By Christina DiPasquale

Today, leading Republicans released a letter urging President Obama to set aggressive motor vehicle efficiency and emissions standards.  Signatories include ten former Republican members of Congress, two former Republican governors and four former EPA Administrators (Christine Whitman having served both as a governor of New Jersey and EPA Administrator).

Citing the United States’ dependence on foreign oil and oil price volatility the group writes:

“Reductions in fuel consumption could not come at a more important time. With thousands of U.S. troops fighting overseas, unrest in the Middle East and consumers at home feeling the pain at the pump we must resolve to unshackle ourselves from the world oil market…  If oil continues to be a primary driver of our economy and security, we will hand our destiny to other nations, many of which do not share our interests.”

The signatories argue that new fuel efficiency and emissions standards are vital to provide automakers with an investment climate that would allow them to continue to bring more fuel-efficient vehicles to consumers. This letter both acknowledges that these standards will simultaneously serve our national security needs and strengthen our economy “while also driving reductions in oil consumption and carbon pollution that fuels climate change.”

In recommending a national program that implements strong standards for 2017-2025 vehicles, the letter mentions that the first substantial increase in fuel economy standards in 25 years was passed by a bipartisan bill – the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

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ThinkProgress filed this report from Marshalltown, IA.

Today at a campaign stop with the group American Principles Project, Herman Cain took a question about how to increase domestic oil production. Without missing a beat, Cain said that, as president, he would create a special commission to remove environmental and energy regulations at the EPA. Cain explained that the commission would be comprised of businessmen from the coal, oil, shale oil, and natural gas industries because they are the “people closest to the problem.”

Cain then said he would literally appoint the CEO of Shell Oil, presumably current CEO Peter Voser, to the commission because Shell Oil has “been abused by the EPA.” Earlier in his remarks, Cain had riffed for a few moments about how Shell had faced delays in a drilling plan due to EPA regulations:

CAIN: The EPA is the biggest barrier to more permits, more drilling, more shale oil production. So I’m going to have a regulatory reduction commission that I’m going to appoint that’s going to go in and determine how we make things move faster. Some regulations we need. I’m not anti-regulation. I’m just anti-too much regulation. And the people on this commission are going to be people who know something about coal, oil, shale oil, natural gas, and they will be people whose businesses or individuals who have been abused by the EPA. If you’ve been abused by the EPA like Shell Oil, I’m going to ask the CEO of Shell Oil would he like to be on this commission, and give me some recommendations. The people closest to the problem are the ones who can solve the problem.

Watch it:

Later in the day, at his next campaign stop in Iowa Falls, Cain told a campaign supporter about his EPA plan, and said his energy executives-led commission would kill off regulations.

Cain is particularly close to oil CEOs. Shortly after announcing his intention to run for the presidency, Cain met with Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries in Palm Springs, California. As ThinkProgress reported, other oil executives were in attendance.

CLEARING UP THE CLIMATE DEBATE:  Professors Stephan Lewandowsky and Michael Ashley step into the twilight zone of climate change scepticism — where the sun is made of iron and the royals are out to get you. The Conversation cross-post

Science, like much human endeavour, thrives on debate.

Climate deniers want to participate in this debate as equal partners, and feel that they are entitled to be heard and to be taken seriously. This is quite understandable, but by itself does not create an entitlement.

In science, to actually contribute at the forefront of a field one has to earn credibility, not demand it. Being taken seriously is a privilege, not a right.

In science, this privilege is earned by not only following conventional norms of honesty and transparency but by supporting one’s opinions with evidence and reasoned argument in the peer-reviewed literature.

This is what makes science self-correcting. If arguments turn out to be wrong, in time they are caught and corrected by other scientists. It is virtually impossible to publish long-refuted nonsense in good peer-reviewed journals.

Climate deniers, by contrast, seem to avoid the peer-reviewed literature or publish by sometimes abusing the system. Nor do the deniers turn up and present their ideas at any of the many international scientific conferences, open to anyone, where these issues have been explored for decades.

Deniers simply keep restating nonsensical arguments that the scientific community has known to be wrong for a long time.

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Dr. John Abraham, a University of St. Thomas scientist with the Clmate Science Rapid Response Team, offers these comments to ThinkProgress Green on Vice President Al Gore‘s Rolling Stone article on the battle between “Science and Reason” and “Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues”:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s comments reflect a real frustration that is shared by scientists who are concerned about this issue. Every year, the evidence becomes stronger and stronger as our Earth warms, the seas rise, and the ice melts. Every year, the denial machine trots out new arguments that tries to explain away what we can see with our eyes. Every year, the ranks of the denialists get thinner and thinner and the stature of their members decreases.

Despite this overwhelming consensus amongst people who understand climate, there is a gulf found within the general public. Many people are either not concerned or are dismissive. Part of the apathy is a result of terrible media coverage and a well-funded industrial force against taking climate action. When our media defers to experts from think tanks as experts in climate science, everyone loses.

Al Gore’s statements reflected a hope that many scientists shared, that the new administration would champion the cause of environmental stewardship and would resist the forces of denial. Instead of taking a strong and public stand, the current administration has chosen to work within other frameworks, including using stimulus funding to promote renewable every and relying upon the EPA to work on greenhouse mitigation.

It is not clear which approach would have a greater chance at success. What is clear is that every year we delay action is another year that other countries increase their technological lead on us in this important area of clean power production. Every year that we delay, the solutions become more expensive. Every year we delay is a year that groups like the Heartland Institute and the Cato Institute win, and the rest of us lose.

There’s a fight brewing over federal government re-structuring that may have enormous implications for our ability to monitor climate and more efficiently deploy tax payer dollars. But is the “debate” just thinly-veiled opposition to climate science?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the organization responsible for weather forecasting, gathering data on climate patterns and monitoring the health of the marine environment, is proposing a management shift to bring climate-related science and services under one umbrella to more efficiently meet growing demand for data from the military, insurance companies, farmers, firefighters, home builders and utilities.

NOAA administrators say that they’re getting an overwhelming number of requests for climate data, and the authority to re-structure the organization would allow them to more efficiently meet demand and allow the military and the private sector to respond to the data. (For example, NOAA says the residential home building industry has saved $300  million a year due to their ability to adapt to changing frost line levels.)

“Our core climate science, information, and service activities are distributed across multiple line offices and therein inhibit our ability to efficiently target and deploy our resources and efforts,” explained NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco at a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing today.

Also testifying at the hearing, the Navy’s Deputy Oceanographer Robert Winokur said the proposed service would help with “resource allocation and management” while also “facilitating data that we would need for national security.”

Sounds like a commonsense budget-neutral measure to improve data distribution and make government more efficient, right?

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Taking a lesson from coal, the natural gas industry, under increasing scrutiny for its boom of unregulated fracking across the United States, is now bringing its own propaganda to children. Talisman Energy, a Canadian driller with extensive operations in Pennsylvania, has developed the coloring book “Talisman Terry’s Energy Adventure,” starring the “friendly fracosaurus,” a smiling dinosaur wearing drilling garb named Talisman Terry. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explains that the coloring book is part of the company’s outreach strategy to Pennsylvania locals:

The coloring book’s overt message — drilling is smart, safe and American — is delivered in kid-friendly fashion, glossing over the environmental and economic controversies that have surrounded drillers tapping the Marcellus Shale rock formation for lucrative pockets of gas. [...] Talisman Terry was developed at Talisman Energy’s Calgary headquarters and has been distributed at community picnics in northeastern Pennsylvania counties. It’s available free as a PDF on the company’s website.

The content of “Talisman Terry” is beyond parody, with smiling rocks, flowers, balloons, fish, and puppies, as well as American flags, the Statue of Liberty, and bald eagles. According to the coloring book’s before-and-after pages, the impacts of natural gas drilling evidently include the creation of rainbows:

“If you’re talking age 9 or younger, you can’t get into the questions like, ‘What is in fracking fluid?’” Natalie Cox, Talisman’s head of U.S. communications, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In fact, Talisman doesn’t have to tell anyone, even adults, what is in fracking fluid. Pennsylvania’s disclosure laws are riddled with loopholes, and federal regulation is prevented by the “Cheney loophole.”

The natural gas industry is following on the heels of the coal industry, which has produced its own coloring books, a pro-coal curriculum, and even coal carols.

The Center for Investigative Reporting put together this great video on the hidden costs of gasoline.  It’s worth thinking about the next time you’re filling up at the pump.

Vice President Al Gore has rejoined the public fight on global warming, issuing a clarion call to take action to address the climate crisis. Twenty years ago, he participated in the international mobilization against the future threat of fossil fuel pollution heating up our atmosphere. For decades, he and other leaders have battled the fossil fuel industry and their corporate and political allies to mobilize for a sustainable civilization. Now, the crisis of dangerous climate change is upon us. Speaking before the Games for Change festival on Monday, Gore delineated a few of the catastrophic disasters caused by our superheated climate system in the past twelve months:

Look what’s happened in the last twelve months:

– The twenty million people displaced in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country, one of the biggest flood events in their history.

– An area of Australia the size of France and Germany combined, flooded.

– The nation of Colombia, they’ve had five to six times the normal rainfall. Two million people are still homeless. Most of the country was underwater for a portion of last year.

– My hometown, my home city of Nashville, a thousand-year flood. Thousands of my neighbors lost their homes and businesses. They had no flood insurance because there had never been a flood in areas that were flooded.

– Drought. Russia, biggest drought in their history, biggest fires in their history, over 50,000 people killed, and then all of their wheat and other food crops, along with that of Ukraine and Kazakhstan, taken off the world markets, leading to an all-time record spike in food prices.

– Texas, right now. The drought raised from “extreme” to “exceptional.” 254 counties in Texas, 252 of them were filed in the major disaster.

– Today, biggest fire in the history of Arizona, spreading to New Mexico.

– Today, biggest flood in the history of the Mississippi River valley underway right now.

At what point is there a moment where we say, ‘Oh, we ought to do something about this?’

Watch it:

Gore followed up by saying that the solution to the climate crisis doesn’t just involve changing to cleaner technology, but also the empowerment of women. When you “educate girls and empower women,” Gore said, “the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”

Our Nobel prize-winning former vice president has a must-read 7000-word essay in Rolling Stone, “Climate of Denial: Can science and the truth withstand the merchants of poison?”

Gore discusses climate science and  the link to recent record-smashing extreme weather events, of course.  And he makes clear the stakes are too high to become disillusioned by our flawed political system, “What hangs in the balance is the future of civilization as we know it.”

What I will focus on here are his blistering critique of Obama, his even tougher take on the media, and the “five basic ways” individuals can make a difference.  Let’s start with the president:

President Obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change. After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding. After the House passed cap and trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority. Senate advocates — including one Republican — felt abandoned when the president made concessions to oil and coal companies without asking for anything in return. He has also called for a massive expansion of oil drilling in the United States….

During the final years of the Bush-Cheney administration, the rest of the world was waiting for a new president who would aggressively tackle the climate crisis — and when it became clear that there would be no real change from the Bush era, the agenda at Copenhagen changed from “How do we complete this historic breakthrough?” to “How can we paper over this embarrassing disappointment?”

… Yet without presidential leadership that focuses intensely on making the public aware of the reality we face, nothing will change. The real power of any president, as Richard Neustadt wrote, is “the power to persuade.” Yet President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.

No argument here (see The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2).  Gore continues:

Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States…

The truth is this: What we are doing is functionally insane. If we do not change this pattern, we will condemn our children and all future generations to struggle with ecological curses for several millennia to come.

Predictably, the media has jumped on Gore’s criticism of Obama.

ABC News Politics has run the AP story with its headline, “Gore Faults Obama on Global Warming.”  The lede:  “Former Vice President Al Gore is going where few environmentalists — and fellow Democrats — have gone before: criticizing President Barack Obama’s record on global warming.”

Memo to ABC News and the AP:  Obama has been widely criticized by environmentalists.

But what is particularly absurd about this story is that it never mentions that Gore launches an even more blistering and detailed attack on the media!  In fact, that’s how Gore’s essay begins — by comparing the mainstream media today to the referees of professional wrestling (!!):

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“We’re estimating that we are avoiding $3 billion of retrofits for a 33-year-old coal plant,” said CPS Chief Executive Doyle Beneby. “We’ve chosen to invest those dollars today in clean sources that are affordable.”

(Chart source: Calpine with data from Energy Velocity and M.J Bradley & Associates)

A municipal utility in Texas said this week that it plans to shut down an 871-MW coal plant within the next 7 years to avoid spending $3 billion for pollution controls. The Deely plant, operated by CPS Energy, has been running for more than 30 years – making it a candidate for environmental upgrades to comply with pending federal standards for mercury and air toxics.

Rather than invest in a new coal plant, however, the company plans on making up for the production loss by investing in 780 MW of energy efficiency capacity and 1,500 MW of renewable energy, including 44 MW of contracts from solar PV plants. Sierra Club issued a statement this week celebrating the planned closure, saying that solar “will replace that dirty electricity and bring clean energy jobs to Texas.”

Sort of. From a Reuters story:

The utility on Monday also announced a 25-year agreement to purchase 200 megawatts of power from the Summit Texas Clean Energy coal-fired plant under development near Odessa.

Construction is expected to begin by early 2012 on Summit’s 400-megawatt integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant which is designed to capture 90 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions.

Beneby said CPS will replace the Deely output with electricity from the Summit plant, along with additional renewable power and the potential purchase of an existing gas-fired power plant.

The announced closure of the two-unit CPS Energy plant marks the 189th and 190th generators that are set to be retired in the coming years. Recently AEP said it may close up to 6 GW of coal plants and replace those plants with natural gas. These planned retirements mark a major turn-over for the generation mix in the U.S., which is transitioning old coal plants out of the mix and bringing in new natural gas and renewable resources. But how much of that will be new coal?

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Mercedes Makes Hybrid Popemobile For Upcoming Germany Trip

Pope Benedict XVI has a lot of ground to cover when he heads back home to Germany this September, but thanks to a new popemobile from Mercedes, at least 30 of those kilometers (18.5 miles) will be on the greener side.

The Vatican has contracted with Mercedes for the first-ever hybrid popemobile, according to a report by business magazine Wirtschaftswoche. Citing company sources associated with the top-secret project, the magazine reported that the vehicle, based on Mercedes’ M Class, would come with both a battery and a gasoline engine.

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Activists fighting to end mountaintop removal mining (MTR) have long pointed to the adverse environmental effects of the process on surrounding communities. Now, the argument that the destructive mining process also has a substantial human cost on those communities is beginning to gain momentum.

According to a new study by professors at West Virginia and Washington State universities, mountaintop removal has a direct link to the prevalence of birth defects in the communities where it is practiced. By studying birth records from 1996 to 2003, the professors found that six separate birth defects were more common in MTR communities. WFPL News reports:

According to the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research, babies born in counties in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee where mountaintop removal mines were in operation were 26 percent more likely to suffer from some kind of birth defect. That’s compared to babies born in counties where there is no coal mining. The babies were also more likely to have birth defects than those born in counties where coal is mined other ways.

“There were even higher birth defect prevalence rates in the recent period,” [Professor Melissa Ahern, lead author of the study] said. “Which means as mountaintop mining has increased, it appears that increase is associated with higher birth defect rates.”

This is not the first study to link MTR and health problems. In May, researchers at West Virginia University found that people living near MTR sites suffered lower levels of health and quality of life than those in other areas.

Unfortunately, even with evidence of MTR’s adverse effects on human health mounting, governors and lawmakers in the Central Appalachian states have continued to battle the communities they represent, choosing instead to stand up for coal companies’ ability to continue destroying our environment and our health.

Carbon Nation is a terrific documentary, perhaps the best ever on climate solutions.

It is coming out on DVD in August.  You can pre-order it here.  And you can enter (before June 30th) to win one of 100 DVDs that will be given away by Stonyfield Farm here.

Gary Hirshberg, President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, explains why they partnered with the film and promoted it on their lids:

Stonyfield Farm chose to partner with Carbon Nation and to appear in the film because a large part of our mission is to protect and restore the planet. We believe that every person can be a climate activist, and that being green can also mean being profitable.  We need to make changes now so that future generations can enjoy clean air, water and soil. This movie offers us hope that this is not only possible, but utterly achievable.

Can’t argue with that.

You can see the film trailer — which I’m not entirely thrilled with — here:

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