The Washington Post has yet another dubious spin on Obama today, “Environmental Groups Wait to See Definitive Action From Obama“:

The abrupt resignation Saturday of White House “green jobs” adviser Van Jones has focused new attention on one of the Obama administration’s top priorities: the environment.

While Jones was criticized as a left-wing zealot, the Obama team’s record so far on the environment has been far from radical.

The White House’s main effort has been to undo several Bush-era policies on climate control, air pollution and the regulation of roadless forests. Those actions, combined with court decisions that have struck down other rules, have given President Obama a relatively blank canvas on which to redraw U.S. environmental policy. But the administration has been cautious, leaving key issues in limbo and questions unanswered about the way it would balance environmentalism and the economy.

Uhh, no, no, and no.  Van Jones was the green jobs advisor.  He was an ardent advocate for reducing pollution and poverty together with clean energy.  So a media story that starts with his resignation can’t utterly ignore the staggering achievements in both clean energy and greenhouse gas emissions that Obama has already attained — gains that exceed his four predecessors combined.  Well I should said a story “shouldn’t utterly ignore” since this story does.

Obama’s record so far on clean energy and the most important environmental issue — global warming — may not be politically radical, but it is unparalleled in U.S. history.

Let’s remember, for instance, that Obama will raise new car fuel efficiency standard to 39 mpg by 2016 “” The biggest step the U.S. government has ever taken to cut CO2. And the Obama EPA declared carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans’ health and welfare requiring regulation.  The final EPA announcement should come this month, leading to the first ever national global warming regulations (at least for new power plants) — no matter what Congress does.  Of course Obama helped get through the House of Representatives its first ever climate bill, which is also the first clean air bill in two decades — see The U.S. House of Representatives approves landmark (bipartisan!) climate bill, 219 – 212. Waxman-Markey would complete America’s transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill.

And then we have that amazing stimulus.  Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, in his post “Obama Has Cut Taxes for 98.6 Percent of Working* Households**” asserts, “One thing I don’t quite get has been the White House’s reluctance to highlight the non-infrastructure parts of the stimulus package.”  In fact, the White House hasn’t done a very good job of touting the $100 billion in clean energy benefits of the infrastructure or most of its other energy and environmental achievements.  Since the media, among others, seems to have forgotten, let me excerpt from my April 26 post, “The Green FDR: Obama’s first 100 days make “” and may remake “” history“:

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Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an opponent of climate and clean energy action, is taking the helm of the key Senate Agriculture Committee. The current chair, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), is leaving his post to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) at the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. As all the Democrats senior to Lincoln currently chair other committees, she is now poised to become the first woman chair of the agriculture committee, where she has jurisdiction over major elements of energy reform and climate policy. In an committee hearing on carbon market regulation today, Lincoln said that she thinks “there are great opportunities here,” but took a sour view of any action this year:

Making sure as we do move forward, that we don’t do so putting a disproportionate burden on our hardworking farm families and our agriculture communities across this country. They do a tremendous job providing food and fiber for the world. While it isn’t necessarily my preference to move on cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate this year, the Senate is going to move on climate change legislation in the future.

Lincoln is violently opposed to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, calling the clean energy economic legislation supported by President Obama and passed by the House this June a “complete non-starter“:

The House’s Waxman-Markey bill picks winners and losers and places a disproportionate share of the economic burden on families and businesses in rural America. It is a deeply flawed bill. I will not support similar legislation in the Senate.

Lincoln continually makes the false argument that taking action for clean energy and fighting climate change is more dangerous than the status quo, worrying that the ACES Act “could lead to really high, higher food prices in these economic times.” In reality, global warming has already damaged crop yields, and unchecked warming will devastate them. Unprecedented, multi-year droughts even now are destroying the top agricultural states in the country — California and Texas. Furthermore, the unregulated and fickle oil and coal markets have led to energy price shocks that drove food prices wild. Again, inaction will only make the unsustainable status quo even worse — for Arkansans and all of America.

Lincoln is filbustering America’s future, powered by hundreds of thousands of dollars of polluter cash. This year alone, Lincoln has taken in $156,350 from electric utilities, making her the fourth-most utility-dependent Democrat in the Senate. Worse, among the $163,250 in oil and gas contributions received, Lincoln has taken $10,000 from Koch Industries, the extremist right-wing pollution company behind the Astroturf organizations demonizing Obama and his efforts for energy and health reform.

The U.S. agricultural sector is responsible for 6 to 8 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions, but has the opportunity to sequester at least ten percent of all emissions through afforestation and carbon-friendly crop practices. The Agriculture Committee has jurisdiction over any such agricultural offsets programs — which may have a value of tens of billions of dollars each year — that are managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Much more money is at stake with the broader carbon cap-and-trade market which the American Clean Energy and Security Act would establish — hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The legislation would also add new regulations to the even larger energy derivative markets, restoring accountability and reducing volatility to energy prices. The Agriculture Committee oversees the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which has become the primary regulatory agency for derivatives. In fact, Agriculture Committee members now receive the bulk of their campaign contributions from the financial sector instead of the diminished agriculture sector.

While some are still building new climate-destroying coal plants in North Carolina, the Outer Banks Ocean Energy Corp. sees clean energy potential in the windy “First in flight” state.  The Energy Daily (subs. req’d) reports:

Feeling the wind at its back following its recent formal chartering as a new company, the Outer Banks Ocean Energy Corp. announced plans Tuesday to develop a giant wind- and ocean-powered renewable energy project off North Carolina’s coast.

The Outer Banks Ocean Energy Corp. (OBOE) said it is in the early stages of developing the North Carolina Hybrid Energy Preserve, a predominantly wind-based project planned to generate between 200 and 600 megawatts of renewable energy in federal waters up to 25 miles offshore of the Tar Heel State.

But OBOE sees more opportunity for clean energy that never runs out than just offshore wind:

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In a letter issued last week, the Environmental Protection Agency “moved toward revoking the largest mountaintop-removal permit in West Virginia history.” Citing “clear evidence” of likely damage, the EPA has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to “suspend, revoke or modify” the permit it granted in 2007 to Arch Coal to dig a 2,278-acre coal stripmine and fill six valleys and 43,000 linear feet of streams with the toxic debris:

The EPA asked the Army Corps to “suspend, revoke or modify the permit,” for the Spruce No. 1 Surface Mine in Logan County, according to the letter. “Recent data and analyses have revealed that downstream water quality impacts have not been adequately addressed.”

Obama’s EPA has granted most of the mountaintop removal permits it has reviewed. “It’s not the death of mountaintop coal mining,” said Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s campaign to limit the use of coal, told Bloomberg News. “But it’s clear that it’s not just going to be blanket approval of anything the Corps wants to do, which was essentially the case under the Bush administration.”

This is a Wonk Room repost.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports:

Atmospheric circulation patterns in August helped spread out sea ice, slowing ice loss in most regions of the Arctic. NSIDC scientists expect to see the minimum ice extent for the year in the next few weeks. While this year’s minimum ice extent will probably not reach the record low of 2007, it remains well below normal: average ice extent for August 2009 was the third-lowest in the satellite record. Ice extent has now fallen below the 2005 minimum, previously the third-lowest extent in the satellite record.

Not a big surprise — see “NSIDC: Record low Arctic ice extent unlikely in 2009.”  Since the 2009 arctic extent AREA is no longer that close to 2008 levels, which set the record for minimum ice VOLUME, it seem unlikely 2009 will set a volume record (see “Will we see record low Arctic ice VOLUME this year?“).

The long-term trend remains the same (see “Human-caused Arctic warming overtakes 2,000 years of natural cooling, ‘seminal’ study finds“) and hence the medium-term also remains the same (see North Pole poised to be largely ice-free by 2020: “It’s like the Arctic is covered with an egg shell and the egg shell is now just cracking completely”).

NSIDC has some good analysis of the summer 2009 melt seasons to put this in some context:

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The great environmental writer and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, is the guest blogger.

Nicholas Stern is the most important climate economist in the world. After a stint as chief economist at the World Bank, he was asked by the government in his native Britain to conduct the most thorough review of the economics of global warming yet undertaken.

Released in October of 2006, the Stern Review drew praise from many of his brethren in the field–and it also drew gasps of shock and horror from anyone who bothered to read it. It laid out, quite clearly, the cost of doing too little or moving too late on climate change: economic damage that would be greater than WWI, WWII, and the Great Depression combined. In April, he published a powerful popular account of his work, Blueprint for a Safer Planet, and he’s been one of the leading forces preparing for the Copenhagen meeting.

So that’s the background. Today in Berlin, a reporter from one of the city’s papers, Daniel Boese, asked him about the 350 target–which goes well beyond the numbers he was using in his book even in April. Read more

When we last left the flagship of the coal industry efforts to stop the clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill, it was fast taking on water (see “Duke Energy quits coal front group over climate bill“).  Sure some otherwise sane passengers had joined the crew’s efforts to patch up the holes (see “GE fights for change from the inside “¦ of a scandal-ridden coal industry front group!“) — for now (see below).  But the smart ones, like Alcoa, had quietly gotten on one of the few remaining lifeboats.

Today Greenwire (subs. req’d) reports:

Another member of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is leaving the coal-and-utility trade group, citing concerns about whether the alliance wants to obstruct legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

Alstom Power, a French company that makes parts for power plants and is working on carbon sequestration, said it is leaving ACCCE immediately.

“We have resigned from ACCCE because of questions that have been raised about ACCCE’s support for climate legislation,” said Tim Brown, an Alstom spokesman. The French company, which is partnering with U.S. utilities on power-plant projects, said that it wants to “remove any doubt about our full support” for a climate bill.

The move comes less than a week after Duke Energy Corp. said it was withdrawing from ACCCE because of powerful members of the group that are unwilling to support climate legislation. Alstom’s decision also shrinks ACCCE’s membership as the Senate returns and ACCCE lobbies the Senate on its version of climate legislation….

Both Alstom and Duke belong to the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an alliance of businesses, environmental groups and other organizations lobbying Congress to mandate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. U.S. CAP in its blueprint for action urges Congress to “quickly” enact legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

There are now just two companies that belong to both ACCCE and U.S. CAP: Caterpillar and General Electric Co.

C’mon Caterpillar and GE — do you really want to go down with the ship?  Like the Titanic, the good bad ship ACCCE is coal-powered and steaming too fast in the wrong direction:

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Salazar says U.S. climate bill remains high on agenda

Despite Washington’s nearly single-minded focus on healthcare reform, the Obama administration still expects the U.S. Senate to pass climate change legislation, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Tuesday.

“Right now we are focused on this crusade for healthcare reform for the country and that’s where our time and energy will go for the days ahead,” Salazar said during an interview at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit.

Even so, he added, “We want both (healthcare and climate bills). The president has been very clear that these are two big issues for the United States and for our time”….

If Congress fails to produce a climate bill for President Barack Obama to sign into law, Salazar noted, the White House could direct executive-branch offices to go ahead with new regulations controlling carbon pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency already has started that process.

But Salazar also pointed out: “It (climate change) will not be addressed in a complete and long-term manner unless there is congressional action.”

While public support for healthcare reform has slipped in recent weeks, polls indicate that the public still backs Obama’s efforts to expand solar, wind and other alternative energies and to wean the United States off its reliance on foreign oil….

Without tough new steps, environmentalists fear worsening droughts and floods, the spread of disease and melting ice caps that would contribute to dangerously rising sea levels.

For the media, it’s always “environmentalists fear worsening droughts.”  How about “Without tough new steps, the top scientists of the world and every major government project worsening droughts and floods, the spread of disease and melting ice caps that would contribute to dangerously rising sea levels”?  But even Reuters prefers the political drama to straight reporting.

Boxer Vows to Introduce Energy Bill by Month’s End

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Any first-time visitors from Tom Friedman’s column can go here for “An Introduction to Climate Progress.”

“China is going to eat our lunch and take our jobs on clean energy “” an industry that we largely invented “” and they are going to do it with a managed economy we don’t have and don’t want,” said Joe Romm, who writes the blog, climateprogress.org.

The only way for us to match them is by legislating a rising carbon price along with efficiency and renewable standards that will stimulate massive private investment in clean-tech. Hard to do with a one-party democracy.

This is from Friedman’s column, “Our One-Party Democracy,” which he previewed on Meet the Press Sunday.

The jobs argument is a core message for winning the public debate about the clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill.

Friedman is a centrist who advances the argument because he knows it is true, because he understands climate science is real, and because he is a hard-core capitalist who sees the tough dynamic the U.S. is facing in the global economy.  If you’re not first, you’re probably last.

The importance of the clean energy jobs message is evidenced by the fact that the corporate polluters and their right-wing allies in the media will do anything to kill it, from publishing phony studies attacking clean energy jobs to pushing their vile assault on Van Jones, who has been a leading articulator of the message (see “Fox News blurts out its agenda: “Now that Jones has resigned, we need to follow through”¦. First, stop cap-and-trade, which could send these groups trillions,” and then put “the whole corrupt ‘green jobs’ concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream”).

How else do we know the clean energy jobs message is crucial?  Obama also uses it at every opportunity, including his recent Labor Day speech.  In spite of the media’s strong desire to push the message that Obama has lost interest in the climate and clean energy bill, once again he said:

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