“We’re kind of channeling, like I said, that old ’70s, ’80s sort of really happy, sunny feeling.”

I apologize in advance for posting a video that some will see as objectifying women — a debate we’ve already had here (see “Supermodel: Why I Took It Off For Climate Change“).

But I think this is a shocking video that must be seen for how it objectifies the Maldives — using the vanishing islands in the Swimsuit Edition as a back drop whose beauty can be exploited and discarded by the priveleged super-rich whose blissfully ignorant comments are so unintentionally ironic that you’d almost think you were watching a video from The Onion:

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“If the lesson from health care is let’s not do anything hard, then why don’t we all go home… But if we go home, China won’t.”

If it’s climate and energy independence and clean energy jobs, there is no in between — at least not for the conservative senator from South Carolina.  Today, Graham told a group of 200 business leaders who advocate comprehensive legislation:

Every day we wait in this nation China is going to eat our lunch. The Chinese don’t need 60 votes.  I guess they just need 1 guys vote over there – and that guy’s voted.

What Congress is going to come up here and do all these hard things?  Who are these people in the future? Because we constantly count on them.  I don’t know who they are.  I’ve yet to find them.

So I guess it falls to me and you.  So let’s do it.

Who would have guessed that Lindsey Graham — among the 20 most conservative U.S. Senators in 2008 — would have more of a backbone for a comprehensive bill than many Senate progressives and the President himself!

Yes, as expected, the President set the record straight today on his utterly misinterpreted remarks yesterday that led to TPM’s sensational headline, “Stick A Fork In Cap-and-Trade.”  In remarks to Senate Democrats today, Obama praised Graham’s efforts with Lieberman and Kerry to “find a workable, bipartisan structure so that we are incentivizing and rewarding the future”:

So don’t give up on that.  I don’t want us to just say the easy way out is for us to just give a bunch of tax credits to clean energy companies.  The market works best when it responds to price.

Good statement, but compare it to Graham’s:

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This Huffpo repost is by Richard Seireeni Brand, Architect, and author of “The Gort Cloud: The Invisible Force Powering Today’s Most Visible Green Brands”

Seventh Generation may be the market leader in eco-friendly household cleaning products and is unquestionably dedicated to environmental and social responsibility, but these are not the main reasons people are buying their products. For a majority of their most loyal customers, who turn out to be issue-aware women with children, the primary driver of consumer choice turns out to be safety. Many women simply want fewer toxic chemicals in their homes. To draw attention to this USP (unique selling proposition), Seventh Generation recently launched their “Protecting Planet Home” campaign.

It’s often not clear why people buy the things they do. This is particularly true when it comes to choosing sustainable and/or socially responsible products. Saving the planet or supporting fair trade is never the only driver of consumer choice — an insight that becomes especially clear when choices are made between competing green products.

So, what is a ‘driver of preference’?

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A U.S. delegate walk past solar panels on display outside a Future House, a clean-energy resident development project in Beijing, China, on July 16, 2009 in the AP photo. As China aims to lead the world’s clean-energy race, reports from the Milken Institute and the Heritage Foundation have become a distraction on the real debate on clean energy economy. This CAP repost is by Rebecca Lefton.

The president reiterated his commitment to comprehensive clean-energy and climate reform in his State of the Union address last week and his budget proposal released on Monday. The bipartisan effort to advance legislation in the Senate remains strong, and Americans continue to strongly support action on global warming.

Yet recent reports from the Heritage Foundation and the Milken Institute“”commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers””are misleading about how these energy reform measures will affect the economy. They are a distraction from the real debate about how to best move forward to secure our economy and national security, and protect our planet from the effects of climate change. Here’s a quick look at what they got wrong.

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A day after President Barack Obama recognized that Senate Democrats wish to abandon global warming pollution limits in an energy bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) mocked the approach as “half-assed.” Obama’s remarks yesterday that “it’s conceivable” the Senate will attempt to pass an energy-incentives bill without a plan for reducing carbon pollution opened the floodgates for hyperbolic speculation in the Washington D.C. press that “cap-and-trade is dead.” Several conservative Democrats have advocated that climate legislation be postponed or abandoned in favor of the Bush-lite energy bill approved by Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) energy committee last year. However, speaking at the Business Advocacy Day for Jobs, Climate & New Energy this morning, Graham attacked this approach in no uncertain terms:

There was this idea floating around yesterday – don’t know how serious it is – that somehow it would be wise for Congress to do energy bill only. I don’t think that’s wise. The reason I don’t think that’s wise is that it is a kick-the-can-down-the-road approach. It’s putting off to another Congress what really needs to be done comprehensively.

I don’t think you’ll ever have energy independence the way I want it until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon. The two are connected in my view – very much connected. The money to be made in solving the carbon pollution problem can only happen when you price carbon in my view. So if the approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill and say that is moving the ball down the road, forget it with me.

Democrats who are denying the critical urgency of reducing carbon emissions — or worse, claiming falsely that an incentive-only package would deliver a low-carbon economy — include Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA). Others, like Bingaman, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have indicated their willingness to claim victory with just the passage of the Senate energy package, described by Center for American Progress president John Podesta as “weak, toothless, and unacceptable.”

“If you break this apart you’ll have a watered-down solution on both fronts,” Graham — who last year similarly rebuked Republicans — concluded. “The world is moving, pollution is growing, we’ve got a chance to get ahead and lead. If we wait too long and if we try to take half measures as the preferred route on all these hard problems, they just get worse.”

Obama delivered a less compelling defense of the necessity of a comprehensive bill today, saying that “I don’t want us to just say the easy way out is for us to just give a bunch of tax credits to clean energy companies.”

A cap-and-trade system or the like is the only way America can break the grip of coal and oil companies on the future of our economy, our health, our environment, and our national security. Dependent on the millions of dollars of campaign funds that flow from these polluters, too many senators on both sides of the aisle are willing to put fossil fuel profiteers above the fate of their nation.

Below are recent quotes from senators attempting to justify failing to prevent a climate catastrophe: Read more

Converting Coal Plants to Biomass

Coal-powered generating stations retrofitted to run on a mixture of coal and dried wood pellets can produce cost-competitive, emission-reduced electricity even without the advent of a cap-and-trade system, according to a new biomass life cycle analysis published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology.

For utilities under pressure to meet renewable portfolio standards, biomass should be considered along with wind, solar and small-scale hydro, says Heather MacLean, the lead researcher and an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto.

“The study results suggest that biomass utilization in coal generating stations should be considered for its potential to cost-effectively mitigate” greenhouse gases from coal-based electricity, the paper concluded.

For more on biomass conversion and cofiring, see:

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A 1995 document the North Dakota coal industry used before the legislature to show how carbon taxes would help wind and hinder lignite development.

Brad Johnson outs Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) for putting coal industry profits above the well being of North Dakotan families in today’s Wonk Room repost.

In a bald attempt to defend coal industry profits, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) has joined a predominantly Republican push to overrule the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases are dangerous pollutants.

Earlier this month, Pomeroy introduced the Save Our Energy Jobs Act (H.R. 4396), which would rewrite the Clean Air Act so that “[t]he term ‘air pollutant’ shall not include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride.” Pomeroy’s justification for flouting the reality of the global warming threat is the need to defend the coal, oil, and gas industries:

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“I am the Lorax: Cease and desist.”

That is the message coming from Dr. Seuss Enterprises to LoraxAg, a coal gasification startup that named itself without permission after Dr. Seuss’s beloved environmental hero. Last week, the Wonk Room notified the defenders of Dr. Seuss’s intellectual property that a coal company was draping its coal-to-chemicals technology in truffula trees. Now, the New York Times reports that Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ Karl ZoBell has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company, as “we do not license the use of Dr. Seuss’s works for other companies to make a profit”:

They should be creative enough to come up with their own name for their company. Dr. Seuss coined this phrase. The term did not exist until he invented it.

LoraxAg claims not to have received the cease-and-desist notice. If necessary, Zobell said, Dr. Seuss Enterprises would “seek relief — and possibly damages — from the courts.”

“I am amazed that nobody suggested to them that this is a bad idea,” ZoBell told the New York Times. However, this is typical behavior for dirty coal operatives. The coal industry has gone to absurd heights to greenwash its toxic and dirty reality, from Frosty the Coalman carols to coal ringtones.

Must-see panel with 2 top scientists who helped author IPCC reports.  It will be webcast here Wednesday, from 12:00pm – 1:30pm ET.  Details here.

I probably won’t get my usual number of blog posts up today.

Please post your comments on the panel when it’s done here.

Obama’s budget lays foundation for innovation-driven growth

Andrew Pratt and Jonathan Moreno spell out the significance of Obama’s budget in 2010 in this pair of reposts. The President’s 2010 budget reflects his deep understanding of the importance that science, education, and innovation have for long-term economic recovery and growth. The first piece, by Andrew Pratt, managing editor for Science Progress, does a good job of putting the 2010 budget’s focus on innovation into context, and Dr. Moreno’s piece then goes into deeper into the impacts that the budget will have on our economy and technology development.

“I do not accept second place for the United States of America,” President Obama said last week in his State of the Union address. Speaking of investments that countries like China, Germany, and India are making in their innovative economies, the president was clear: “These nations, they’re not standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.”

Fortunately, the budget request for fiscal year 2011 that the Obama administration released on Monday includes foundational investments that will help the United States remain the leader among innovative nations. Congressional leaders should support the president’s vision by adopting these investments in their budget later this year.

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