A bunch of polls have come out that find the public supports strong climate action in spite of aggressive and widespread Republican fear-mongering about energy prices.

For instance, the new Washington Post/ABC poll of 1,072 Americans (here) found:

While majorities across the board support government regulation of greenhouse gases, it peaks among liberals (88%) and under 30s (80%), vs. 61% of conservatives and 64% of seniors. Support also ranges from 85% of Democrats, 65% “strongly,” to 64% of Republicans, 39% strongly. Concern about its cost is broader, and stronger, among those who’d presumably be hit hardest — lower-income adults.

Well, lower-income adults would be hardest hit if we didn’t give them a tax cut equal to their higher energy costs, as Obama plans (see “EPA Analysis: “Returning the revenues in [a lump-sum rebate] could make the median household, and those living at lower ends of the income distribution, better off than they would be without the program.” And indeed consumers can end up further ahead by taking advantage of Federal, state, and utility programs to lower their energy bills with energy-saving strategies that the media hardly ever discusses or polls on.

Our side has been weaker and less consistent on messaging, which makes these poll results even more remarkable.  The public seems to have absorbed the Republican arguments and not been persuaded. If you read the details of the poll, you’ll see that immediately after the regulation question, people were asked the cost question — “How concerned are you that federal regulation of greenhouse gases could substantially raise the price of things you have to pay” (with 77% saying they are concerned).

Americans appear to fully understand the worst-case consequences of what they are supporting.  Imagine how the polling will ultimately turn out when President Obama and his team actually launches an all out messaging blitz on energy and climate action, with a tax cut for the poor and middle class, with aggressive strategies to lower their energy bills and create green clean energy jobs, and with a clear message of the cost to Americans of inaction.

A new NBC/WSJ poll of 1,005 Americans (here) asked the question more directly, and also found the public supports strong action in spite of the cost:

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Even though his state is still rebuilding from unprecedented floods, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is committed to coal and wary of fighting climate change. Dorgan told the North Dakota Senate that he was concerned that the market created by capping global warming pollution could be open to manipulation:

I’m not very interested with having a bunch of folks with a bunch of money get their mitts on trading credits, and have our future and our destiny tied to their interests. I feel very strongly there’s something going on with our climate. We need to be attentive to it, we need to deal with it, but as we do, we have to be smart.

It’s legitimate to have a concern about the regulatory structure of a carbon market, about one-tenth the size of the fossil-fuel commodity markets, and Sen. Dorgan has the expertise to design the legislation. But he seems to be letting a policy detail obscure the real issue — that global warming pollution is completely unregulated, allowing corporate polluters to make astronomical profits while destroying the atmosphere.

This carbon loophole has allowed pollution giants like Exxon Mobil, Koch Industries, Peabody Coal, and Massey Energy to ravage the planet, sicken our children, and rake in obscene profits for decades. Now, as North Dakota reels from its third extreme flood in as many years, scientists are warning that the climate crisis is outstripping their projections.

Yet Dorgan seems to be confusing political “reality” with actual reality, when he summarily dismissed Vice President Al Gore’s “Repower America” call that “the nation should rely solely on renewable fuels by 2020″:

Not going to happen. Not even close. We need to continue to use our most abundant resource, but to be able to do that, we have to be able to unlock the technology … to decarbonize coal, and we’re going to do that.

Again, Dorgan is missing the forest for the trees. Dorgan is strikingly pessimistic that America can free itself of fossil fuel dependence, even though the sun, wind, and human ingenuity are much more “abundant” resources than coal. Yet he willing to guarantee the success of experimental carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal-fired power plants Of course, a $300 million loan to a North Dakota coal plant for CCS development may help it along. If Dorgan truly wants CCS to happen, he should recognize that the most important thing the government can do is to create a market for clean energy by passing strong cap-and-trade legislation as soon as possible. Unfortunately, his voting record reveals he puts GOP filibusters of clean energy legislation above the security and health of the United States.

As readers know, I try to stay up-to-date on messaging, which is why I have a whole category devoted to rhetoric.

I have now sat through a couple of extended presentations about clean energy and climate messaging from people who definitely know how to do this sort of thing.  I will present some of the results in a series of posts.

One general theme emerges, I think, which is really Messaging 101:  Be specific.

“Green jobs” is not specific and requires people to fill in the blank depending on what the word “green” means to them.  For some, this apparently means “environmental jobs” as opposed to real jobs for regular folks.

“Clean energy jobs” is much better (according to multiple sources).  People have a much better notion of what clean energy is.

The same goes for “renewable energy” or “renewables.”  Interestingly, for different reasons, I had blogged a year ago that it was Time to stop using the phrase “renewable energy.”

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Memo to Media:  Who the heck are these guys and what are they hiding by apparently misstating their origin?

E&E News (subs. req’d) reports on a new advertising campaign from a “conservative organization”:

The American Energy Alliance (AEA) campaign targets 11 key members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee — all of them moderates whose votes could be critical to the climate bill’s success or failure.

Who is the AEA?  Good question.  The AEA says on its website:

AEA is an independent affiliate of the Institute for Energy Research (IER)….

Aside from the cryptic nature of the oxymoronic phrase “independent affiliate,” it is worth noting that the Institute for Energy Research “has received $307,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.” The President of IER is one Robert Bradley “who previously served as Director of Public Policy Analysis at Enron, where he was a speechwriter for CEO Kenneth Lay,” who was “convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges on May 25, 2006.

Elsewhere on the site, AEA says it is “the independent grassroots affiliate” of IER.  The only people who think AEA is a “grassroots” organization are people who are actively smoking grass.

Now here is where it gets really confusing, apparently by design.

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Jim Prentice, Canada’s environment minister, gives a remarkable interview with The Globe and Mail published on Wednesday on plans to meet the government target of “having a 90-per-cent emission-free electricity sector by 2025″:

OTTAWA “” The federal government is planning sweeping new climate-change regulations for Canada’s electricity sector that will phase out traditional coal-fired power.

Any new coal plants will have to include highly expensive — and unproven — technology to capture greenhouse gas emissions and inject it underground for permanent storage, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said in an interview yesterday.

Ottawa also plans to impose absolute emission caps on utilities’ existing coal-fired power plants and establish a market-based system to allow them to buy credits to meet those targets, Mr. Prentice said.

Electricity users in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia would be hit hard by the new rules, as their provinces rely on coal for more than 70 per cent of their power, and alternatives will be costly.

“The approach that we’ve been working towards involves a cap-and-trade system relating to thermal coal, and the requirement of phasing out those facilities as they reach the end of their useful, fully-amortized life,” Mr. Prentice said.

“The concept is that, as these facilities are fully amortized and their useful life fully expended, they would not be replaced with coal,” the minister said.

He added that coal would be an option if it produced near-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

This phaseout is driven by Canada’s tough target for power generation:

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Ostriches of a feather stick their heads in the sand together.

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) is a true champion of the antiscience wing of the conservative movement stagnation (see Rep. Shimkus: Cutting CO2 emissions is “Taking away plant food from the atmosphere”).  [Note to self:  It isn't a wing of the right wing that is anti-science, it's the whole damn conservative bird ostrich.]

He knows with 100% certainty that humans can’t cause devastating sea level rise because God said in the Bible he would “never again” devastate humans with a flood again:

[Note to Shimkus:  If you believe "God's word is infallible, unchanging" why do you then talk about "The Age of the dinosaurs," when CO2 concentrations were 4000 ppm?  Seriously, I missed that part of the Bible.  If you are going to base your decision-making on absolutist religious beliefs, fine, but then spare me the science lecture.  For those who do quote science, it's worth noting that a 2008 study in Science (subs. req'd) of the Cretaceous [aka the heyday of the dinosaurs] found “sea level that is 170 meters [550 feet!] higher than it is today.“ Of course, much of the United States was a shallow sea during the Cretaceous (see figure below). Irony can be so ironic!]

That is old news. A lead profile of Shimkus in E&E Daily (subs. req’d), however, makes some “birds of a feather” news with this amazing quote from Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee:

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Bill Becker has some meaty suggestions for what “The Green FDR” should do next.

During the last presidential race, Republicans issued a bumper sticker that read “All Sizzle, No Steak” next to a picture of Barack Obama. It was the bumper sticker that didn’t stick and today, Republicans are eating those words. During his first 100 days in office, Obama has served up far more steak than Republicans are willing to digest.

A check of the Obama-Biden campaign platform shows the President has made progress on an impressive number of his pre-election promises on energy and climate, not the least of them an economic stimulus bill that provides the biggest green energy investment in the U.S. history.

Given the Bush Administration’s eight-year climate fast, we’ll need even more meat in the second 100 days and in many 100 days to come. In fact, stabilizing the climate and maintaining that stability is a standing commitment that every future president must make.

So, what’s on the president’s menu for the next 100 days?  Here’s hoping he uses the next three months as impressively as the last, serving up lots more steak — and some sizzle, too. I’ll propose some steak here and some sizzle in Part 2.

Here are some recommendations drawn mainly from the Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP):

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Many readers have expressed interest in learning more about the water consumption of concentrating solar power and how measures to reduce it might impact system efficiency and cost.  After my recent CSP post, “World’s largest solar power plants with thermal storage to be built in Arizona,” Michael Hogan wrote in the comments (here) about a low-water-consuming cooling system he had experience with.  I asked Hogan, a long-time power industry executive and currently the Power Programme Director for the European Climate Foundation (bio here), to write a longer piece for Climate Progress.  Here is what he put together, with links and figures (click to enlarge).

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:  If concentrating solar power (“CSP”) is a core climate solution, indirect dry cooling systems (also known as “Heller” systems) will be a crucial enabling technology, since large-scale CSP will be located in desert regions. US power companies have long favored direct dry cooling systems for fossil plants, probably because of the visual impact of Heller systems.  But Heller systems have long experience in certain regions and will probably play an important role in the success of large-scale CSP.  This is due to their higher efficiency, smaller footprints, quieter operation, lower maintenance, higher availability, and more flexible site layout.  Heller systems can reduce water consumption in a CSP plant by 97% with minimal performance impact.  The height of the cooling towers should be less of an issue in remote desert locations, especially since the central tower in power tower facilities will be of comparable height.

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Fred Hiatt, the opinion page editor of the Washington Post, is sticking to his guns in defense of George Will’s egregiously mendacious global warming columns. In an online chat today, Hiatt repeated his claim that Will’s lies were just “inferences,” and lashed out at Will’s critics:

Boston: This doesn’t relate to Obama but would you care to address the whole George Will global warming column controversy? Is there any concern that lax standards for accuracy hurts the prestige of The Post opinion page more generally?

Fred Hiatt: Happy to, because we don’t have lax standards for accuracy. He addressed the factual challenges to his column in detail in a later column. In general we do careful fact checking. What people have mostly objected to is not that his data are wrong but that he draws wrong inferences. I would think folks would be eager to engage in the debate, given how sure they are of their case, rather than trying to shut him down.

When faced with an opportunity to restore the Washington Post’s besmirched reputation, Hiatt instead slung mud. The reality is that Hiatt does have “lax standards for accuracy,” and Will’s errors were both errors of fact and of “inference.” Will, of course, did not address “the factual challenges to his column in detail in a later column” — he added new errors. It’s bizarre that Hiatt is worried for Will’s ability to reach an audience — the man is one of the most widely syndicated columnists in one of the most prominent newspapers in the land, with a weekly appearance on national television. From the beginning, critics have been calling on the Washington Post to run a correction — something that, to this day, Hiatt refuses to do.

(HT: Media Matters)

One of the main purposes of this blog is to save you time.  As the Washington Post labels its TV columns on American Idol, “We watch … so you don’t have to.”

Nature has devoted much of its April 30 issue to “The Coming Climate Crunch” (subs. req’d).  Sadly, after sitting through pretty much the whole thing, I can’t actually recommend anybody else see buy it. Any regular reader of this blog will learn very little new from the dozen or so articles — and the issue fails utterly to provide its readers with the two must-haves in any comprehensive coverage of the issue:

1. A clear and specific understanding of the plausible worst-case scenario impacts facing the world post-2050 on our current emissions path.
2. A clear and specific understanding of the core climate solutions, policies for their rapid deployment, and an understanding of why the total cost of action is so darn low — one tenth of a penny on the dollar.

What is particularly embarrassing for Nature, whose coverage of this issue has been second to none, is that they don’t even bother with #2 — even though they have a full article devoted to geo-engineering (a puff piece by someone who “now participates in scientific research on the topic”), another full article on adaptation, and yet another full article just on capturing CO2 from the air, which even one of its major proponents is quoted as saying is “the most expensive climate-mitigation technology.”  What were the editors thinking?

The most useful thing in the entire issue is part of one of the figures in the article “Greenhouse-gas emission targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C” — which I’ve extracted and added to my must-have Powerpoint collection:

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Geo-engineering remains at best a secondary climate strategy if you first do really aggressive CO2 reductions and keep concentrations below 450 ppm.  For now, as Obama’s science advisor put it, “The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.”

At worst, geo-engineering is an utterly false hope that will undercut efforts to achieve the kind of emissions reductions needed for it to have any value.  That, of course, is why conservatives love it, which is the subject of the guest post today by Alex Steffen, Executive Editor, Worldchanging.com (first posted it here).

Here is Steffen’s article.  He notes, “This is a draft essay, and obviously still rough in patches. I’d appreciate feedback!

The Idea of Geoengineering is Being Used Dishonestly

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Another busy day in the life of Henry Waxman

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman had a busy day yesterday hearing the many different concerns and sticking points surrounding his draft climate change bill.

In the morning, the California Democrat and his top lieutenant, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), sat down with more than a dozen members of the House Ways and Means Committee, including Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), to talk about the tricky turf lines that the two powerful congressional panels share when it comes to drafting cap-and-trade legislation.

Just after lunch, Waxman switched to one-on-one sessions with several of the moderate committee Democrats who have gone public with their concerns about his proposal.

And then turning his attention beyond U.S. borders, Waxman met with China’s top climate diplomat, Xie Zhenhua, the vice chairman of National Development and Reform Commission, and about eight other Chinese officials in town for U.S.-led global warming talks.

The story continues with an extended discussion of Waxman’s efforts to craft a majority for his energy and climate legislation:

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Our guest bloggers are Andrew Light and Nina Hachigian, Senior Fellows at the Center for American Progress.

Su Wei, China’s chief climate change negotiator.

This week the Obama administration convened a meeting of 17 of the world’s major economies in a forum on global warming outside of the ongoing U.N. climate change process. Though the history of this Major Economies Forum is somewhat tainted, it may well provide a useful opportunity to engage China on global warming, on its way to surpass the United States as the world’s number one carbon emitter. Recent statements by top Chinese officials evince a new openness to adopting targets to reduce the rate of growth in carbon emissions:

Su Wei, a leading figure in China’s climate change negotiating team, said that officials were considering introducing a national target that would limit emissions relative to economic growth in the country’s next five-year plan from 2011.

While that is a small step, it’s a significant one. China and the five other major emitters among developing nations — India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico — were not required to accept mandatory carbon emissions caps under the Kyoto Protocol, as they did not put the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are causing current increases in global temperatures. The United States alone is responsible for nearly 30 percent of all cumulative global warming pollution. Nonetheless, this exception for developing countries was a key part of the unanimous Senate objection to U.S. ratification of the treaty. The China exception remains at the core of congressional objections to an international agreement on climate change.

Enticing direct negotiation with the major emitting developing nations — especially China — is critical to getting a global climate change agreement inside or outside of the UNFCCC process. There are many indications that China is ready to talk — and even more that China is already taking action.

China is ahead of the United States in terms of its own green stimulus package. It’s a much bemoaned talking point in these discussions that China has far surpassed U.S. capacity in solar cell production since 2005. Chinese leaders are “investing $12.6 million every hour to green their economy.” China is spending twice as much as we are in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on green jobs and a green recovery despite the relatively larger size of the U.S. economy.

As China’s political climate changes, its physical climate is getting hotter as well. In January 2008, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification was held in Beijing, a megacity that is already severely swept by dust storms from western and northern regions every year. Shrinking glaciers are starting to cause serious water problems and more intensive damage in the country’s mountainous regions — problems that will soon stress the country’s capacity for short-term mitigation. Just as in the United States, the consequences of climate change are increasingly felt immediately and understood through direct observation rather than being confined to climate modeling.

Joint technological capacity building may be the best road to a new global energy future and help to stimulate the set of climate change agreements which will move us there. Xie Zhenhua, Vice Chairman of the National Development Reform Commission, reiterated that China’s commitment to accepting nationally appropriate reduction goals depends on receiving technology assistance. In Todd Stern’s testimony earlier this month he made it clear that the first priority for the United States in these meetings will be to push along the conversation on technology transfer as a key component of acceptance of emissions caps by the developing major emitters. Such proposals should be discussed now and followed up at the next Major Economies Forum this July in La Maddalena, Italy following the G-8 meeting.

The official Chinese position on climate change remains — you broke it, you fix it. But a creative nudge on the U.S.’s part and a subtle shift in Beijing’s position could open up some real movement in the diplomatic lead up to global climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen.

Read the extended version of this post, “Rise of the Green Dragon?,” at the Center for American Progress.

The Republican conservative party is engaged in a murder-suicide pact.  They will commit climaticide followed closely by political suicide.

With the departure of moderate Sen. Arlen Specter from the GOP and the circling of the wagons by the remaining right-wing idealogues — a pre-20th century metaphor seemed most apt — I thought it worth pointing out the dead end path the entire party is on.

The conservative movement stagnation has staked its entire political future on an uber-short-term anti-scientific quest for political gain at the expense of humanity’s self-destruction (see also House GOP pledge to fight all action on climate. “Why do conservatives hate your children?” and “Hill conservatives reject all 3 climate strategies and embrace Rush Limbaugh“).

Yet, while their united effort to demagogue any effort to make global warming polluters pay may well succeed in blocking strong enough domestic and international action to preserve a livable climate — conservatives can’t stop the scientific reality of catastrophic climate change caused by the human emissions they seek to accelerate.  And so their calamitous climate position will become increasingly untenable, increasingly divorced from reality.

Right now they are filling up YouTube with videos of the most insane statements (see House GOP leader Boehner on ABC: “The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical.” and Rep. Shimkus: Cutting CO2 emissions is “Taking away plant food from the atmosphere” and Rep. Barton: Climate change is ‘natural,’ humans should just ‘get shade’ “” invites ‘expert’ TVMOB (!) to testify).  And they have stacked their “House GOP American Energy Solutions Group” with global warming deniers like Michele Bachmann.

Over the next decade, the painful reality of human caused global warming will really start to hit home (see “Climate Forecast: Hot “” and then Very Hot” and “Nature article on ‘cooling’ confuses media, deniers: Next decade may see rapid warming“).  We are likely to see an increasing number of “near-term climate Pearl Harbors.“  By the 2020s, we may well be approaching the collapse of the entire Ponzi scheme (see “When the global Ponzi scheme collapses (circa 2030), the only jobs left will be green“)

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Senior advisors to the Chinese leadership, such as climate change negotiator Su Wei, below, are openly suggesting that China consider “carbon intensity” targets.  Even as China aggressively pursues world leadership in key clean technologies like solar and wind, it has also announced plans to keep expanding coal use at a pace so rapacious it would single-handedly finish off the climate no matter what we and the other rich countries do. That is why for Obama to preserve a livable climate and be a great president, he must have a climate deal with China. In this post, Andrew Light and Nina Hachigian discuss the “Rise of the Green Dragon?“

This week the Obama administration convenes a meeting of 17 of the world’s major economies in a forum on global warming outside of the ongoing U.N. climate change process. Though the history of this Major Economies Forum is somewhat tainted, it may well provide a useful opportunity to engage China on global warming. There are ample indications that China is ready for such an overture from the United States if not an outright proposal for action.

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Reports of the demise of the clean energy industry have been, well, exaggerated (see “Global recession? Must be time for the media’s alternative-energy backlash“).

The American Wind Energy Association reports:

The wind energy industry installed over 2,800 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity in the first quarter of 2009, with new projects completed in 15 states and powering the equivalent of 816,000 homes….

The new wind power projects add up to 2,836 MW, according to initial AWEA estimates.  The total wind power generating capacity in operation in the U.S. is now 28,206 MW, enough to serve over 8 million homes and avoid the emissions of 52 million tons of carbon dioxide annually””the equivalent of removing 8.8 million cars from the road.

And this is after a record 2008 (see “U.S. wind energy grows by record 8,300 MW“). Here is where states now rank by wind capacity:

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Obama is keeping his promise to restore science to its rightful place with sharply increased funding for research and development, which started with the stimulus package.  As Greenwire reports in “Obama promises record U.S. research spending” (subs. req’d):

In his first major science address since taking office, President Obama promised today to increase U.S. public and private spending to historic highs for science research and development.

“I’m here today to set this goal: We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development,” Obama said during a speech at the National Academy of Sciences.

He added, “We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race…”

Specifically, the White House said the stimulus bill provided $21.5 billion for research and development and the fiscal 2010 budget proposal includes $150 billion over 10 years for renewable energy research as well as $75 billion to make permanent the research and experimentation tax credit.

In another set of stirring remarks — well, stirring if you’re a scientist or care about science (full text here, plus story on teleprompter “mutiny” that got almost as much attention in the MSM as the gist of his remarks) — Obama again said energy and climate were the top priorities: Read more

Pennsylvania’s Sen. Arlen Specter, who announced his switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party today, will remain a key swing vote in a Senate locked by GOP filibusters on green economy legislation like cap and trade, renewable energy standards, and green jobs programs. Specter will be joining a bloc of conservative Democratic senators who are publicly skeptical of President Obama’s clean energy agenda, and who have repeatedly voted against Obama’s proposal to place limits on global warming pollution:

Supporting a filibuster for green economy legislation: Roll call votes #125, 126, and 164.

Requiring that green economy legislation not affect the cost of energy production or use: Roll call votes #116, 117, and 169.

Ideologically, Specter is in line with Democrats like Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), who worries that Obama’s clean economy proposal may “suck money” from his state, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), who is “against forcing petrochemical companies” to “bear the brunt of new costs,” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), who worries cap and trade “could have a negative impact on our economy.”

Specter, whose top donors include the electric utilities Exelon Corporation and PPL Corporation, has told Pennsylvania students that “his main platform in running for re-election is global warming.” There’s still time for him — and the Democrats he’s joining — to build that platform, but more change will have to come.

Update

,Full chart of Specter and Democrats with similar voting records on green economy legislation:

In a stunning piece of political theater with dramatic consequences for clean energy, global warming, and the entire progressive agenda, the Washington Post has just reported:

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter will switch his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and announced today that he will run in 2010 as a Democrat, according to a statement he released this morning.

Specter’s decision would give Democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority in the Senate assuming Democrat Al Franken is eventually sworn in as the next Senator from Minnesota. (Former Sen. Norm Coleman is appealing Franken’s victory in the state Supreme Court.)

Needless to say, as a Republican facing a tough primary challenge from the right, he was a lost vote on global warming legislation.  One assumes that if he is going to seriously run as a Democrat, he’ll support an energy and climate bill.

Here’s more:

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LOBBYING: Industry dollars go to a handful of influential Energy and Commerce members

As always, Congress is driven by the Golden Rule — whoever gives the gold, makes the rules:

Electric utilities, oil and gas corporations, coal producers and other energy industry interests poured more than $375,000 into the coffers of House Energy and Commerce Committee members during the first three months of 2009, according to an E&E examination of campaign finance records.

The dollars flowing to Energy and Commerce members — particularly Democratic moderates — further highlights the high stakes for the industry as lawmakers prepare to mark up a Democratic climate change and energy legislation next month.

At the top of the list for Democrats was former committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), who pulled in about $47,000 from the energy industry. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) — another moderate Democrat and former chairman of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over climate issues — came in at a close second with more than $41,000.

Other major Democratic recipients of industry cash were much further down the list in terms of committee seniority but also represent swing votes on energy and climate legislation. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (D-Texas) picked up $30,000, Rep. John Barrow (D-Ga.) received about $22,000, and Rep. Zach Space (D-Ohio) received $27,000.

Space, a two-term lawmaker from a district that is a major hub for the coal industry, was among one the more prodigious fundraisers among all House Democrats, pulling more than $420,000 in the first three months of 2009. Space’s district leans Republican, and he is virtually certain to have a tough re-election fight next year.

Industry officials say financial contributions to lawmakers typically are a reflection of providing backing for members who understand and traditionally support their position on any number of legislative issues and say there is little relation between campaign donations and lawmakers’ position on any singular issue.

Still, those donations are also a slice of what has become an all-out lobbying blitz on both sides — involving contributions, direct lobbying and public relations campaigns — in advance of legislation that will likely have dramatic ramifications for the energy industry.

More details below:

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