“We will not join the others in the denial, in the pretend, in the ‘let business happen as usual,’ because our kids and our grand kids mean more to us than our own greed. And we’re going to get off oil and move forward as quickly as we know how.”

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin got the crowd fired up at 350.org’s “Moving Planet” event at the Vermont Statehouse in Montpelier last week.   Shumlin spoke about the recent impacts of global climate change on Vermont, how Vermont has taken a leadership role in doing something about it, and how the state can do even more to overcome this challenge in the future:

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin at 350.org’s “Moving Planet” event from Ben B on Vimeo.

Vermont was devastated by the 1-in-100 year deluge from Hurricane Irene:

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Republicans and other conservatives have argued that the Solyndra bankruptcy means that all clean-energy investment is disastrous. The Heritage Foundation claimed Solyndra “ends the green jobs myth.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said the bankruptcy is “Exhibit A in the case for why the president’s economic policies have failed.” “A green jobs fueled recovery is a theory, and is yet unproven,” argued Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) at a hearing on Solyndra.

Last week, former president Bill Clinton met with a small group of bloggers on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York City and blasted these right-wing attacks on technology innovation. Asked by ThinkProgress Green about how to fight the corrupting influence of climate deniers, Clinton said that people need to defend the facts about the green economy as vigorously as the opponents of the clean economy promote lies:

They can take nothing like Solyndra and say that proves all green energy is bad. Why? Because those of us on the other side don’t say: Whatever the truth is, here’s the mega truth. We can’t burn up the planet. We’ve got to find an economically sustainable way to save it. Green energy jobs have grown at twice the rate of overall economy jobs in the last decade, they pay 20 to 30 percent more, they’re directly responsible for a $60 billion trade surplus.

Do whatever you want about Solyndra, but do not insult my intelligence by trying to say that the big oil compaires are right and the green tech people are wrong.

Clinton was citing the analysis by the Brookings Institution of the clean energy economy, which found that employment in the clean-tech sector, which includes companies like Solyndra, grew at 8.3 percent from 2003 to 2010, twice as fast the overall economy.

Many of the Republicans attacking clean-energy jobs seem to just be seeking to score political points against a Democratic administration, especially those who helped put the clean-tech loan program in place. Other conservatives, as Clinton noted, are attacking technological innovation as a way of defending the continued dominance of fossil interests.

Later in the roundtable, Clinton offered some thoughtful analysis of why the government is “picking winners and losers,” as some have described the loan guarantee program that supported Solyndra. He explained that the understanding that corporations have a responsibility to all stakeholders has been lost to the idea that they only answer to shareholders. The role of government in setting market fundamentals has been attacked relentlessly. So government policies that define the market — like clean energy standards, cap and trade, or carbon taxes — can’t get passed, even though those are the most efficient at supporting economic innovation.

People need to understand that the government should play a role in making markets, Clinton said, and “part of the market making should be designed be create a mentality of shared value rather than just shareholder value.”

Read more coverage of the Clinton Global Initiative from ThinkProgress.

With most of the coverage of the Solyndra bankruptcy focused on the political theater in Washington, there has been very little response from within the financial community — particularly in the venture capital space.

I found out why upon talking to people about the issue. After reaching out to some of the top private equity firms and venture capitalists in cleantech, almost no one wanted to speak on the record about Solyndra. Many had friends who lost money in the deal; others just weren’t comfortable talking about such a politically-charged topic, preferring to lay low and stay out of the mess entirely.

But off the record, they all said basically the same thing:  While hitting home runs in clean energy is still difficult, the market fundamentals over the medium and long term (i.e. climate change, need for infrastructure investments, dramatically falling cost of renewables, etc) are still as compelling as they always were. No amount of hype about the Solyndra bankruptcy or political posturing in Washington will deter VCs from addressing those market needs.

After all, venture investments are inherently risky. A venture firm will make 10 bets expecting 9 to fail and hoping the one big success will make up for all the other failures.

“That’s just the way venture capital works. I don’t see it likely or reasonable that Solyndra will cause venture firms to pull back in this space,” explained Ken Locklin, managing director for the private equity firm Impax Asset Management, in an interview with Climate Progress. “I would be surprised if anyone in the venture community pulls back in a big way because of this.”

But this sector is tough, and other experts think it could have a short-term impact.

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Our guest blogger is A. Siegel, of Get Energy Smart Now. The Solar Decathlon is running on Potomac Park off the National Mall until Oct. 2.

In the fifth Department of Energy Solar Decathlon in Washington, DC, 19 university teams are competing to build the best solar-powered house in 10 categories, each for 100 points, for a total of 1000 points. As with an Olympic Decathlon, the overall winner might actually not win any of the categories but simply be a top performer across all of them. The winning house:

— Is affordable, attractive, and easy to live in
– Maintains comfortable and healthy indoor environmental conditions
– Supplies energy to household appliances for cooking, cleaning, and entertainment
– Provides adequate hot water
– Produces as much or more energy than it consumes.

These are the 10 Solar Decathlon 2011 contests: the first five are judged by expert juries: Architecture, Market Appeal, Engineering, Communications, and Affordability. The second five are quantitatively measured: Comfort Zone, Hot Water, Appliances, Home Entertainment, and the all-important Energy Balance.

The most significant competition change from the past is the creating of a cost category which emphasizes affordability.

While cost considerations were part of “marketability” in the past competitions, this was not necessarily a serious element. One team discussed with me in 2009 how they had worked hard to have an audited cost estimate and then discovered that only a few other teams had made similar efforts. Whether correct or not, they were frustrated that, in their perspective, this was not a serious element of the competition analysis. This new category might well have driven the teams into designs that will be marketable at scale.

The 2011 Solar Decathlon Competitors

– The Solar Homestead, Appalachian State University

– TRTL – Technological Residence, Traditional Living, University of Calgary, Canada

– perFORM[D]ance House, Florida International University

– Re_home, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

– WaterShed, University of Maryland

– Self-Reliance, Middlebury College

– First Light, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

– enCORE, Ohio State University

– Empowerhouse, Parsons the New School for Design and Stevens Institute of Technology

– INhome, Purdue University

– CHIP, The Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARCH) and California Institute of Technology (CALTECH)

– E-Cube, Team Belgium, Ghent University

– Y Container, Team China

– FLeX House, Team Florida (The University of South Florida, Florida State University, The University of Central Florida, and The University of Florida)

– 4D Home, Team Massachusetts (Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell)

– Solar Roofpod, Team New York (City College of New York)

– ENJOY House, Team New Jersey (State University of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology)

– Living Light, University of Tennessee

– Unit 6 Unplugged, Tidewater Virginia (Old Dominion University and Hampton University)

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by Dr. Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’s Scientific Integrity Program, in a repost

The Supreme Court in 2007 ordered the EPA to consider whether greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles endanger public health and welfare. Photo: Flickr/dbking.

Last week, the administration delayed the release of a proposed rule on the regulation of global warming emissions from power plants. This came on the heels of a decision to withdraw a science-based standard for ground-level ozone pollution.

In the face of industry pressure for even more delays—and to weaken the Clean Air Act—it’s worth examining the robust scientific standards the EPA adheres to in its attempts to protect public health. A good case study is the EPA’s handling of the scientific evidence that supports regulation of greenhouse gases.

The negative effect of air pollution on health has been well established within public health science. (There are literally thousands of peer reviewed articles on the subject, but for those looking to be convinced, check out a fascinating study that took place during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The study makes a powerful argument for the negative impact of vehicle emissions on health: reductions in commuting and traffic during the Olympics correlated with a 47 percent decrease in acute asthma events at a downtown hospital.)

Despite the increasing evidence of the harmful health effects of greenhouse gas emissions, it wasn’t until April 2007 that these emissions were formally recognized as pollutants and subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The story of the EPA’s quest to protect the public from these emissions—and industry’s resistance—spans both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

The EPA’s mandate

In a landmark 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are in fact air pollutants under Section 202a of the Clean Air Act, and could be subject to regulations – if the EPA found that the science showed the emissions to be harmful. The Court then tasked the EPA with determining whether or not emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. The court gave the EPA significant leeway as to how to make this determination, stating only that the reason for the so called “endangerment finding” was to “conform to the authorizing statute.”

The undertaking was unprecedented: the EPA had never before been tasked with putting together an endangerment finding for any other pollutant. What followed was an exhaustive review of the scientific literature.

EPA’s analysis relied on peer-reviewed science

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By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last week, Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking for a formal investigation into the corporate profits and public financial gain from oil, gas, and hardrock mineral extraction (gold, silver, copper, and others) on public lands. The members requested this investigation due to their suspicions that taxpayers are not reaping proper benefits from extractive activities on public lands. As Grijalva said at a press conference last week:

We also feel that there is a taxpayer responsibility that we have as elected officials. Especially in these fiscal times where we are talking so much about fiscal policy, taxpayers, and revenue for government, etc., that we are getting a fair return on our public lands. That there is indeed a net benefit and a cost benefit for the American taxpayer.

From the information that we get, we hope that this debate continues forward. We’ve asked GAO to give us a financial perspective—how much has the taxpayer lost, how much is this land really worth, and what should be the parameters in the future in order to collect a fair return for the American taxpayer.

Watch it:

The request to GAO is simple. The lawmakers asked GAO analysts to study two questions in particular:

- What was the amount of minerals extracted from federal land and the Outer Continental Shelf and what was the estimated dollar value of these minerals?
- How much did the federal government collect for these minerals, including royalties, rents, and bonuses, and how was this amount determined?

Hardrock mining companies are protected from paying any royalties to the federal government and taxpayers under the 1872 Mining Law, which was enacted during the years of manifest destiny to encourage mineral prospecting in the West.

This 139-year-old law is still in place, and one study estimates that taxpayers will lose $160 million every year without reforms to it. This is of particular importance because many foreign companies are mining uranium, gold, and copper, and, as one advocate put it, “are taking advantage of that loophole and literally taking the United States citizens’ minerals for free.”

Additionally, oil and gas companies have also historically paid less than what the public lands that they drill are worth. A 2007 GAO report found that one offshore drilling royalty relief bill passed in 1995 will “likely cost the government billions, but the final costs have yet to be determined.”

The “objective analysis of the business of mining and mineral leasing on federal lands,” as Udall put it, is anticipated to be completed next summer.

When it comes to messaging, the right wing media machine has perfected the ability to turn molehills into mountain.  Progressives, on the other hand, have perfected the art of turning mountains into molehills.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the cases of clean energy and climate change (and more broadly, clean air and clean water).   From the perspective of polling and public opinion, they are all issues that are very popular  across the political spectrum (other than Tea Party extremists), including independents.  That is, they are among the best wedge issues progressives have (see here and here).

But thanks to the steadfast rhetorical brilliance of the denier industrial complex (DIC) — aka repeating lies and half-truths endlessly — and the general fecklessness of President Obama and other key Democratic politicians, many progressives are actually convinced that climate change is a losing message and are even on the defensive on slam dunk issues like clean energy and clean air/water.

What the DIC is doing in the case of Solyndra, and what it’s doing in the case of EPA clean air regulations are worth exploring in a little more detail.  The Politico reported yesterday:

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There’s a major surge of project development underway in the American wind industry. But it’s not happening for the most positive reason.

With the expiration of two major federal incentives on the horizon, wind developers are pushing to build projects as quickly as possible to qualify for them. The rush has brought construction to levels not seen since 2009. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), there are already more than 7.3 GW of projects under development in the U.S., up from only 5.1 GW completed in 2010.

The reason for the increased activity is two-fold. Much of the late-stage activity has been spurred by the Treasury Grant Program, an incentive that allows developers to take a 30% cash grant rather than a tax credit. That program will expire at the end of this year. That leaves a 12-month window for developers to take advantage of the Production Tax Credit, a core tax incentive for the industry that will expire at the end of 2012. The rush to qualify for the incentives is causing a spike in activity that will carry over into next year.

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JR:  The Weekly Standard was founded in 1995 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.  It become “the country’s preeminent neoconservative magazine,” which is to say a Cheney-Bush mouthpiece pushing for “regime change” in Iraq:  The “Standard did all it could to find (or invent) evidence linking Iraq to 9/11.”  In 2009, News Corp. sold it to the Clarity Media Group, owned by “Philip Anschutz, a billionaire with right-wing politics.”  Anschutz started out as an oilman, diversified into land and rail and media, but is still a major stake-owner in oil and natural gas.

Shauna Theel, in a Media Matters repost.

Fact-Checking The Weekly Standard‘s Solyndra Cover Story

A round-up of the top climate and energy news. Please post additional stories below.

Built in a Dirty Boom, China’s Biggest City Tries to Go Green

Wandering around in downtown Chongqing, it is hard to imagine that this is a city that is going green.

Vehicles clog roads in every direction. Construction cranes stretch to the horizon. And huge posters displaying locally produced industrial goods show where the city’s exploding economic growth is coming from.

But Chongqing (population 28,846,200) is more than meets the eye. After living with acid rain and toxic smog for decades, the city has been scrambling for ways to clean up the air. It is also overhauling its power-hungry economy and rebuilding it on a base of industries that use less energy.

Chongqing isn’t alone on such a transformation path. It is one of several pilot provinces and cities that Chinese leaders picked last year in an attempt to find a low-carbon growth model that can be spread to the rest of the nation.

More than 100 arrested in Canada pipeline protest

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by Araceli Ruano and Rebecca Friendly

California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed three clean energy bills into law.  Governor Brown should be commended for following through with this commitment and leadership on this important policy area. The three renewable energy bills signed by the Governor serve to bolster California’s stated commitment to clean energy, to create jobs, lower electric bills and improve air quality.

Last month at the National Clean Energy Summit (NCES) hosted by CAP and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Governor discussed how California has been consistently committed to clean energy as exemplified by former Governor Schwarzenegger’s efforts and California’s status in the early 80’s as the world leader in wind generated electricity. Governor Brown continued by asserting California’s current commitment to regaining its leadership in renewable energy by investing in its key resources, wind, solar and efficiency.

Let’s look at the three bills.

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