Decades of bipartisan advances on clean air and water at risk

U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) introduced a bill that would consolidate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency into a single, new agency called the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). The bill would provide cost savings by combining duplicative functions while improving the administration of energy and environmental policies by ensuring a coordinated approach.

This move by Burr — with 15 GOP climate zombie cosponsors — is aimed at undermining science-based standards that protect our clean air and clean water.  His press release quoted above is doubletalk.

I worked at the DOE for 5 years in the mid-1990s.  I lived through the efforts of the Gingrich Congress to try to shut down the Department, and especially its clean energy programs.  I also worked closely with EPA at that time.  In fact DOE ended up hiring some EPA folks who wanted to work on pollution prevention and clean energy.

So I can state with a great deal of confidence that DOE and EPA are utterly different agencies that have no meaningful duplicative functions.  Yes, they both have a General Counsel’s office, for instance — but DOEE would still need the lawyers from both EPA and DOE since they do completely different things and require completely different sets of expertise.  What this would allow the GOP to do is to cut the combined operations budget and staffing, thereby crippling both agencies, all in the name of “streamlining.”

Equally important, this would remove a voice from the Cabinet meetings– either a Lisa Jackson or Steven Chu.  These meetings are already dominated by economic agencies or those who don’t have either an environmental or clean energy expertise.

Also, combining a regulatory agency with an agency that advocates for and serves the need of those regulated industries is widely seen as a disastrously bad idea.  Indeed, that mistake helped lead to the BP oil disaster.  As the NY Times reported one year ago in its piece, “Interior Unveils Plan to Split MMS Into 3 Agencies“:

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While some math-challenged folks continue to push the false narrative that liberals outspent conservatives in the last election cycle, the Center for Responsive Politics has put out a comprehensive analysis showing otherwise.

Undisclosed spending by conservative-leaning groups exceeded that of liberal ones $119.6 million to $15.7 million.  ThinkProgress has the story:

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Our guest blogger is Kiley Kroh, Associate Director for Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Yesterday, one year and two weeks after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig took the lives of 11 people and perpetuated the worst environmental disaster in US history, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives began voting on a trio of bills designed to repeat the catastrophe:

HR 1230: Reopening risky offshore drilling. The first of the “Oil Above All” bills, HR 1230, passed the House by a vote of 266-149. If enacted into law, the bill would force the Administration to offer lease sales in the Gulf and off Virginia that were canceled in the wake of the BP disaster, after the administration determined safety standards and environmental impact assessments were in serious need of reform.

HR 1229: Accelerating drilling permits. The bill would force the Secretary of Interior to approve or deny all new applications for drilling permits under an existing exploration plan within 30 days (with the possibility of two 15-day extensions). These applications are for dangerous and complicated work and often take oil companies years to compile — the bill would impose rushed, arbitrary permitting deadlines, as well as prevent the enforcement of key public interest and environmental laws. HR 1229 is scheduled for a vote next week.

HR 1231: Opening everywhere to offshore drilling. This legislation would force sweeping new drilling in sensitive areas — namely the entire Atlantic coast, Southern California coast, the Arctic Ocean and Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

All this flies in the face of recommendations of the President’s National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which stated unequivocally in its report that laws for spill prevention and response need to be improved before drilling is expanded:

The technology, laws and regulations, and practices for containing, responding to, and cleaning up spills lag behind the real risks associated with deepwater drilling into large, high-pressure reservoirs of oil and gas located far offshore and thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface. Government must close the existing gap and industry must support rather than resist that effort.

“To be allowed to drill on the outer continental shelf is a privilege to be earned, not a private right to be exercised,” the commission concluded.

Instead of working to implement this fundamental principle and prevent another blowout, the House leadership is unconscionably choosing to speed up the exact processes that the commission cited as contributing factors to the BP disaster. The commission lays out a set of critical recommendations that have been completely ignored by this Congress. It should be no surprise to anyone that none of them included “speed up permitting” or “open half of the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling.”

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UPDATE: Yes, the false accusation that Gore was exaggerating came from none other than Roger Pielke, Jr. And yes, I just re-confirmed with Gore’s office that Pielke is as wrong today in his false claims as he was 2 years ago (here).  Pielke has enlisted Anthony “shout them down in the comments section” Watts in his effort smear Al Gore and me and anyone who tries to explain the science of how global warming is driving more extreme weather.

In 2009, the Washington Post printed a remarkable number of dreadful pieces on global warming — including one by Bjorn Lomborg, two by Sarah Palin (!) and, most infamously, three by George Will that shockingly repeated global warming lies the Post knew were lies (see short list here).

Gawker weighed in with, “The Washington Post Has the Worst Opinion Section in America,” explaining they “openly allow George Will to lie, to straight-up lie, without fact-checking or corrections.”  The Columbia Journalism Review called it The Will Affair.

So who could possibly do a media analysis that concluded the Washington Post covered climate well in 2009?  Hint:  It’s the same person who utterly misanalyzed the spending data to conclude climate bill opponents were outspent by proponents.  The answer is after the jump, as if you didn’t already know….

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Members took over $4 Million from Big Oil to push planetary heating

CAP’s Kristen Bartoloni in a Wonk Room cross-post.

On Wednesday, 26 House Republicans launched an energy coalition called the House Energy Action Team (HEAT) as a vehicle for the GOP (Grand Oil Party) to tout their oil above all energy agenda.

The team’s name is sadly appropriate, as their agenda will accelerate the greenhouse pollution that is dangerously heating up our planet. Texas Republican Bill Flores, who received over $200,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, explained that their “all of the above” approach means expanding oil and gas drilling:

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LaHood: Americans won’t return to guzzlers when gas prices fall

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Thursday that he’s not concerned that consumers’ interest in efficient vehicles will tail off when gasoline prices fall.

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Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) with George W. Bush

Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, established 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon to give Americans clean air and water. The bill, introduced by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), would merge the EPA, which enforces environmental laws, with the Department of Energy, which manages nuclear energy and energy research, into one department.

In January, Newt Gingrich proposed abolishing the EPA, and several House Republicans have supported that goal, while making numerous attempts to hamstring limits on industrial polluters. Burr’s statement announcing his bill to eliminate the EPA argues that “duplicative functions” can be eliminated, even though the two departments are completely different:

U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) introduced a bill that would consolidate the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency into a single, new agency called the Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE). The bill would provide cost savings by combining duplicative functions while improving the administration of energy and environmental policies by ensuring a coordinated approach.

Burr’s bill has fifteen co-sponsors, all of them global warming deniers: Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Enzi (R-WY), John Thune (R-SD), John McCain (R-AZ), Dan Coats (R-IN), Richard Shelby (R-AL), John Barrasso (R-WY), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), David Vitter (R-LA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT).

The extreme weather of 2010 was record-setting. But it may be the new normal. This year Americans have already suffered through “supercell thunderstorms” in Iowa, severe drought and record wildfires in Texas, and heavy rains across the United States. The recent southeastern storms and tornados took at least 340 lives across eight states. And residents of the Mississippi River Valley only narrowly avoided the most severe, damaging floods there in nearly a century.

The Center for American Progress’s “Year of Living Dangerously” report and this video highlight the damage from extreme weather in 2010″”including the 1,000-year flood in Nashville, Tennessee, and the “snowmageddon” across along the East Coast””and the connection to global warming:

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