Memo to Politico: Do you really aspire to being nothing more than a new media version of the MSM — stenographers of the status quo?

The Politico wasn’t a finalist for the 2009 “Citizen Kane” award for non-excellence in climate journalism solely because it is (supposedly) a new media outlet.  But while the Politico offers itself as an antidote to the old media, this collection of political journalists has quickly established itself as more of the same.  Squared.

Indeed, because they focus on the political ping pong game, with little or no substantive analysis of the issues they write about in a large fraction of their pieces, they are in danger of becoming a poor man’s David Broder, the sultan of the status quo, stenographer of those centrists who are fatally uninformed about global warming.

For instance, in “Republicans push on ‘Climategate’,” the Politico focused strictly on how the right-wing anti-science crowd were using the purloined emails and didn’t even have a single comment from an actual scientist until the second page of the story — and that was science advisor Holdren from his (terrific) House testimony.   And they buried the most important  line:

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) dismissed the controversy as more of a public relations problem than a serious scientific meltdown.

An equally bad piece this month, “Have the greens failed?” sought to pass a negative judgment on the entire clean energy effort of the Obama administration and environmental advocates who support its goals — before Obama’s first year was up (!) and with no mention of many of the president’s remarkable achievements (!!), including for instance,  Obama will raise new car fuel efficiency standards to 35.5 mpg by 2015, which is the biggest step the U.S. government has ever taken to cut CO2.

This is standard old-media stuff — when the President’s poll numberes are in a down cycle, declare defeat and failure.  Since nobody would read the Politico for substantive analysis, which is done infinitely better at a number of major media outlets and blogs, the only possible reason to read the Politico is for the political analysis.  But why bother when that analysis is both so predictable and so influenced by the Politico’s center-right, status quo spin on everything?

Naturally, the Politico’s pundits have turned their substance-free, horserace-heavy attention to the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill, in an article titled “Senate Democrats to W.H.: Drop cap-and-trade.”  The piece is a perfect example of journalistic malpractice, intentionally misleading  from the very start — the headline and lede:

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An Array of New Interests Joins Washington’s Climate Change Debate

The next round of the battle over climate change policy on Capitol Hill will involve more than the usual suspects. Way more. Watch soup makers face off against steel companies. Witness the folks who pump gas from the ground fight back against those who dig up rock. And watch the venture capitalists who have money riding on new technology try to gain advantage in a game that so far has been deftly controlled by the old machine.

The Center for Public Integrity has the most comprehensive analysis of the lobby to influence both domestic and global climate action.  They’ve just published their latest analysis of the U.S. climate lobby, by Marianne Lavelle and M.B. Pell, which I excerpt below:

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China introduces yet another new law to boost renewable energy.

“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,” as I’ve said.  Our only chance of matching them is to pass the bipartisan climate and clean energy bill.

Two new articles underscore America’s challenge.  The first is a short Reuters piece on China’s new renewables law, and the second is a long New Yorker piece.  Reuters reported Sunday:

A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.

The amendment to the 2006 renewable energy law was adopted on Saturday by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, the Xinhua news agency said.

The amendment also gives authority to the State Council energy department, together with the State Council finance department and the state power authority, to “determine the proportion of renewable energy power generation to the overall generating capacity for a certain period.”

Such legislation is not how we do business, which is why, I repeat, “The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill.”

The New Yorker piece is great news from the perspective of those who want to see widespread dissemination of low-cost low-carbon technology, but alarming to any American who understands that such technology will be the among the biggest source of high-wage jobs and economic power this century (see “Invented here, sold there”).  I recommend reading the whole  piece, but I’ll single out two must-read extended excerpts.  First, the overview:

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NRDC’s Doniger: “Give up the sour and grudging reviews. The Copenhagen Accord is a significant breakthrough that signals a new era of effective cooperation between all major emitters, and opens the door to finally enacting U.S. climate and energy legislation next year.”

This guest post by David Doniger, the policy director of NRDC, was first published here.  I know Doniger from our days in the Clinton administration, where he was director of climate change policy at the Environmental Protection Agency and, before that, counsel to the head of the EPA’s clean air program.  He is one of the country’s savviest thinkers on climate policy and emissions regulations.

The Copenhagen climate deal that President Obama hammered out Friday night with the leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa broke through years of negotiating gridlock to achieve three critical goals.  First, it provides for real cuts in heat-trapping carbon pollution by all of the world’s big emitters.  Second, it establishes a transparent framework for evaluating countries’ performance against their commitments.  And third, it will start an unprecedented flow of resources to help poor and vulnerable nations cope with climate impacts, protect their forests, and adopt clean energy technologies.

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