Our guest blogger is Bryan R. Lentz (D-PA), a state representative from Pennsylvania’s 161st district and an Iraq war veteran.

Last week, congressional investigators uncovered a forged letter sent to the office of Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), criticizing the House’s climate change bill. According to the Washington Post, this letter was forged to appear as if it had come from an American Legion post in Virginia when in fact it was drafted by a lobbyist for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity opposing clean energy legislation.

As an Iraq war veteran and a state legislator, I object to the exploitation of the good name of our veterans and one of our nations’ most distinguished veterans organizations to serve the interest of for profit special interest groups.

On Thursday, the very same day this falsified letter came to light, I joined with a real group of veterans, over 150 from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and others. As part of Operation Free, we came from across the country to join former Senator John Warner to call on the United States to end its dependence on dirty fossil fuels, and take action to combat the national security threat of climate change. As Senator Warner, a veteran of WWII and Korea, said:

Terrorism and insurgency are fed by famine, poverty and failing states. There is a direct link between famine, poverty and failing states and climate change.

That is why we as veterans care about the energy policy – it impacts our national security.

I traveled to DC because I believe the Senate needs act on the Waxman-Markey bill quickly, and pass serious climate change legislation this year. The dishonest tactics of special interest groups are despicable at all times. But when our nation’s security and the good name of real soldiers are put on the line in the name of greed and profiteering, it’s a whole new level of unacceptable.

Our guest blogger is Dan Levitan of the New York Working Families Party.

In the early hours of September 10th, the New York State Senate passed a major bill championed by the Working Families Party to make energy efficiency upgrades to one million homes and businesses over the next five years. The Green Jobs-Green New York Act will leverage private investment and Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative funds to make the upgrades. The bill passed the Assembly unanimously in June and now awaits the Governor’s expected signature. The program created by this bill will create an estimated 14,000 living wage jobs. The key innovation is a revolving capital fund, which would leverage private investment in energy efficient to massively increase the use of existing technology.

Here’s how it will work:

— State-certified contractors would perform free or low-cost energy audits for homeowners, looking for repairs and upgrades (air sealing, insulation, new boilers, etc.) that can pay for themselves through energy savings in an 8 – 10 year window.

– The work is paid for by the Green New York fund, and homeowners pay the fund over time back out of a portion of their energy savings. They pocket the rest, plus get their homes repaired.

Compare this to the current situation:

— A homeowner has to independently do the research to find a contractor they trust to perform an energy audit, pay for it themselves, and then pay the upfront costs of the repair — without support from lenders or energy providers.

For a cold, old state like New York, the number of existing residential and commercial buildings that can be upgraded is huge — we estimate the program could reach one in seven existing homes. It’s a great example of how market failure can be solved through progressive policy.

And none of it would have been possible without the policy work done by the Center for American Progress along with the Center for Working Families.

Last month I noted “The top 5 ways the ‘birthers’ are like the deniers.”  The above sign, from the 9/12 Project DC march on Washington, is worth those thousand words.  Yesterday, countless right-wing protesters were in DC, inspired by uber-extremist Glenn Beck and organized by Republican lobbyists.  Tasteless wingnut signs, like ‘Bury Obamacare with Kennedy’, were the norm.  Think Progress attended the rally and has much, much more in this repost:

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Several months ago I met with the lead climate negotiator for a major European country.  I spelled out some of my oft-repeated concerns about international offsets aka the Clean Development Mechanism.  He kept nodding his head and said, “Work with us to fix it.”

Here are the key points about the CDM:

1. It’s certainly not as bad as many people think (see excellent overview from Point Carbon here — “The CDM: Rip-offsets or real reductions?“)
2. The Europeans are going to insist on keeping it.  It remains a principal mechanism for having polluters pay for clean energy in developing countries.  We certainly need some such mechanism.
3. Under the House climate bill, we don’t have to participate in any international offset market that does not meet high standards for quality assurance.
4. For all the lame and/or insufficiently audited CDM projects that became certified emissions reduction (CER) credits for the Europeans to buy instead of actual emissions reductions, they only bought about 80 million in 2008 and the average price was about $25/ton (see “Do the 2 billion offsets allowed in Waxman-Markey gut the emissions targets?“).
5. Many of the cheapest tons — the dubious Chinese HFC projects — are largely gone and the standards for CDM are certain to be tightened in whatever deal comes out of Copenhagen deal in the wake of ongoing news about questionable CDM oversight.
6. The central conclusions of my recent analyses and discussions with leading experts this year remains true.  Large-scale, inexpensive international offsets don’t exist nor will they.  Were the U.S. to enter the CDM market in a big way, prices would go up.  The overwhelming majority of emissions reductions in the climate bill as currently written will be met with domestic clean energy strategies (see “Game changer, Part 2: Unconventional gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet).

That said, some in this country are trying to weaken in the Senate bill the international offsets oversight provisions found in the House clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill.  The latest story from the UK’s Sunday Times, “Carbon-trading market hit by UN suspension of clean-energy auditor,” should undercut the rationale for those efforts:

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