bay watershed.” The Wonk Room reported in May 2008 how regional EPA administrator Mary Gade, in a scandal reminiscent of Alberto Gonzales’s firing of U.S. Attorneys, was pushed out by Bush appointees for her efforts to make Dow Chemical clean up its century-old toxic waste. Center for American Progress senior fellow Robert Sussman called her firing “highly irregular“:

If her only sin was zeal in protecting the public, firing her was wrong and will send a troubling message to EPA employees all across the country who are trying to do their jobs. Clearly, it’s up to Steve Johnson to explain why he fired Mary and up to Congress to investigate the circumstances.

Despite Congressional inquiries, Administrator Johnson never explained the firing, and only left his post when Bush left office. Now, however, Sussman — who supervised Obama’s EPA transition team — is the EPA’s senior policy counsel. According to the Michigan Messenger’s Eartha Jane Melzer, “Jackson also stated that newly appointed advisor, Robert Sussman, would provide oversight on the matter.”

Cleaning up the toxic Bush legacy will take years, but this is an welcome start, especially for the residents of Saginaw Bay.

Marc Morano

A top aide for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be leaving his Senate post after a Wonk Room investigation revealed how he coordinates the right-wing climate denial machine. Marc Morano, Inhofe’s environmental communications director, joined the Senate in 2006 to promote Sen. Inhofe’s denial of manmade global warming via the Drudge Report and other right-wing outlets. E&E News reports that Morano will return to the conservative media network as a blogger for Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT):

Marc Morano, the spokesman for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will leave the committee later this month to become executive director and chief correspondent for a fledgling Web site that will serve as a “clearinghouse and one-stop shopping” for climate and environmental news.

Morano joined the Senate, with a $134,000 a year salary, from the rightwing website Cybercast News Service (CNS), where he launched the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in 2004 and attacked the war record of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) in 2006. Morano was Rush Limbaugh’s “Man in Washington” in the 1990s. Limbaugh, of course, still promotes global warming denial.

Both CNS — a subsidiary of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center — and CFACT are part of the Scaife network of conservative front groups, supported by the Richard Mellon Scaife family fortune and corporations like Exxon Mobil. CFACT and the Media Research Center are co-sponsors of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, a global warming denier extravaganza that begins Sunday, March 8.

A Congressional source tells Climate Progress that as of today, “Senator Menendez has no holds on any scientist nominees.”

So that would suggest efforts to get him to drop those holds has had some impact (see “Help free John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco“).

But it now appears that other, anonymous Senators are still holding up both nominations. Mike Dunford of ScienceBlogs has all the contact info needed if you want to continue applying pressure where it would useful (here and below):

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The top public relations group for the coal industry is looking to shape public attitudes online, with a $20 million media budget for Internet-based advertising alone. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is on the search for a “Vice President, Paid and Digital Media” to increase the public’s “appreciation for the use of coal”:

The Vice President, Paid and Digital Media is responsible for implementing proactive digital media and traditional media placement strategies as a component of an integrated national communication program designed to 1) support coal-based electricity advocacy initiatives and 2) increase the public’s awareness of and appreciation for the use of coal to generate electricity.

This position, according to recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International, will oversee the public relations and media placement firms under contract and manage an annual media budget in excess of $20 million: more than $3 million for “digital media programs” (like the “Clean Coal Carolers” and a “Blogger Brigade“) and greater than $17 million for “media placement.”

ACCCE’s planned digital onslaught is just one component of a comprehensive, national public relations campaign to misinform the public about coal. In 2008, ACCCE spent over $45 million on its deceptive messaging, including $10.5 million to lobby Congress. The PR firm Hawthorn Group has bragged about its “grassroots campaign” for ACCCE involving “sending ‘clean coal’ branded teams to hundreds of presidential candidate events” and “giving away free t-shirts and hats emblazoned with our branding: Clean Coal.”

The Wonk Room received the job description when Korn/Ferry approached Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Associate Director for Online Advocacy, Alan Rosenblatt, about the job. Alan tells the Wonk Room:

While some may work just for money, progressives work for values. Which might explain why this headhunter was naive enough to recruit me despite the fact I work for an organization that opposes her client.

Download the Korn/Ferry job description for ACCCE’s Vice President of Paid Digital Media here.

In two must-read articles, the uber-sober Economist magazine slams “clean coal” — aka carbon capture and storage (CCS), or carbon sequestration — as an “illusion,” and an expensive and potentially dangerous one at that.

In an editorial, the Economist points out:

• Tonne for tonne, CCS looks like an expensive way of cutting carbon. The cost of it may fall, but probably not by much, given the familiarity of the technologies it uses.
• CCS is not just a potential waste of money. It might also create a false sense of security about climate change, while depriving potentially cheaper methods of cutting emissions of cash and attention–all for the sake of placating the coal lobby.

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My column on Rupert Murdoch greening News Corp (Jack Bauer becomes first-ever carbon-neutral torturer as Murdoch says “Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats”) has inspired cartoonist Marc Roberts aka ThrobGlobblin (click to enlarge):

As readers know, climate blogger JohnnyRook, aka Steven Kimball, was very ill (see “Murder, He Wrote“). On Monday, he died in his home in Port Townsend, Washington at the age of 53.

Meteor Blades at Daily Kos has a very nice tribute in which he notes:

Steven’s family has asked that anyone who wishes to make a remembrance in his name can contribute to 350 org at this link. It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate place. Goodbye, Steven. We miss you already.

Let me just end with what Rook posted in the comments of my tribute to him, since it was once of the last things he ever wrote:

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Okay, maybe that headline tried to do too much– but I wanted to

1. Invite my DC readers to a panel Monday March 9 at noon at B-339 Rayburn House office building with lunch provided (invite here, note RSVP).
2. Invite all my readers to suggest things for me to say.

I am not going to use PowerPoints, so that only leaves rhetoric.
While the topic question is “Are nuclear jobs green jobs?” I have been asked to speak about all green jobs, as well as answering the topic question.

Your thoughts are sought.

Related Posts:

• Green Jobs 101
• Obama’s amazing speech at wind-turbine-parts maker
• Guess who’s trashing “green jobs?”
• Must Read: Van Jones and the English Language