The Onion:  For some reason, climatologists have been running around in an agitated state, waving their little arms and squawking about “global warming.”

Nation’s Climatologists Exhibiting Strange Behavior

More Humor From America’s Finest News Service:

• Major new report finds “Global warming issue from 2 or 3 years ago may still be problem”
• Planet Earth Doesn’t Know How To Make It Any Clearer It Wants Everyone To Leave
• Republicans vote to repeal Obama-backed bill that would destroy asteroid headed for Earth

The nation is heading toward the deadline for raising the debt ceiling to avoid fiscal default. The debate has been centered around whether or not an austerity program of massive cuts in federal spending will be “balanced” by much smaller tax increases. To be honest, most of the debate has been centered around whether the Republicans are crazy enough to go forward with their bluff to allow default and thus broad economic misery, even among Wall Street, unless all of their demands — which include deficit-increasing tax cuts — are met.

The boundaries of this debate are designed to make the nation’s fundamental problems — economic inequality, underemployment, global warming, and the like — worse, not better.

Outside observers such as Al Gore, the New York Times’ David Leonhardt, and the Center for American Progress’ Joe Romm have castigated President Obama’s economic conservatism and called for a response based on sound economic and scientific theory, instead.

Here’s my summary of the different approaches to these fundamental threats to the future of the American dream:

	PROGRESSIVES	OBAMA	TEA PARTY
Economic Malaise, Joblessness, Inequality	Massive Keynesian investment funded by progressive taxation on the rich and corporations.	Hope spending from beginning of term and Fed’s quantitative easing does enough. Argue that Keynes was wrong. Austerity cuts.	Massive austerity cuts, tax cuts for the rich and corporations, and privatize everything.
Global Warming	Huge clean-energy and infrastructure spending funded by heavy taxes and/or strict cap on carbon pollution.	Modest regulation of coal plants, increase in fuel economy standards, hope Recovery Act spending was enough. Don’t talk about it.	Deny existence. Argue protection of environment is a plot to take away freedom.
Debt Default	Raise the debt ceiling.	Claim it’s a huge problem, push massive austerity cuts and possibly some revenue increases. Argue against simply raising the debt ceiling.	Claim it’s not a problem, use fear of default to pass massive austerity cuts and privatize everything.
Long-Term Deficit	Massive Keynesian investment funded by progressive taxation on the rich and corporations.	Massive austerity cuts and slowing the rate of tax cuts for the rich and corporations.	Massive austerity cuts, tax cuts for the rich and corporations, and privatize everything. Increase deficit.

As of this moment, the president’s negotiating stance is a lot closer to the radical, destructive goals of the far right than to the climate hawks and progressives.

The Obama Administration is set to announce aggressive new fuel efficiency standards tomorrow, scoring a rare victory on the environmental front. But the details of the agreement may weaken the standards and allow automakers to delay action on improving the efficiency of America’s fleet of vehicles.

At issue is a “technology re-opener” that allows auto manufacturers to fight the standards after 2021 in the hopes that they can re-negotiate rules with a future administration that may be more lenient on the industry. The re-opener potentially gives auto companies an incentive not to develop technologies immediately so they can argue down the road that the standard can’t be met.

Under the current timeline, the administration’s proposal would increase fuel efficiency for cars by 5% per year and increase efficiency of light trucks by 3.5% per year through 2021. After 2021, standards for light trucks would climb to 5% through 2025 – bringing the efficiency of the entire U.S. vehicle fleet to 54.5 mpg from today’s 27.3 mpg. Those are the highest standards proposed since 1987. The most recent standards passed in 2009 require the nation’s fleet to average 35.2 mpg by 2016.

Despite the rise in value for used fuel-efficient cars and surveys showing two thirds of Americans want more efficient automobiles — and the inevitably of rising gasoline prices because of peak oil — American manufacturers say they are skeptical that consumers will buy them. Hence, the inclusion of a re-opener that gives auto companies a “self destruct” mechanism if they don’t think the standard is working — or if they decide to make it unworkable themselves.

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This month, San Francisco launched a new program to build business co-ops to deploy distributed solar power, key to greening California’s power supply. The City and County of San Francisco Department of the Environment and the World Resources Institute has launched Solar@Work to “help Bay Area businesses obtain affordable solar electric systems”:

Solar@Work is a commercial solar group-purchasing program that was created to secure discounted solar pricing for commercial building owners, provide an affordable solar financing option, and stimulate local economic development.

“California Gov. Jerry Brown set a lofty new target this week: to generate enough clean green energy from rooftop solar panels and small wind turbines to power 3 million homes statewide by 2020,” SolveClimateNews’ Maria Gallucci writes. “Speaking at a UCLA clean energy conference on Monday, the governor said that 12 gigawatts, more than half of California’s 20-gigawatt renewables goal, should come from local, distributed generation.”

“For most people the act of buying and having a solar PV system installed is very inconvenient and loaded with uncertainty,” the Cost of Energy’s Lou Grinzo writes. “Are you getting ripped off by a local contractor? Does the outfit really know what they’re doing, or are they leaping into the solar market without giving their installers and salespeople proper training? And how big a system do you really need? The questions multiply very quickly when you go from the initial, abstract concept of ‘let’s put in a solar PV system’ to the messy details of how to make that happen.”

Government-backed solutions to solve these market failures — like power purchase agreements and solar co-ops — Grinzo writes, “dramatically simplify the buying process” and “you get green electrons, often at a slight discount, the company makes money (in part thanks to government subsidies), and everyone wins.”

Researchers have published two new studies linking water contamination caused by mountaintop removal mining to adverse health effects, further proof that the practice is not only destroying the environment but is also destroying human lives in the communities around it. The first study, published in June, linked MTR to higher rates of birth defects in surrounding communities. The second, released this week, found that multiple forms of cancer were twice as prevalent in MTR communities than they were elsewhere.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), meanwhile, continues to ignore the implications of these studies, paying them lip service while sponsoring legislation that will further undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate coal companies and other polluters. Despite calling the incest claims “disgusting” and “uncalled for,” Rahall refused to say what action he would take on the studies multiple times in a recent interview with the Charleston Gazette, saying the studies made no recommendation for what action should be taken:

Well, first of all, I don’t find in these studies, certainly not the latest one that is, where they make any recommendation as to what we should do about mountaintop mining.

In reality, the studies called for specific actions, including strengthening existing EPA regulations. From the birth defects study:

Existing regulations to protect air and water quality in mountain-top mining areas may be inadequate, and enforcement of those regulations has been lax, though recent efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency may be moving in the direction of stricter regulations. The findings documented in this study con tribute to the growing evidence that mountaintop mining is done at substantial expense to the environment, to local economies and to human health.

Unfortunately, Rahall and Congressional Republicans are taking the exact opposite approach. Rahall co-sponsored legislation, passed by the House last week, that would gut the EPA’s ability to enforce the Clean Water Act. Instead of strengthening the EPA, which Rahall has accused of “strong-arming the states,” it would end its ability to restrict “dredge-and-fill” mining permits issued by the Corps of Engineers. The EPA would no longer be able to step in if it deemed state water quality standards to weak or withdraw its approval for of state water pollution regulatory policies.

Rahall claims he is taking the studies seriously. But his actions in Congress continue to tell a different story. In response to a guidance document on water quality standards and surface mining released by the EPA last week, Rahall again took the chance to criticize the agency, saying it had “appointed itself judge, jury and executioner” and “deemed itself Almighty God.”

In one of the biggest strategic blunders of his presidency, Obama has bought into the erroneous Republican frame that the biggest problem facing this country is our national debt.  Worse, he has chosen to be a salesman for a centrist agenda of austerity, not the progressive one of investment.

In the past few weeks, Obama has used the presidential bully pulpit to its fully capacity for the first time since taking office.  Sadly, he’s chosen to sell the public on the nonsensical notion that biggest short-term and long-term threat facing the nation is the national debt and over-spending.

Gone is any discussion of the things the public cares most about right now — creating jobs and restoring our manufacturing base, as a new poll makes clear (see figure).  Gone is any discussion of the progressive policies Obama himself used to message on, albeit halfheartedly — an investment agenda, energy security, competing with China.  Gone is this lofty rhetoric from a long, long time ago (well, 2010, actually):  “The nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

I  doubt most climate hawks and progressives outside of the DC Beltway fully appreciate what the emerging debt deal would likely mean for energy and environmental spending over the next decade.  As E&E News (subs. req’d) bluntly explains this morning:

As the capital’s debt-limit drama enters its final act today, the last two solutions standing — one Democratic, one GOP — would slash long-term energy and environmental spending to a degree comparable with the fiscally austere deal struck to avert a springtime federal shutdown.

The bipartisan alignment on knifing what is likely to be billions of dollars from U.S. EPA and the Energy and Interior departments’ budgets over the next 10 years is drawing little notice as the debt-limit talks hurtle toward a hectic climax marked by bitter intra-party tensions….

Both party leaders’ spending caps would represent a cut of more than $40 billion next year relative to the CBO baseline set by the government funding deal for 2011 that averted a shutdown in April. By 2021, CBO estimated, the Reid approach would mean a $125 billion cut below the shutdown-deal baseline, or $6 billion more in cuts than Boehner’s plan.

Those long-term cuts refer to the panoply of domestic agency spending, from EPA air-pollution monitoring to DOE efficiency grants to many other non-energy or environmental programs. But on a more granular level, the 16 percent slice taken from EPA’s budget in the April shutdown deal could well be the shape of things to come for most non-defense federal programs, unless the final debt pact takes a turn toward the left.

I think it is even worse than that for a couple of reasons.

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In an effort to gut decades-old successful environmental regulations, House Republicans have added riders to a funding bill for the Environmental Protection Agency that would roll back the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. There are over 40 anti-environment/anti-public health provisions in the funding bill that would compromise the important progress made in the U.S. to improve air and water quality.

The American Lung Association is hitting back this week with a nation-wide television campaign urging Congress not to support policy that, according to Senator Harry Reid, would bring America back to “the robber-baron era where there were no controls on pollution from power plants, oil refineries and factories.”

Watch it:

Florida Tea Party members believe that federal efforts to protect manatees from extinction are part of a United Nations conspiracy to place manatee over man. Freshman Rep. Rich Nugent (R-FL) is now standing up for the Tea Partiers against the feared manatee overlords, offering an amendment to the FY 2012 Interior and Environment appropriations bill (HR 2584) that would block the creation of a manatee refuge in Citrus County:

U.S. Rep. Rich Nugent is asking Congress to withhold funding for a proposed manatee-protection rule involving Crystal River and King’s Bay, effectively stopping the rule before it starts.

The planned refuge would place speed limits on motor boats, to protect the nearly extinct species of herbivorous, aquatic mammals from maiming, disfigurement, and death.

Other crazed amendments offered to the FY 2012 Interior and Environment appropriations bill:

Scott (R-GA): None of the funds for climate change research.

Fahrenthold (R-TX): None of the funds to interfere with States’ efforts to regulate hydraulic fracturing.

Blackburn (R-TN): Prohibits the appropriated agencies from buying compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Blackburn (R-TN): Bar funding for the SunWise Program, an EPA program to teach parents, teachers, and children about what they should do to protect kids from overexposure to the sun.

Fleming (R-LA): Eliminate funding for the Energy Star program.

Flores (R-TX): None of the funds to enforce section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 to prohibit federal purchases of high-carbon fuels.

Lankford (R-OK): None of the funds for the President’s Council on Environmental Quality.

King (R-IA): None of the funds to enforce the Oil Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure Program.

Stivers (R-OH): None of the funds to regulate stationary source greenhouse gases for two years.

Order 1000 Addresses Hurdles in Planning Processes and Cost Allocation

The Mountaineer Wind Energy Center on Backbone Mountain near Thomas, West Virginia, is shown above. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s new Order Number 1000 will fundamentally improve the way new transmission lines are planned and paid for, resulting in thousands of miles of new lines that will bring renewable energy to your house.  AP Photo.

– Richard W. Caperton

It takes a unique person to fully understand all 620 pages of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s new Order Number 1000, “Final Rule on Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation by Transmission Owning and Operating Public Utilities.” Most likely that person is a very well-compensated lawyer.  Everyone else only needs to understand that this is likely the most progressive clean energy action the federal government will take this year. Order 1000 will fundamentally improve the way new transmission lines are planned and paid for, resulting in thousands of miles of new lines that will bring renewable energy to your house.

First, some background on why new transmission lines are important. Renewable energy companies face a challenge that’s universal to businesses that create a product: getting the product from the production site to the customer. Some businesses are able to address this challenge by locating their production site near existing transportation resources. A small factory, for example, can be placed next to a railroad spur or near a highway exit. Other businesses are constrained by location but are served by infrastructure that’s been built over the last century. Indeed, grain farmers in the Great Plains can access an extremely well-developed railroad system.

Renewable energy, though, is unique. You can only build wind farms where the wind blows and solar arrays where the sun shines, but this isn’t necessarily where transmission lines exist. So to power our country with renewable energy, we’ll need to build new transmission lines to get that power to market.

FERC’s new rule does two big things that will lead to new transmission lines: It strengthens regional planning processes and clarifies rules on who will pay for new lines—so-called “cost allocation.”

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A round-up of climate and energy news. Please post other stories below.

Montana spill tally: Oil on about 60% of shoreline

Teams tallying damage from an Exxon Mobil Corp. oil spill into the Yellowstone River have found contamination along roughly 60 percent of shoreline that’s been inspected downstream from the pipeline break, Montana’s chief environmental regulator said.

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The U.S. Coast Guard’s top official says the organization is not prepared for a major oil spill in the Arctic, where oil companies are pushing to Congress and regulatory agencies to allow for more offshore drilling.

In a Senate hearing yesterday on Arctic drilling, USCG Admiral Robert Papp countered the oil industry’s claims that it would be prepared for an oil spill, saying:

“If this were to happen off the North Slope of Alaska, we’d have nothing.  We’re starting from ground zero today….  We have zero to operate with at present.”

By comparison, the coast guard says it had adequate resources to deal with last year’s spill by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Even with the resources for a rapid response, the Macondo well still managed to leak five million barrels of oil over 86 days:

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Central Russia is under its second year of extreme heat, with temperatures above 30°C (86°F) for an entire month. “The central city of Volgograd was Russia’s hottest city with temperatures hovering above 40° Celsius (104 F) for the past few days, hotter than Cairo, Tashkent, Tehran and New Delhi.” The extreme heat is causing the former permafrost tundra to smolder and burn. Across Russia, “the emergencies ministry used 18 planes and 38 helicopters in an effort to douse a total of 220 wildfires, including 28 major blazes covering nearly 12,000 hectares,” a Moscow-based spokeswoman told AFP. “A major fire started in the southern Rostov region on Tuesday causing two days of explosions of World War II-era shells embedded in a local forest.” However, Russian officials may be downplaying the true extent of the fires, Radio Free Europe reports:

Already, fires are ravaging the Far East region of Yakutia, where Nikolai Shmatkov of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) says satellite images show officials are again underreporting their extent.

“Greenpeace estimates 4 million hectares are burning in Yakutia,” he says, “but the official figures show only 1 million hectares on fire in the entire country.”

Fires are also raging in the northern Arkhangelsk region and in peat bogs surrounding Moscow. Greenpeace’s Kuksin, who spoke from a blaze outside Moscow where he is organizing volunteer firefighters, says the government is increasing the danger by denying the fires. “It’s trying to hide the problem instead of solving it,” he says, “and that leads to human casualties.”

The catastrophic rise in wildfires as Russia heats up from greenhouse pollution threatens the planet with feedback loops that accelerate global warming.

by Raj Salhotra

Summer is filled with bad sequels; but this summer’s political theater, in which Republican politicians claim that environmental regulations will destroy the country, is the worst of all.

At a Politico event yesterday on energy issues in the 2012 election, Center for American Progress Distinguished Senior Fellow Carol Browner gave her review:

“I’ve seen this movie before in 1995, starring Newt Gingrich. […] We don’t have to choose, we can have both. They are linked — a strong economy helps a clean environment; a clean environment drives us toward a strong economy.”

The event offered a spirited discussion on the role of energy and environmental issues in the upcoming presidential election. Participants included Senator John Barrasso, Representative Diane DeGette, Representative Doc Hastings, former head of the EPA Carol Browner, and former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

Here’s how the debate, which will likely mirror the discussion of the issues in 2012, played out: Read more

Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

Tropical Storm Don, forming in the Gulf of Mexico, is expected to head toward Texas, disrupting oil production but bringing some relief from the killer drought. [ThirdAge]

The Obama administration and major auto manufacturers have reached a deal to raise fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks between 2017 and 2025 to 54.5 MPG, resolving a contentious negotiation over how to cut vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions. [Washington Post]

American Petroleum Institute officials are slated to meet Thursday morning with White House staff to take issue with the Environmental Protection Agency’s cost-benefit analysis of its pending ozone rules. [E2]

Thunderstorms packing heavy rains left some roadways under water, prompted flash flood warnings across much of southern Michigan and knocked out power to more than 21,000 homes and businesses. [AP]

“Although private industry may assert they are adequately prepared for a response to a spill, we must determine what response capability our Coast Guard and nation needs to have so we can mount an adequate response as exploration advances towards production” of oil in the Arctic Ocean, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Robert Papp testified before Congress. [UPI]

The massive heat wave that baked half the country in triple digit heat indexes last week have caused as many as 64 deaths in 15 states. [Examiner]

A new statewide survey of environment issues conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California found more residents favor climate change policy, want to cut greenhouse gas emissions and believe they are already experiencing the effects of global warming. [LA Times]

British farmers are experimenting with crops such as olives and nectarines which have traditionally been imported from southern Europe while the first British tea plantation has opened with a changing climate set to transform the nation’s countryside. [Reuters]

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) floated legislation Wednesday that would formally integrate consideration of climate change into U.S. foreign policy on sustainable development and poverty reduction. [E2]

More oil-company earnings figures out today — the latest from Shell and Exxon.

Exxon reported a whopping $10.7 billion in profits, an increase of 41% from the same period last year. Overall, Exxon has earned over $20 billion in profits in just the first six months of the year. Not surprisingly, ExxonMobil is also one of the most politically engaged of the top five oil companies. A few key facts:

• Exxon is the top oil and gas contributor in 2011, giving over $384,000 already this year, with 95 percent of the contributions going to Republicans.
• Exxon has spent over $3 million on lobbying this year and has increased their lobbying expenditures by at least 25 percent from the first quarter to the second.
• ExxonMobil spent $5.7 billion—more than half of its first-quarter profit—to buy 69 million shares of stock in order to “reduce shares outstanding.”
• Despite ranking in the top of the Fortune 500 list of company profits, ExxonMobil, along with other oil companies, continues to receive billions of dollars in tax breaks paid for by taxpayers.
• Exxon pays a lower effective tax rate than the average American. In the years spanning 2008 to 2010, Exxon paid an effective rate of 17.6 percent, nearly 16 percent below the average individual federal tax rate.
• ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson ranked in as one of the highest paid CEOs in 2010, earning over $21 million in direct compensation.

ExxonMobil is also well known for giving millions of dollars to climate deniers and industry front groups with the goal of creating doubt about global warming, attacking the integrity of climate science and scientists, and promoting a pro-corporate polluter agenda.

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