The Wonk Room has previously identified seven key U.S. Senate races and fourteen U.S. House races between a vote for climate action and a global warming denier. Today, the Wonk Room highlights four gubernatorial races which could shut down the clean energy revolution in the Midwest. In Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, four Democratic governors who have supported clean energy may be replaced by Republicans who have expressed fealty to big oil. The Republican candidates — Terry Branstad in Iowa, Sen. Sam Brownback in Kansas, Rep. Mary Fallin in Oklahoma, and Matt Mead in Wyoming — hold commanding leads in the polls over their Democratic opponents. The Republicans mock global warming as a conspiracy, doubt that it is caused by manmade pollution, and promote the expansion of the coal and oil industries in their states.

The heartland of America is under extreme threat from the destructive power of global warming, including increasingly frequent catastrophic storms, heat waves, and drought. Furthermore, by denying the opportunity of clean energy jobs, these potential governors risk turning their states into economic wastelands.

IOWA – Terry Branstad
KANSAS – Sam Brownback
OKLAHOMA – Mary Fallin
WYOMING – Matt Mead

IOWA

Former governor Terry Branstad is leading Gov. Chet Culver (D-IA) in the race to run Iowa’s government. Remarkably, even though Iowa is increasingly devastated by catastrophic floods, Branstad’s only public policy position on global warming pollution is:

– To “wholeheartedly” support a coal-fired power plant opposed by NASA scientist Jim Hansen because it would emit 5.9 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, and

– To support the construction of a South Dakota oil refinery near the Iowa border that will emit 19 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Furthermore, Branstad has attacked Culver’s $875 million flood recovery plan, falsely claiming “it saddled Iowans with excessive debt.”

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Back in July, the mostly dead climate bill went belly up.  As I noted here , the bill has passed on!  It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies!  ‘E’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-CLIMATE BILL!!

Still, it appears news travels slow these days, at least into certain states.   That’s the charitable view of this ad by Gov. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — an ad that is otherwise notable for its faux bravado.  After all, it’s not bloody hard to kill something that is dead:

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The plague of anti-science syndrome has spread through GOP Senate candidates faster than a globally warmed wildfire (see “Dawn of the brain-dead Senate“).  Even the once-immune have fallen to this new, highly resistant strain (see “McCain drinks the Kool-Aid [iced tea?] and becomes a climate conspiracy theorist“).  And that most certainly threatens to create a hellish post-apocalyptic world.

Brad Johnson has the story of Pennsylvania’s Senatorial infectee.

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This is a cross post by CAP’s Daniel J. Weiss.

President Barack Obama took office with four major domestic agenda items: a plan to prevent the recession from growing worse and launch recovery; health care reform; financial reform to avoid future meltdowns; and clean energy and global warming legislation to create jobs, reduce oil use, and cut pollution. The president succeeded with the first three items. But clean energy legislation died in the Senate after passing the House.

The October 6, 2010 New Yorker has a “behind the curtain” dissection of the rise and fall of climate legislation in the Senate. It provides an interesting insider view of the always messy legislative process.

Reporter Ryan Lizza details some senators’ admirable willingness to stretch beyond their comfort zones on some energy issues to cement an agreement that would establish declining limits on carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants while allowing more offshore oil drilling and subsidies for nuclear power. He also notes the critical miscommunications and different approaches by senators and the Obama administration that reduced prospects for success.

Lizza gives short shrift, however, to the real reasons Senate passage of climate legislation was impossible in 2010: the deep recession, unified and uncompromising opposition in the Senate, and big spending by oil, coal, and other energy interests. Let’s take a close look at these factors.
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And a new Maryland nuke bites the dust

Exelon Corp. Chief Executive Officer John Rowe said he expects natural-gas prices to remain low, pushing back the construction of new U.S. nuclear power plants by a “decade, maybe two.”

“We think natural gas will stay cheap for a very long time,” Rowe said in an interview today at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “As long as natural gas is anywhere near current price forecasts, you can’t economically build a merchant nuclear plant.”

… Absent a price on carbon dioxide emissions, gas would have to rise to $9 or $9.50 to make the reactors economically attractive, Rowe said.

Reports of the death of the long-heralded nuclear renaissance have not been exaggerated.  The industry has helped ruin itself by failing to either standardize its product or stop costs from escalating out of control (see “Intro to nuclear power” and “Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost “” $10,800 per kilowatt! “” killed Ontario nuclear bid“).

And the pro-nuke conservative movement finished off the renaissance by killing the climate and clean energy jobs bill, which would have priced carbon and boosted all low-carbon forms of energy.

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Researchers use drilling data to find a geothermal hot spot in West Virginia

Researchers have uncovered the largest geothermal hot spot in the eastern United States. According to a unique collaboration between Google and academic geologists, West Virginia sits atop several hot patches of Earth, some as warm as about 400 degrees. If engineers are able to tap the heat, the state could become a producer of green energy for the region.

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Guest Blogger Rhone Resch is President and CEO of the Solar Energy Association (SEIA).

The solar industry is wrapping up its most successful year ever. Solar is now the fastest growing energy industry in the U.S., employing nearly 100,000 Americans and generating billions of dollars of economic growth for our economy.

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