California Republican Darrell Issa isn’t interested in energy security, reducing pollution, helping consumers cuts costs or preparing the nation for peak oil. The same day that the Obama administration announced an historic fuel efficiency standard that will reduce oil dependency by billions of gallons, save consumers $1.7 trillion dollars in fuel costs, and stimulate tens of thousands of jobs, Issa said last Friday he wants an investigation into the negotiations.

Just as they did after the administration established new fuel standards in 2009, Republicans are questioning the integrity of the negotiations, according to The Hill:

Issa sent out letters to executives of the country’s major automakers Friday alerting them to the investigation and requesting that they keep all documents related to meetings with administration officials on the standards.

In the letters, which were obtained by The Hill, Issa says the administration’s efforts to negotiate the fuel economy standards “raise serious concerns.” The new rules, which were announced Friday by President Obama, will also limit consumer choice, Issa says.

“I am concerned about the agreements lack of transparency, the failure to conduct an open rulemaking process, as well as the potential for vehicle cost increases on consumers, and negative impact on American jobs,” the letters say.

Obama reportedly talked automakers up from 40 mpg to 54.5 mpg by 2025 – presumably by throwing in a “re-opener” that will allow manufacturers to re-negotiate standards after 2021. Many of the negotiations took place behind closed doors in the days leading up to the announcement.

As Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Issa has the authority to lead such inquiries.

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Last night, President Obama claimed his debt ceiling deal as lifting the “cloud of uncertainty that hangs over our economy.” While he expresses concern for the political weather, the actual weather — poisoned by carbon pollution — is growing more devastating. The drastic cuts in federal investment that are requirements of the debt deal will leave the nation in deadly peril from our superheated climate, just as full mobilization is needed.

Last week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) brought attention to the deadly scourge of severe weather fueled by climate change, and the federal government’s troubling lack of readiness. In an appropriations subcommittee hearing on budgeting for federal disaster assistance attended only by himself — Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) appeared only to give an opening statement, but left without asking witnesses questions — Durbin interviewed top climate scientist Donald Wuebles, NOAA deputy administrator Dr. Kathryn Sullivan, and representatives from the Small Business Administration and the private re-insurance industry. Durbin discussed the extraordinary damage to the nation from climate disasters in the first seven months of 2011, before asking whether the federal government is actually ready:

We’ve seen droughts in Texas, wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico, flooding in Tennessee, and according to Sen. Moran, both in his state, drought and flooding. Today, there are excessive heat warnings in twenty communities throughout Kansas, Sen. Moran’s home state, and flood warnings along the Missouri River. In 2011, almost $28 billion in damages have already been caused by catastrophic events, and the hurricane season is just starting. The economic impact of severe weather events is only projected to grow in future years as the frequency and intensity of weather events continues to grow.

The weather is getting worse and more violent. Catastrophic, in fact. The federal government needs to do more to be ready to protect federal assets and provide disaster assistance on an increasing frequency. Are we ready?

Watch it:

“I’m not sure the federal government is thinking ahead when it comes to our preparedness for disasters,” Durbin continued, with extreme understatement. Dr. Wuebles explained that because oceans can store vast amounts of heat, the changes in climate we are now seeing are the result of the pollution added twenty years ago — which means that failure to act now will doom future generations to an unimaginably deadly world.

“We’ve stopped talking about this on Capitol Hill,” Durbin concluded. “We’ve decided that the debate over global warming is too contentious. I think it’s a big mistake.”

The perfect antidote to the debt deal is some cartoons by Joe Mohr aka Mean Joe Green:

For  background on that cartoon see “Study: Hottest Decade on Record Would Have Been Even Hotter But for Chinese Coal Plant Sulfur Pollution” and “Fox News Confuses Sulfur Pollution with Greenhouse Gases.”

Here’s some more Mohr, starting with “The Green Republican!”

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• “At some point, if you want to be a leader then you gotta lead” — President Obama, 7-22-2011
• “No way.  Not gonna happen.  Excuse me, NEVER!” — Tea Party or my 4-year-old daughter (various times)

If we judge by outcomes, then the Tea Party is now leading this country.  The fact that it is leading us under-water is apparently of less interest to the president then his various governance “victories.”

If you look up Pyrrhic Victory in the dictionary, there is a picture of Obama.

We not only have no policy to prevent catastrophic climate change, our “leaders” have stopped talking about the problem and the House is trying to stop anyone from even planning for it.

And what is our economic “policy” in the uber-slow recovery from the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression?  Under Obama’s “leadership,” we have become so obsessed with the national debt that we are actually willing to 1) undermine near-term growth by a spending-cuts-only debt-reduction strategy and 2) undermine long-term growth by enshrining caps on crucial investment programs, including clean energy.

The NY Times story on the deal opens:

The nation’s political leaders agreed on Sunday to spend and invest less money in the American economy, a step that economists said risks the reversal of a faltering recovery, in the hope of improving the nation’s long-term prosperity.

Ezra Klein thinks that reads more like “an Onion piece” than a Times story.  The whole saga reads like an Onion piece.

There is now no longer any question that the single most effective messaging strategy in US politics is precisely the same as the strategy practiced those who have always been the most effective at getting what they want — young children.  Just say what you want over and over and over again and give in to no demand or compromise.  And if you don’t get what you want, escalate!

Of course, at home, my daughter’s strategy can be countered with a number of viable alternatives.  I find distraction still works, but one can simply ignore her if nothing else works.  Ah, but if she pulls the stunt in a nice restaurant in the middle of the meal — or, say, if she simply refuses to extend the debt ceiling until you promise  to give her cupcakes every day for the rest of her life….  But wait, why did you allow her to  have a say in the debt ceiling in the first place?  What were you thinking?

Hmm.  That extended metaphor spun out of control, but I confess that it’s hard to think straight when I try to ponder just what Obama is thinking.  So I won’t.

Instead, here’s Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the Nation, in her WashPost column on “the spectacle of how much Tea Party Republicans will be able to extort for agreeing not to blow up the economy”:

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Two climate activists perched in trees next to a strip mine atop Coal River Mountain in West Virginia have shut down operations for nearly two weeks now. Sunday marked the 12th day that protesters Becks Kolins and Catherine-Ann MacDougal have been camping in trees 80 feet above the ground on the Bee Tree permit, Alpha Natural Resources’ only active strip mining permit on Coal River Mountain. The tree sit is the longest one in West Virginia history, according to the RAMPS campaign, and “has successfully halted blasting on portions of the site, aside from a small blast last Friday afternoon.” Kolins and MacDougal are part of a nationwide movement of people willing to engage in civil disobedience to stop the immoral destruction of their future by the fossil fuel industry, the campaign — an affiliate of Peaceful Uprising — says:

The sitters expressed solidarity with Tim DeChristopher, a West Virginia native who was sentenced Tuesday to two years in federal prison for peacefully disrupting an illegitimate oil and gas auction and saving tens of thousands of acres of public land from oil and gas exploitation.Prior to his sentencing, DeChristopher expressed his strong support for the tree sitters. From the trees, Becks wrote, “Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years. Please support him and all those who suffer to bring justice to us all.”

“Until this past Wednesday, trucks were still hauling coal that had previously been extracted and stockpiled; now, even this work has ceased,” the campaign reports. Local resident Junior Walk was arrested for supporting the tree sitters along with Elias Schewel on the first day of the protest. Both were released on bail that evening.

Citizen activism may be the only protection the mountains have against the mountaintop removal mining, which is giving local communities cancer and birth defects. West Virginia’s politicians are working with Tea Party Republicans to overturn Environmental Protection Agency efforts to enforce Clean Water Act rules against the pollution caused by blowing up mountains.

On Aug. 20, several weeks of protest will begin in front of the White House to challenge President Obama to prevent the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

“We thank the multitude of people across the country that have expressed their unwavering support for the tree sitters,” the RAMPS campaign wrote in an email update on Saturday. “Please be assured that these words of encouragement are being passed on to the young people in the trees, and will be ever more necessary with each passing day they spend sitting and sweating in the muggy West Virginia heat.”

The RAMPS campaign, reporting on the tree sit on Twitter at @RAMPSWV, is seeking contributions and comments that oppose the renewal of the Bee Tree mining permit, acquired by Alpha when they took over Massey Energy.

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, Colorado.

Republicans’ anti-environment record has at least one prominent GOP official fearful that his party’s rhetoric could turn off swing voters, especially as the 2012 election approaches.

In an interview with ThinkProgress, former Colorado GOP chair Dick Wadhams, who came to notoriety after guiding now-Sen. John Thune (R-SD) to a narrow victory over then-Majority Leader Sen. Tom Daschle in 2004, worried that his party risked alienating swing voters on environmental issues. “We cannot come across as anti-environment,” Wadhams declared. “I think if our language gets kind of intemperate, it could come across that way”:

KEYES: Do you think a lot of the GOP efforts like, for instance, Newt Gingrich has been out front calling to dismantle the EPA, do you think that’s going to help with swing voters in Colorado?

WADHAMS: I do think that we can make a case that the federal government and the EPA have overreached. It depends on the tone that we use. We cannot come across as anti-environment. What we have to do is come across as against the heavy hand of the federal government and in favor of reasonable environmental regulations and taxes. And so I think it’s all in the matter of how we do it.

KEYES: Are you worried though that some of the efforts and rhetoric might be construed as anti-environment?

WADHAMS: I think if our language gets kind of intemperate, it could come across that way. And so I think we need to be careful about that.

Though Wadhams feared the consequences of Republicans’ anti-environment reputation, their policies have been precisely that. Consider the records of the top GOP presidential hopefuls:

- Newt Gingrich has called for scrapping the Environmental Protection Agency. Numerous congressmen are ready to take up Gingrich’s call if Republicans win control in 2012.

- Michele Bachmann hinted that she would also support dismantling the EPA, declaring in a debate that she wanted to “repeal” the “job-killing” agency’s regulations.

- Tim Pawlenty, at one time a cap-and-trade supporter because he understood the threat of climate change, has since flip-flopped on the issue. He now denies the reality of climate change, calls cap-and-trade a “disaster,” and refers to his previous position a “clunker.”

- In June, Mitt Romney told New Hampshire voters that it was important to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, only to backtrack in the face of conservative pressure and declare, “I don’t think carbon is a pollutant.”

- Only Jon Huntsman has shown willingness to tackle climate change, declaring in a speech this week, “I’m not ashamed to be a conservationist. I also believe that science should be driving our discussions on climate change.”

Unless Republicans quickly change their positions on protecting the environment, Wadhams’ hope for his party to avoid being labeled “anti-environment” will be in vain.

Billionaire ‘philanthropist’ Warren Buffett Owns the Railroad Behind the Scheme to Ship Massive Amounts of Montana Coal to the Biggest Greenhouse-Gas Emitter on the Planet

This remarkable story was originally published in the Missoula Independent and was re-printed with permission from the author.

by Matthew Frank, the Missoula Independent

With the heavy spring rains, the Otter Creek Valley, in southeastern Montana, glows green in early July, dotted with sage and bright patches of yellow clover and wild mustard. Ranchland rises gently toward rugged hills and buttes. Otter Creek twists a narrow channel through the middle, reflecting clouds. Otter Creek Road follows the creek. Few pickups pass between the unincorporated community of Otter to the south and the one-gas-station town of Ashland to the north.

A month before and about 6,000 miles away, in Beijing, a city of 20 million, where enveloping smog obscures the surrounding mountains, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer spoke of this Montana valley—or, rather, what’s beneath it. The governor of the state with the greatest coal reserves keynoted a coal conference sponsored by Peabody Energy, the largest private coal company in the world, with massive operations in northeast Wyoming, just south of Otter. Schweitzer and coal companies such as Peabody see economic opportunity in exporting coal to China and other energy-hungry Asian markets. More than a billion tons of coal beneath the Otter Creek Valley could be shipped and burned there.

Schweitzer addressed a crowd of researchers and coal company reps at the coal gasification conference at the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel. “I talked a little bit about energy security in the U.S. and most of the countries that were represented there, and how we share a concern,” Schweitzer told me, speaking recently in his office in Helena. “We’ve become so dependent on oil from just a few unstable regimes, and the sooner we get to a new energy source that’s cleaner, greener, more sustainable, it’s better for everybody. Coal can have a future if we have a solution to CO2″—that is, a way to burn coal and contain the greenhouse gas—”or it doesn’t have a future if we don’t.”

But Arch Coal—and every other coal company in the business of making money—isn’t waiting for a solution. Arch, the second-largest U.S. coal producer, has paid about $160 million to lease 18,000 Otter Creek acres containing 1.4 billion tons of coal from the state of Montana and Great Northern Properties.

Meanwhile, Arch is arranging a way to ship the coal to Asia. On July 1, Arch, Warren Buffet’s BNSF Railway, and billionaire Forrest E. Mars Jr. purchased the Tongue River Railroad Company, which holds a valuable federal permit to build a 121-mile rail link between Miles City and Decker, with a spur connecting to the Otter Creek tracts, at an estimated cost of $550 million.

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

Solar firms busier as demand increases

The trees that cover Ruppert Cos.’ 600-acre nursery in Laytonsville now share a small parcel of land with 988 deep metallic blue solar panels that will supply power to the landscaper’s five-building headquarters.

The company began construction on a new, eco-conscious campus three years ago and the $1 million solar field, a third of which is financed by a federal tax credit, promises to erase its $35,000 annual electric bill.

The company exemplifies what industry observers have described as an increase in the number of business and homeowners who have embraced solar energy as the price of technology comes down and installers reform their business models to allay steep up-front costs.

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by Melanie Hart

The global aviation community has been trying to establish some sort of global aviation emission reduction system through the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, since 1997. Unfortunately, that process has been a complete failure.

After many years of proactive engagement in ICAO, the Europeans decided to take the lead by incorporating aviation emissions into their own cap-and-trade system and extending the requirements to cover third-party countries. Starting January 2012, the commission will monitor and cap carbon emissions for all flights that touch down in European territory. The cap will decrease over time to encourage efficiency improvements. If airlines exceed the cap, they must purchase allowances from EU member states or other airlines to cover the excess.

U.S. airlines are seeking an exemption to the European system by arguing that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, or ETS, violates the Chicago Convention, which grants individual countries “complete and exclusive sovereignty” over their own domestic airspace, and the U.S.-EU Open Skies Agreement, which allows U.S. and European airlines to operate transatlantic flights from any U.S. airport to any European airport and vice versa.

The Air Transport Association of America, United Continental Holdings, and American Airlines have filed a lawsuit to challenge the third-party country extension plan on those grounds, and that suit has now been referred to the European Court of Justice. The U.S. House transportation committee is backing up the ATA lawsuit with a new bill proposal—the ‘‘European Union Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act of 2011’’—that would make it illegal for U.S. airlines to comply with the EU ETS requirements.

China is also making waves about the third-party country emissions requirement, and China and the United States are undoubtedly watching one another to see if they can divide the Europeans on this issue.

The Chinese claim that they are the biggest victims in the EU cap-and-trade scheme because the EU measures carbon emissions from the point of departure. If Chinese airlines cannot meet Europe’s aviation emission reduction targets, China’s geographical location and longer flight paths will result in higher fees. In addition, since China’s civil aviation industry is still growing, those fees will most likely increase over time. According to the Chinese Air Transport Association, or CATA, Chinese airlines could wind up paying the Europeans $122 million in carbon allowance fees for 2012 and around $456 million annually by 2020.

Unlike the United States, however, the Chinese are making an effort to meet the Europeans halfway. And our refusal to offer any sort of positive engagement is giving China added bargaining power on aviation emissions while eroding U.S. leadership on global climate change.

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In June, ThinkProgress blew the lid off the “Iowa Energy Forum,” a recently formed organization designed to appear as a bona fide citizens’ group. In fact, the Forum is part of the oil lobby’s new effort to shape the Republican primary with phony grassroots events and planted questions among caucus-goers about oil industry priorities.

Now, Des Moines Register reporter Jennifer Jacobs reports that the Iowa Energy Forum is planning to co-opt a series of Republican primary events in Iowa. The Forum — funded by the American Petroleum Institute, a lobbying group representing Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Saudi Refining Inc (a subsidiary of the Saudi state oil company), Chevron, and other oil giants — is sponsoring a large presence at the Iowa Straw Poll, as well as conservative religious events like the Iowa Faith and Freedom conference later this year.

Complicating the oil industry’s astroturf effort, many of the industry lobbyists guiding the Iowa Energy Forum are simultaneously paid consultants for the Tim Pawlenty for president campaign:

The American Petroleum Institute hired political consultants Chuck Larson and Karen Slifka to promote the Iowa Energy Forum message. Larson and Slifka have been paid consultants for Pawlenty and remain volunteer advisers. Contacted separately about how they avoid the appearance that they’re working both sides of the street, Larson and Slifka answered the Register’s questions via email, with similar responses: They consult with legal counsel and comply with federal elections rules. [...]

Slifka negotiated the purchase of tent space for Pawlenty at the straw poll “land auction” last month. She and Larson were paid more than $47,000 last quarter for their work for Pawlenty, campaign disclosure reports show. Pawlenty’s state political action committee, Freedom First, paid their limited liability company, Midwest Political Professionals, about $22,000 in fees and expenses. And his presidential campaign paid them about $25,000.

While working on Pawlenty’s straw poll push, the same lobbyists are setting up an oil industry booth at the straw poll, complete with an air conditioned “igloo” with free rides and oil industry messages. Kent Sorenson, a spokesman for the Rep. Michele Bachmann presidential campaign, blasted the conflict of interest and said Pawlenty has “sunk to desperate and unethical attempts to win the Ames straw poll.” But its not just Pawlenty who is reliant on the oil industry and its political network. The Iowa Republican Party has accepted at least $100,000 from the American Petroleum Institute.

The Ames poll is infamous for being little more than an opportunity for candidates to buy as many tickets as possible, and rig the vote by busing in supporters. But this time around, it’s not just political candidates buying support; the oil industry will have its own caucus of “grassroots” supporters at the event.

As House lawmakers consider spending cuts that would eviscerate energy and environmental programs, a narrowly focused report from the Energy Information Administration is likely to add fuel to the debate over subsidies to renewable energy.

After delaying release the study, which compares 2010 subsidies for fossil and renewable resources in the electricity sector, the EIA sent the document to three members of Congress last Friday.

Climate Progress obtained a copy of the report from the Checks and Balances Project before it was publicly released.

Although sources close to the EIA’s decision to delay the report last week said there were internal concerns about “quality assurance” and providing a “full picture” of the subsidies landscape, the agency has decided to go forward with the product anyway.

The report offers up-to-date information on yearly government spending on energy programs; however, its limited scope paints a decidedly skewed picture of the subsidy landscape for energy. The data show that government spending on energy programs has doubled since 2007 from $17.9 billion to $27.2 billion, with renewables in the electricity sector receiving 55% of federal support and generating 10.3 percent of electricity. But the EIA explicitly explains that taking a “snapshot” of yearly subsidies does not tell the whole story:

Focusing on a single year’s data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years across all energy fuels and technologies.

For example, many of the expenditures for renewable energy under the loan guarantee program were for facilities that are still being developed and not currently generating electricity. Also, the Treasury Grant program created in place of tax credits ended up front-loading expenditures, thus leading to “much higher overall electricity subsidy estimates for renewables in FY 2010.”

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