Serious climate action or a significant increase in federal clean energy funding all but dead for foreseeable future

It looks like the new Speaker of the House will be John Boehner, the man who said, “The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical.”

Ironically very few races were decided by climate and clean energy outside of California, which embraced the strongest possible action to reduce pollution.  And poll after poll makes clear the public as a whole supports strong action.  And the overwhelming scientific understanding that  unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases poses a grave threat to the health and well-being of our children and countless future generations grow stronger every year (see “An illustrated guide to the latest climate science“).  But the economy and the President’s dreadful messaging, coupled with a staggering amount of money from Big Oil and the corporate polluters, swept in countless pro-pollution conservatives in the House.

There will be no post-partisan energy policy (see “Brookings embraces American Enterprise Institute’s climate head fake along with right-wing energy myths“).  I was at the US Department of Energy the last time the right-wing seized control of the House, under Newt Gingrich.

We had started a process of increasing the budget for clean energy over the past two years, much as Obama and Chu have — and immediately Gingrich and his pro-pollution extremists tried to shut down the department and zero out all applied energy R&D.  We fought back as hard as we could, and basically held them to a draw.

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Salon: “Tea Party has now officially cost GOP a Senate seat”

Rand Paul has become the first of the Tea Party extremists to be elected to the Senate — but Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell has lost her bid for a Senate seat.

Here’s some background on the hard-core, pro-pollution libertarian from Kentucky:

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New U.S. daily high temperature records in October outpace record lows by nearly 5-to-1

ENDLESS SUMMER:  For all the talk of plummeting ocean temperatures, last month was tied for the second hottest October in the UAH satellite record (with 2003, 2006, and 1998 — October 2005 was slightly hotter).  And we had the rare event of “two simultaneous hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean on October 30,” as Meteorologist Jeff Masters noted (see below).

In this country, Steve Scolnik of CapitalClimate reports:

… new record high temperatures are outpacing record low temperatures in the U.S. for the 8th consecutive month. Preliminary data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) for October show over 1500 new record highs, vs. slightly more than 300 lows, giving a ratio of 4.75 to 1. For the year to date, new highs are exceeding new lows by a ratio of 2.8 to 1….

new record warm minimum temperatures also exceeded record high maximums as they have in nearly every month so far in 2010. The excess of high minimum records was particularly strong in the summer, when as many as 3761 were reported in August alone.

I like the statistical aggregation across the country, since it gets us beyond the oft-repeated point that you can’t pin any one record temperature on global warming.  If you want to know how to judge whether the 4.75-to-1 ratio for October is a big deal, here’s what a 2009 National Center for Atmospheric Research study found for 1,800 weather stations in continental US over the past six decades:

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What does Marc Morano do when he’s not cyber-bullying and urging violence against climate scientists?  Turns out he is the Assistant Treasurer of an organization that has launched a 25-minute “Breaking Point” political attack ad, which attempts to paint President Obama and the Democrats as “treacherous” and “socialist,” as people who act “often with hostility” towards America.  It also viciously smears John Holdren and Van Jones and Carol Browner with false attacks.

The video, if you have the stomach to watch it, is beyond noxious.  It is, I suppose, no surprise coming from the man who helped launched the Swift Boat smear.  But it is laughable that, on his website, the Morano has the nerve to label as assert ‘alarmists’ people who merely report what the climate science says — when his video mash up of clips from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the New Black Panther Party, Hamas, and Mao Tse-Tung is so far beyond alarmist that I’m not even sure a word exists to describe its incendiary hate speech.

With this video, Morano has now fully discredited himself as a propagandist, much like Andrew Breitbart. Brad Johnson has the story:

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Governments can use policy measures alongside relatively small sums of public money to catalyze private sector participation to help developing countries finance their transition to a clean energy economy.

This cross post is by CAP’s John Podesta, Richard W. Caperton, and Andrew Light.

International negotiations on a comprehensive climate change treaty made limited progress this year, yet global investments in clean energy in both developed and developing countries alike continue apace. Ironically, there is a positive connection between the two””despite the slow pace of negotiations to produce a comprehensive climate treaty, the discussions have produced a continuing and evolving commitment in the international arena to help developing countries finance their transition to a clean energy economy.

A new report released today, “Investing in Clean Energy,” from the Center for American Progress and seven other global think tanks that comprise the Global Climate Network provides a progress report on commitments to clean energy development in several sectors in China, India, Nigeria, and South Africa. Our report estimates the total cost over the next decade for achieving these targets, and then offers recommendations on how best to use public funds that may become available in the creation of a global climate fund to leverage the private capital needed to meet these goals.

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Stimulus Bill Has Put Almost 8 GW of Geothermal Energy on US Grid

The geothermal industry has begun an unprecedented expansion starting this year, as a record 7, 875 MW of geothermal projects broke ground, the Geothermal Market Update reports this week. While the pre-deadline dash to break ground on new US solar projects has been getting all the coverage these last few months, the similarly deadline-driven geothermal projects have been able to break ground on time.

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This is the last in a series by William Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

The point of this five-part post has been to offer a few ideas on the questions that many environmental leaders are asking right now: Is the climate battle lost? Where do we go from here?

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