Over the next few months, senators and other major state political figures will be taking sides on the climate and clean energy bill in front of Congress.  Thanks to the new landmark 13-agency report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, we now know how those state “leaders” who oppose action will be remembered if they succeed.

I will start with Mississippi because Governor and former dirty-energy lobbyist Haley Barbour is helping to lead the GOP charge to destroy a livable climate at a hearing Tuesday — and because one of the main reasons I wrote Hell and High Water and started this blog is that my brother lost his Pass Christian, Mississippi home to Hurricane Katrina [see "The Storm of the Century (so far)"].

The grim figure above — along with an extended excerpt on Southeast climate impacts from the NOAA-led report — can be found here.  The map on he right shows that in the IPCC’s A2 scenario, by 2090, most of Mississippi would see some 150 days with peak temperature above 90°F every year — an almost nonstop heat wave that starts in May goes through June, July, and August, not ending until late September! Further, much of the state would see temperatures above 98°F for more than two months a year (see “When can we expect extremely high surface temperatures?“).

Worse, we are on pace to exceed the A2 scenario (which is “only” about 850 ppm in 2100):  See U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm “¦ the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” “” 1000 ppm.  So if if we listen to deniers and delayers like Barbour, the impacts will be worse than the report projects.  Barbour will have turned Mississippi into Mexico.

Along with this heat will come much more severe droughts, an impact that has already begun throughout the region:

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“A standard incandescent bulb, left, and a more efficient one using Deposition Sciences technology.”

Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge

When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012, that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed.

But as it turns out, the obituaries were premature.

Researchers across the country have been racing to breathe new life into Thomas Edison’s light bulb, a pursuit that accelerated with the new legislation. Amid that footrace, one company is already marketing limited quantities of incandescent bulbs that meet the 2012 standard, and researchers are promising a wave of innovative products in the next few years.

Indeed, the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation.

Millions hungry as warming shifts seasons: Oxfam

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NYT‘s Green Inc explains:

A picture was worth 24,000 mirrors when eSolar, a company based in Pasadena, Calif., that specializes in solar thermal power, transformed a vast field of heliostats at its Southern California solar farm into a Fourth of July tableau of the American flag and the Statue of Liberty….

[CEO Bill] Gross, the founder of the tech-incubator Idealab, contends that eSolar can deliver electricity cheaper than natural gas by using sophisticated algorithms to control inexpensive and lightweight mirrors called heliostats….

“We have such precise control over the field that we can do anything with the mirrors we want,” Mr. Gross said, “and this is proof of it.”

See also “Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload “” a core climate solution.”

Tuesday July 7 at 10 am EDT, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will conduct its first big hearing to explore Waxman-Markey and related legislative proposals to build a clean energy economy and reduce global warming pollution (webcast here). The first panel will feature Energy Secretary Steven Chu and other cabinet officials.  The second panel includes business and environmental leaders, and a mayor.  The GOP’s star witness testifying against serious climate and clean energy action is Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS).  Daniel J. Weiss and Alexandra Kougentakis of the Center For American Progress Action Fund explain just how pathetic it is that the the Republican Party chose Barbour for this role (in a post first published here).  I’ll blog later today on what climate inaction would mean for the Mississipi.

Barbour is no run-of-the-mill state official. He just became head of the Republican Governors Association, replacing disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC). Before he was elected in 2003, Barbour was one of was one of Washington’s most well-connected and powerful lobbyists, notorious for influence peddling for tobacco and big energy companies. He also served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993-1997.

Barbour has long been an advocate for big polluting companies, and has reaped political and financial benefits from these efforts. His record makes him an obvious choice to speak in opposition to clean energy policies:

BARBOUR AWASH IN BIG OIL, BIG ENERGY CASH

Barbour has long been at the intersection of special interest lobbying, elections, and campaign cash. He represents cash and carry politics at its worst:

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Our guest bloggers are Daniel J. Weiss and Alexandra Kougentakis, a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy and a Fellows Assistant at the Center For American Progress Action Fund.

On July 7, 2009, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will conduct a hearing to review proposals to build a clean energy economy and reduce global warming pollution. The first panel will feature cabinet officials, and the second panel includes business and environmental leaders, and a mayor. Perhaps the most prominent of all the witnesses will be Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS).

Barbour is no run-of-the-mill state official. He just became head of the Republican Governors Association, replacing disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC). Before he was elected in 2003, Barbour was one of was one of Washington’s most well-connected and powerful lobbyists, notorious for influence peddling for tobacco and big energy companies. He also served as Chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993-1997.

Barbour has long been an advocate for big polluting companies, and has reaped political and financial benefits from these efforts. His record makes him an obvious choice to speak in opposition to clean energy policies:

BARBOUR AWASH IN BIG OIL, BIG ENERGY CASH

Barbour has long been at the intersection of special interest lobbying, elections, and campaign cash. He represents cash and carry politics at its worst.

• The oil & gas and utility industries were major contributor to his Mississippi gubernatorial campaigns, providing over $1.8 million in campaign cash. [National Institute on Money in State Politics, Accessed 7/2/09]

• According to the Center for Responsive Politics, coal companies and electric utilities lavished over half a million dollars on Barbour’s firm during his last two years as CEO and chairman, in 1998 and 1999. After taking time off to work on advisory committees for the presidential campaign of George B. Bush, Barbour returned to the firm in 2001. With the addition of new clients, including from the oil & gas industry, the firm made over a million dollars a year in dirty energy profits by the time he left again for his 2003 gubernatorial run, with $2.24 million in total for 2001-2002. [Center for Responsive Politics, accessed 7/2/09]

BARBOUR’S POLITICAL AND INDUSTRY TIES HAVE HAULED IN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

• Under his RNC leadership during the 1994 and 1996 election cycles, the oil and gas industry donated $30 million in contributions to Republicans, while providing only $12 million to Democrats – or nearly 3-1. Electric utilities donated nearly $10 million, and coal companies donated over $1.5 million, for a grand total of $42.0 million dollars. [Center for Responsive Politics, accessed 7/2/09, 7/2/09, 7/2/09]

• Barbour hosted a Southern Company party for lobbyists at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Southern was the top spending special interest that attempted to influence the debate over House the American Clean Energy and Security Act. With a force totaling 63 lobbyists, Southern was nearly twice as high as any other company. Its coal fired power plants emit 172 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. [Politico, 8/12/08; Center for Public Integrity, 7/1/09; IPS News, 11/16/07]

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Obama’s interview on the climate bill last week had this Q&A (transcript here, my earlier summaries here and here):

Media: One of the provisions that got added very late to this bill that senators had expressed some reservations about was the one that puts tariffs on goods imported from countries that don’t have these sort of restrictions. What do you think of that revision and would you like to see the Senate strip it out?

Obama: At a time when the economy worldwide is still deep in recession and we’ve seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there. There were a number of provisions that were already in place, prior to this last provision you talked about, to provide transitional assistance to heavy manufacturers. A lot of the offsets were outdated to those industries. I think we’re going to have to do a careful analysis to determine whether the prospects of tariffs are necessary, given all the other stuff that was done and had been negotiated on behalf of energy-intensive industries.

So certainly it is a legitimate concern on the part of American businesses that they are not disadvantaged vis-a-vis their global competitors. Now, keep in mind, European industries are looking at an even more ambitious approach than we are. And they obviously have confidence that they can compete internationally under a regime that controls carbons. I think the Chinese are starting to move in the direction of recognizing that the future requires them to take a clean energy approach. In fact, in some ways they’re already ahead of us — on fuel efficiency standards, for example, they’ve moved beyond where we’ve moved on this.

There are going to be a series of negotiations around this and I am very mindful of wanting to make sure that there’s a level playing field internationally. I think there may be other ways of doing it than with a tariff approach.

Krugman disagrees with the President (and I tend to agree with the Nobel Prize winner in Economics):

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To avoid maxxing out on my July quota of irony in the first week of the month, I will simply report this as a straight news story.  The UK Times reports:

With temperatures across much of France surging above 30C this week, EDF’s reactors are generating the lowest level of electricity in six years, forcing the state-owned utility to turn to Britain for additional capacity.

Fourteen of France’s 19 nuclear power stations are located inland and use river water rather than seawater for cooling. When water temperatures rise, EDF is forced to shut down the reactors to prevent their casings from exceeding 50C.

Now everybody who is anybody knows that no single weather event can be attributed to human-caused global warming.   And those same people know that nuclear power is the one and only possible solution to human-caused global warming.  So, to all those non-cognoscenti inclined to use this one-time, freak occurrence to diss nukes, let me say as loudly as I can, “NOTHING TO SEE HERE!  MOVE ON!”

Also, the image above is presented solely as an example of the kind of inappropriate humor one should eschew in these troubled times.  Any resemblance between the nuclear power plant employee depicted above and advocates of nuclear power living or mortified is purely coincidental.

The story explains:

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