Appearing on General Electric’s conservative-skewing business network, CBNC, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) argued that carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, is not a “real pollutant.” In an interview with right-wing economist Larry Kudlow on Thursday, Inhofe repeated lies about the cost of climate legislation. Kudlow, praising Inhofe for telling Americans about this “very scary story,” attacked the prospect of global warming regulation as a “backdoor energy tax” that “can drive stocks into the ground.” Inhofe claimed that President Obama wants to “intimidate Congress” into passing “$300 to $400 billion a year” in taxes, so that the American people will blame Congress instead of him:

The reason why I don’t think they’ll try to do that through regulation is because certainly this president, President Obama knows that once the American people find out that they’re going to pay about $2,000 a year in taxes for something that doesn’t do anything, there’s going to be an outrage. And they want to be able to say, “Oh, no, that was Congress that did it.” My feeling is they’re using this for intimidation purposes and they’re going to try to intimidate Congress to do this.

Watch it:

CNBC’s promotion of right-wing fantasies originating from polluter-funded think tanks and conservative bloggers is nothing new. Energy and media multinational General Electric is often portrayed as a climate-friendly corporation which influences American politics to the left, primarily because of the presence of Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s afternoon programming. On Fox News, Glenn Beck rants that GE is going to get “all kinds of contracts from the government on green energy” because it is “in bed with Obama.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Steve Milloy claims the new Kerry-Boxer clean-energy jobs act is larded with “payoffs to GE.” Bill O’Reilly claims GE “is also pushing for the proposed cap-and-trade program” and “using its power and the airwaves to influence politics” so that it can “reap billions of dollars if the Feds OK the carbon deal.”

Not only does GE attack climate action through its CNBC network, it also supports several national lobbying campaigns against clean-energy legislation, through its membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (GE Energy), the American Petroleum Institute (GE Oil & Gas), and the National Association of Manufacturers (GE Enterprise Solutions). Unlike GE, companies such as Duke Energy have abandoned NAM and ACCCE for their retrograde position on climate change.

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Where else but the Washington Post editorial page — that bastion of un-fact-checked disinformation – would you find a misleading and misguided piece attacking federal efficiency standards written by a guy who “teaches environmental ethics”?!  Or is that “!?”

Now I can see a libertarian writing a misleading op-ed in defense of inefficient incandescent light bulbs — heck, they don’t much like government mandates for air bags.  But a true environmental ethicist would be shouting from the mountaintop — or at least from his blog — that we have grievously violated every principle of intergenerational ethics in creating this global Ponzi scheme, whereby current generations have figured out how to live off the wealth of future generations.  We have been stealing from our children and grandchildren an ever greater fraction of nonrenewable energy resources (especially hydrocarbons) and natural capital (fresh water, arable land, forests, fisheries), and, the most important nonrenewable natural capital of all “” a livable climate.

But David Henderson (pictured above), who “teaches environmental ethics in the philosophy and religion department at Western Carolina University,” says government has no business creating environmental or efficiency standards for lightbulbs.  His muddled piece, “Let There Be (Incandescent) Light,” perpetuates one enormous myth — that somehow clean energy generation alone without energy efficiency can solve our energy and environmental problems — and a bunch of smaller ones.

On the one hand, Henderson acknowledges that the 2007 federal “minimum efficiency requirements for lighting” do not actually ban any technology (as the EU standards do) and that “there may very well be some improved incandescents on the market that will” meet the standard.  On the other hand, he keeps calling the minimum standard a “similar ban” to the EU asserting “this ban is still a bad idea.”

It’s not a ban.  As the NYT reported in a major article back in July, “Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge”:

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IT IS refreshing to see three energy companies — the nuclear power operator Exelon; Pacific Gas and Electric; and New Mexico’s largest electricity provider, PNM — quitting the US Chamber of Commerce over that organization’s increasingly shrill, doom-saying opposition to climate change legislation in Washington. The chamber claims that limits on greenhouse gas emissions by Congress or the Environmental Protection Agency would be “a job killer,” would “completely shut the country down,” or, even worse, “virtually destroy the United States.”

So begins a great Boston Globe editorial, “Chamber of overstated horrors.”  These resignations really brought home the message of the Chamber’s extremism to the broader media in a tangible way (see Chamber of Horrors: The incredible, shrinking industry group falsely claims “We’ve never questioned the science behind global warming”).

The rest of editorial makes clear just how much the Chamber brought this on themselves with its Luddite call for “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” on global warming:

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Durham, North Carolina-based The Scrap Exchange (above) is “a sustainable art supply store that takes unwanted materials and resells them as arts and crafts supplies,” as explained in this CAP repost.

Is one person’s trash really another’s treasure? According to a Durham, North Carolina-based arts and crafts store it is.

The Scrap Exchange lets people explore their creativity while helping out the environment. The Scrap Exchange was founded in 1991 as a sustainable art supply store that takes unwanted materials from businesses and community members and resells them as arts and crafts supplies. Materials sell for 50 to 70 percent off their retail prices, and popular items include paper, fabric, office supplies, marble scraps, and CD cases. The idea is to promote environmental awareness and creativity by providing high-quality, low-cost materials for artists.

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