A recent EPA study estimated that just one law — the Clean Air Act — prevented 230,000 deaths, 3.2 million lost school days, and 13 million lost work days a year in 2010. The benefits of this act, including savings in medical expenses and increased worker productivity, are 30 times greater than its cost of implementation, and the benefits of regulation, more generally, also have been shown to exceed costs [PDF].

The right-wing noise machine has mastered the art of repeating a few key nonsensical messages over and over again until some people actually believe them.  It has much in common with the sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, who repeat the pigs’ perversion of the original principles:  “Four legs good, two legs better!” or “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

And so in the Orwellian world of the right-wing, the word “rich” is out and “job creators” is in.  There simply are no more rich people in the Tea Party fantasyland.  Of course, no jobs are being created, and the rich are simply sitting on their billions, accumulating a staggeringly disproportionate amount of the wealth to shame the Gilded Age — the richest “400 people have more wealth than half of the more than 100 million U.S. households,” Politifact was grudgingly forced to agree that Michael Moore’s statement was correct.  So one would have to be a sheep to keep calling them job creators.

Oh, but wait, say the sheep,  the reason the job creators aren’t creating jobs is because of the “job-destroying EPA,” a phrase repeated as often as “job creator” is.  In a sane world — I know, I know, another counterfactual, but bear with me — everyone would call it the “life-saving EPA.”  But that would require a president with coherent principles and messaging skills to lead the way, as opposed to one who caved on the life-saving ozone rule — even though a National Bureau of Economic Research study found “robust evidence that ozone levels well below federal air quality standards have a significant impact on productivity:  a 10 ppb decrease in ozone concentrations increases worker productivity by 4.2 percent.”

In the interest of continuing to set the record straight, what follows is a post by Elizabeth A. Stanton, a senior economist with the Stockholm Environment Institute-U.S. Center, via TripleCrisis (and Grist).

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Boston Globe reporter Donovan Slack reports today that Mitt Romney’s top energy advisor also works for a lobbying firm that counts coal giant Peabody Energy as a top client.

Former Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) has emerged as a key player in Romney’s policy circle, and is featured in Romney’s jobs plan writing about the importance of the coal industry. As Slack reports, Talent simultaneously maintains a lucrative career at a firm that represents Peabody, one of the largest coal companies in the world:

What the former Missouri senator’s essay does not mention is that the Washington lobbying and communications firm he leads as co-chairman, Mercury Public Affairs, counts among its clients Peabody Energy, a St. Louis-based company that is one the largest coal producers in the world.

Peabody Energy has paid Talent’s firm an average of $125,000 every year for the past five years to help represent its interests in Washington. The energy company also retains other firms, spending an average of $2 million each year on lobbying, records show.

As ThinkProgress Green’s Brad Johnson noted back in May, Romney has sought energy advice from other polluter lobbyists. One of them, Jeffrey Holmstead, has worked as a registered lobbyist for Duke Energy, Southern Company, and other fossil fuel giants.

Romney’s current energy policy includes polluter friendly ideas like “amending the Clean Air Act to exclude regulation of carbon and opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil production.”

A Texas power company is suing the Environmental Protection Agency to block a clean-air rule that it claims will force it to shut down decades-old power plants and close coal mines, killing 500 jobs. EFH Luminant is fighting the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which calls for substantial reductions in smog and acid rain pollution by Texas sources beginning in January 2012:

Dallas-based Luminant has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to remove Texas from a new Environmental Protection rule due to go into effect early next year that the company says will force it to idle two power plants and end mining operations at three lignite mines, including one in Central Texas.

In reality, the two units being idled — Monticello 1 & 2 — were part of a bad deal made by Luminant in 2007. Plummeting natural gas prices and increased electricity production from wind have made the coal plants “almost worthless.” The plants purchased in 2007, including the Monticello units, are now worth about $1 billion but carry $10 billion in debt.

As the population of Texas booms and its temperatures rise, the threat from air pollutants like NO2 and SO2 grows. Millions of Texans — especially children and senior citizens — are at risk from Luminant’s outdated coal plants. The level of pollution from the units violated the Clean Air Act well before the new rule was slated to go into effect. A 2009 State of the Market analysis by ERCOT, the Texas electric commission, found that coal power was becoming a “marginal fuel” in the region:

As significant additional wind, coal and potentially nuclear resources are added to the ERCOT region and transmission constraints that serve to limit existing wind production are alleviated, it is likely that the frequency of coal as the marginal fuel will increase in the coming years.

A 2010 Brattle Group analysis similarly found that the coal plants cannot compete financially with natural gas power.

EFH/Luminant is attempting to make the Environmental Protection Agency the scapegoat for consequences of their poor business decisions. They want people to believe that Americans have to choose between their health and their jobs, but it’s just a crass shifting of blame.

CNN Caption:  “Melting ice is visible near Greenland’s Ilulissat glacier, one of the areas seeing the effects of global warming in the Arctic.”

University of Bremen physicists reported Saturday that Arctic sea ice reached its lowest extent measured since satellite observations began three decades ago, as we reported yesterday.  Climate Progress had previously reported on the record low volume, too (see “The Arctic death spiral continues“).

So why another story?  Well, first, it’s always worth celebrating a major US media outlet actually ascribing something happening now to global warming without any caveats.  So kudos to CNN, even if it is just their news blog.

Second, kudos to University of Bremen physicists for clearly explaining in their report — “Arctic sea ice extent small as never before” (love that translation) — why this is happening and what it means:

Alerting message from the Arctic: The extent the the Arctic sea ice has reached on Sep. 8 with 4.240 million km2 a new historic minimum….  It seems to be clear that this is a further consequence of the man-made global warming with global consequences. Directly, the livehood of small animals, algae, fishes and mammals like polar bears and seals is more and more reduced.

This is indeed a message from the Arctic.  But is anyone paying attention?

Climatologists and cryo-scientists are.  And they are stunned.  Wales Online reported last week that Dr. Alun Hubbard at Aberystwyth University’s Centre for Glaciology came back from the Petermann Glacier in north-west Greenland documenting stunning changes in just the past two years:

“Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the break-up, which rendered me speechless.  It was just incredible to see. This glacier is huge, 20km across, 1,000m high.  It’s like looking into the Grand Canyon full of ice and coming back two years later to find it’s full of water.”

Here are the gob-smacking before and after photos:
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By Michael Conathan

Last week, President Barack Obama delivered an address to Congress laying out his plan for job creation in America. In the most recent version of this column, I did the same, at least for the fishing industry. Though admittedly my work lacked some of the pomp and circumstance of a joint address to Congress, it suggests one key to fishing jobs is greater investment in fisheries science, which would reduce the uncertainty forcing regulators to keep catch limits low, thereby allowing fishermen to catch more fish. That’s a classic supply-side solution. But there’s another side to that equation as well: greater demand.

American consumers are comfortable enough with the concept of supply and demand that Big Oil’s backers can use it as false logic to make a case for increased offshore oil and gas drilling. If we produce more oil, the argument goes, we will increase supply, and prices will come down. Never mind that oil is an internationally traded commodity, the price of which is heavily influenced by financial speculators and an international cartel over which American consumers have exactly zero influence. Also never mind that the nonpartisan Energy Information Association has declared unequivocally that increasing drilling will have no impact on gasoline prices.

Fair play in that it’s tough to know which is harder to understand: macroeconomics or ecosystem-based management and fisheries sustainability. Theories of how to get our country’s financial house in order and how to buy a guilt-free filet may occur on slightly different levels, but at their core, they are equally complex.

Fortunately, when it comes to fish, there’s a simple answer that will help spur the economy and lead to more sustainable dining. It’ll be better for your health, too. Put down your seafood wallet card for a minute and pay attention. Here it comes, in two words. Ready?

BUY AMERICAN.

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by Brad Johnson, in a Think Progress Green cross-post

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), the top Koch Industries man in Congress, is continuing his assault on the Environmental Protection Agency and its mission to protect the public welfare from toxic polluters. Pompeo has introduced legislation (HR 2876) to kill the Environmental Justice Eco-Ambassador Program, a small graduate student internship program that deals with the connections between economic disparities, discrimination, and environmental health. According to Pompeo, the program is part of the Obama administration’s plot to “indoctrinate” students “to act as tools of this Administration’s radical policies“:

At a time when millions of Americans cannot find work and are saddled with record deficits and crippling environmental regulations, spending $6,000 of taxpayer money per student to act as tools of this Administration’s radical policies is clearly not acceptable — nor is it ever the role of the federal government to indoctrinate.

“The requirements outlined the EPA’s stated desire to recruit and hire, at taxpayer expense, only those college students who are ideologically in line with the Obama Administration’s radical environmental policies,” Pompeo claims.

But the “radical” requirements are simply as follows:

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With solar module prices falling closer to the $1 a watt threshold, many manufacturers are struggling to keep their heads above water. But project developers are doing quite swimmingly.

The continued decreases in panel prices are causing a boom in commercial-scale development throughout the U.S. According to analysis from Solarbuzz, the non-residential project pipeline has increased from 17,000 MW to 24,000 MW in just two months. Those figures include projects in all stages of development, so it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll get built. But activity is increasing at an very rapid rate.

According to a 2010 analysis from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association, the average total installed cost of solar systems in the U.S. fell 20%, due largely to the increasing size of projects and the reductions in module and hardware prices.

China continues its dominance in the global solar PV manufacturing sector. But the two leading suppliers to these non-residential projects are actually American companies — First Solar and SunPower. (However, those companies have moved much of their production to Asia.) The Chinese manufacturer Suntech is the third-largest supplier to these projects.

Even though many of the modules are being sourced from outside the country, these domestic installations provide an enormous value to local economies.  According to a recent trade balance study from GTM Research, around 73% of the total economic value of a solar system stays in the U.S.

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HEAR ATHLETES TALK CLIMATE CHANGE ON CAPITOL HILL

Please join us in Washington DC next Wednesday night, 9/14 for this unique event with Jeremy Jones, Gretchen Bleiler, Chris Davenport and Auden Schendler. Open to the public!

I will be emceeing this event at the Capitol Wednesday.  I lived in Colorado for 2 years — and skied 70 times! — when I worked with Amory Lovins in Old Snowmass.

The latest science says that we are losing our snow mass — and the primary cause is human emissions (see “USGS: Global Warming Drives Rockies Snowpack Loss Unrivaled in 800 Years, Threatens Western Water Supply“).  And no, one snowy winter doesn’t change that, as USGS scientist and co-author Julio Betancourt explained, “The La Niña episode this year is an example with lots of snow in the north while severe drought afflicts the south. But, in the north, this year’s gains are only a small blip on a century-long snowpack decline.”

The lead author, USGS scientist Gregory Pederson, explained, “What we have seen in the last few decades may signal a fundamental shift from precipitation to temperature as the dominant influence on western snowpack.

What’s particularly worrisome is that we’ve seen these dramatic and harmful changes already — and we’ve only warmed about a degree Fahrenheit in the past half century.  The problem for our children and grandchildren is that if we continue anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions pathway, we are on track to warm ten times times that this century (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F ).  At the same time, the Southwest is drying out (see NCAR analysis warns we risk multiple, devastating global droughts even on moderate emissions path).

What follows is a guest post from Auden Schendler, Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company and a board member of Protect Our Winters.

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Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), the top Koch Industries man in Congress, is continuing his assault on the Environmental Protection Agency and its mission to protect the public welfare from toxic polluters. Pompeo has introduced legislation (HR 2876) to kill the Environmental Justice Eco-Ambassador Program, a small graduate student internship program that deals with the connections between economic disparities, discrimination, and environmental health. According to Pompeo, the program is part of the Obama administration’s plot to “indoctrinate” students “to act as tools of this Administration’s radical policies“:

At a time when millions of Americans cannot find work and are saddled with record deficits and crippling environmental regulations, spending $6,000 of taxpayer money per student to act as tools of this Administration’s radical policies is clearly not acceptable — nor is it ever the role of the federal government to indoctrinate.

“The requirements outlined the EPA’s stated desire to recruit and hire, at taxpayer expense, only those college students who are ideologically in line with the Obama Administration’s radical environmental policies,” Pompeo claims.

But the “radical” requirements are simply as follows:

Applicants must have previously been involved and/or have a strong interest in environmental justice, social justice issues and/or environmental health disparities in an academic, volunteer and/ or employment setting.

Quite simply, Pompeo believes that justice is a radical ideology, based on willful ignorance of reality. Children living in poverty have higher exposure to toxic chemicals. Neighborhoods near toxic waste facilities are disproportionately minority and poor. Although this internship is a new program, the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice was established under President George W. Bush, not President Obama.

Although Pompeo claims the federal government should never “indocrinate,” he is a co-sponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which decrees that “human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization.”

Pompeo’s legislation would also forbid EPA spending on student “programs related to the study of greenhouse gas emissions.”

His bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Carter (R-TX), Gregg Harper (R-MS), and David McKinley (R-WV).

The French nuclear safety body says one person died and another was seriously injured Monday in an explosion at the Marcoule nuclear site in southern France.  The Nuclear Safety Authority said there have been no radiation leaks outside of the plant, which treats nuclear waste with little radioactivity.  Three other people were injured in the explosion, the statement said.

This is a breaking story, so details are scarce.  I welcome any links or comments from readers in France.

Here is the official internal translation of the statement from the French nuclear safety authority (ASN):

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

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the planet’s largest reef system and one of the seven natural wonders of the world, but it may not survive the century.

Coral reefs ‘will be gone by end of the century’

Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.

The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be “a new first for mankind – the ‘extinction’ of an entire ecosystem”. Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that “we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years”.

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