Top medical groups have repeatedly warn Americans of health risks posed by climate change.  The medical journal Lancet’s Health Commission has warned: “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” Brad Johnson takes on the GOP counterattack in this cross-post (with video).

Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) today introduced legislation with Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) to block the Environmental Protection Agency from implementing Clean Air Act protections against global warming pollution, rejecting the counsel of America’s public health advocates.  A boon to Koch Industries and the other polluters who supported his campaign, Upton’s legislation would nullify the EPA’s Supreme Court-mandated scientific finding that burning fossil fuels is damaging our climate system.

At a climate hearing on this week Upton justified his legislation by claiming the threat greenhouse gases pose to air quality and public health is a “myth”:

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Last Sunday the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — The Oscars — celebrated its 83^rd year. Motion pictures nominated for an Oscar have always held great power in shaping culture and conversation, and have brought important issues into the American conscious. Award winning (or nominated) films can focus the spotlight on global issues in ways not possible in most forums. In the last few years there have been a growing number Oscar nominated movies with environmental themes, such as last year’s best picture nominee Avatar or this year’s best documentary nominee Gasland.

Now the United Nations is joining the efforts to bring climate change into the Hollywood spotlight.  CAP’s Emily Bischof has the story.

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By CAP’s Jorge Madrid, Bracken Hendricks, and Kate Gordon.

It has become quite the trend lately for conservatives and their media cronies to come out with attacks on “clean energy” and “green jobs.”  These attacks run the gamut from debates about exactly how many jobs have been created to broad jabs at the very notion that America needs to move to a cleaner, more efficient clean energy economy.  While the attacks range widely in their scope and focus, they all miss a critical point:  greening our economy is an environmental and energy security imperative, and one that also happens to provide the opportunity for the U.S. to compete in the huge emerging global clean tech marketplace.

A recent New York Post article by Shikha Dalmia, “Green Boondoggles” (3/1/2011), is a great example of just how misguided these attacks can be.

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The Kochs outspend Exxon Mobil on pro-pollution disinformation aimed at preventing action to preserving a livable climate.  Their efforts, if successful, will cause billions of people around the globe to suffer needlessly for decades, if not centuries.

This ThinkProgress cross-post offers a small way to fight back.

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This is a TP cross-post.

Last week, CAP’s John Norris and Sarah Margon suggested that President Obama respond to the crisis in Libya by engaging Libyan business leaders to convince them that leader Muammar Qaddafi “is a liability they can no longer afford.”  Since Libya is Africa’s largest oil producing country, a good place to start would be the oil industry:

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