But conservatives falsely claims pollution is energy and a carbon cap that starts in 2013 is “in the middle of a recession.”

Senators say President Barack Obama is insisting that any energy legislation put a price on carbon emissions “” something many Republicans call an energy tax they can’t accept.

That’s the initial brief AP story after Obama met with a bipartisan group of nearly two dozen senators today.  As Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson notes, the GOP keeps claiming “Pollution Is Energy.”

The UK Guardian pushed the status quo media’s conventional wisdom in their headline “Barack Obama fails to rally support for energy bill.”

In fact, Olympia Snowe issued a long statement endorsing a utility cap but repeating some tired myths — including the nonsensical conservative talking point that taking action on climate starting three years from now would somehow threaten the recovery, when the reverse is true (see Nobelist Krugman attacks “junk economics”: Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities”).

Here is Snowe’s full statement:

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The habitability of our planet is threatened by fossil-fueled politicians who can’t tell the difference between pollution and energy. After a White House meeting on energy reform this morning, Republican senators rejected President Obama’s call for a price on carbon pollution, repeating the Newt Gingrich lie that it would be a “national energy tax”:

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “As long as we take a national energy tax off the table, there’s no reason we can’t have clean energy legislation.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “A cap-and-trade energy tax will not sell at this time. We’ve got to find a path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who refused to attend the meeting: “I wish the president would focus his attention on stopping the spill and cleaning it up instead of trying to use this crisis as an opportunity to push for a new national energy tax.”

These senators know they’re lying when they equate greenhouse gas pollution with “energy.” Their states are being ravaged by our overheated climate system, including the freak flooding of Nashville and Kentucky and the melting of Alaska’s tundra.

Murkowski is being especially disingenuous about finding a “path that does not put an added burden on American taxpayers.” Right now, American taxpayers are paying the costs of fossil fuel pollution — the destruction of our health, our oceans, and our climate — while corporate polluters like oil disaster giant BP rake in the profits.

The rhetoric of these climate peacocks who put party over planet can’t hide their track record of playing the willing stooge for pollution profiteers.

Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Susan Lyon, Special Assistant for Energy Policy at American Progress give a recap of the best policy proposals for oil savings of 2010 in this repost.

Oil, oil, everywhere, but not a drop for fuel. This is the stark view of Gulf Coast residents who see a 24,500 square mile oil slick menacing their shores. The devastating BP oil disaster has clearly increased the urgency to dramatically reduce America’s oil consumption; and cutting our consumption would save consumers money, reduce foreign oil imports, help our economy, increase national security, and reduce global warming pollution.

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This TP crosspost (with video!) could be filed under “Signs of the Apocalypse.”  But these days I think the smaller, more manageable category would be “Signs there isn’t going to be an apocalypse.”

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Across the US and in countries from Greenland to New Zealand, citizens gathered on beaches linking hands and standing quietly to show their opposition to offshore drilling for oil and their support for clean energy development. Founded “” ironically, before the Deepwater Horizon disaster “” by Florida restaurateur and surfer Dave Rauschkolb, the Hands Across the Sand movement blossomed rapidly in four short months, undoubtedly fueled by the two-month-old specter of tens of thousands of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Sarah Busch, intern for the energy team at American Progress and Shirley Gregory, a Gulf coast resident who blogs at Gulf Oil Monitor, share their experiences participating in simultaneous rallies in Washington and Navarre, Florida.

On the Florida coast…

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And the Tea Party postponed their Las Vegas convention

Before getting to the irony of the anti-science Tea Partiers canceling their big convention because the weather is too hot, let’s look at some of the staggering extreme weather events around the globe.

In China, “The Southern Daily said over 600 millimetres (24 inches) of rain fell in Guangdong’s Huilai county over a six-hour period on Friday, a 500-year record.”  That’s two feet of rain in 6 hours!

As Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told me earlier this month:

There is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.

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Germany setting up $500 million climate fund

Germany says it is setting up a $500 million fund to provide micro-finance loans to developing countries for projects such as new supermarket freezers and biomass heating to help cut greenhouse gas emissions.

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This morning, President Barack Obama is meeting at the White House with “a bipartisan group of senators to discuss passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation this year.” The 23 attendees include several climate peacocks, but not Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who said last year that “the green economy is coming,” and told administration officials in May, “I’m in this to win.”

Graham has chosen instead to attend the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and for Gen. David Petraeus, where he can continue to talk before the cameras. The other notable non-attendee is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), yet another indication that the Republican caucus will pursue the same strategy of obstruction they followed with the stimulus, health care, and financial reform.

The “climate peacocks” — senators who tried to block the EPA from acting on greenhouse pollution because they claim it’s Congress’s job — attending today’s White House meeting are:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Agriculture Chair
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Commerce Chair
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
George Voinovich (R-OH)

The other sixteen attendees include Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and key actors on climate and energy, including the chairs of the energy, environment, foreign relations, and finance committees:

Harry Reid (D-NV)
Max Baucus (D-MT), Finance Chair
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Energy Chair
Barbara Boxer (D-CA) , Environment and Public Works Chair
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
Judd Gregg (R-NH)
John Kerry (D-MA), Foreign Relations Chair
Joe Lieberman (I-CT)
Richard Lugar (R-IN)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Strikingly, the only Gulf Coast senators attending the White House meeting on day 70 of the greatest oil catastrophe in United States history are the two Democrats from the region, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

I have known guest blogger Jane Dale Owen for more than a decade.  She is one of Houston’s leading environmental champions and president of Citizens League for Environmental Action Now (CLEAN).  Owen is the granddaughter of Robert Lee Blaffer, co-founder of Humble Oil, which “would later consolidate with Standard Oil of New Jersey to become Exxon.”

Throughout history, industry has endangered public health and the environment by ignoring early warning signs. Government and industry leaders have failed to follow the Precautionary Principle, a guide toward preventing harm to the planet and to human health. Instead, industry has been allowed to play Russian Roulette with the environment and our lives. Now 11 people have died and much of the Gulf is dying as a result of the latest outrageous industrial catastrophe.

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The Tea Party crowd is anti-science, pro-pollution and anti-regulation.  This wouldn’t matter so much if they remained a fringe group.  But they have been embraced by the mainstream conservative movement, and successfully won GOP nominations for national office (see Rand Paul: “I believe business should be left alone from government”).

One of the biggest successes of the Tea Party movements is U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R-NV).  Think Progress has the latest on her extreme pro-Big-Oil and pro-mining views:

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