Sure, the extremist wing of the GOP has been saying crazy things about climate for a while (see Rep. Shimkus: “Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a flood”).

But the anti-science wing is now in charge (see John Boehner says on ABC: “The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical”).  And it has been able to make climate craziness a litmus test for the Presidency.

Just 3 years ago, the GOP nominee was a climate hawk who campaigned on a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas — and folks like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney supported climate science and climate action.

Now, even the most semi-rational contenders for the GOP nomination have to tie themselves to the anti-rational Tea Party mantra of deny, deny, delay, delay that will ultimately sink their party and the entire nation, literally and figuratively.

Here, then, are the top 5 craziest things GOP contenders said on climate this year.

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The payroll tax bill sent by House Republicans to the U.S. Senate included two polluter poison pills, the Keystone XL provision for the oil industry and Boiler MACT language to protect toxic coal pollution. In an underreported move, the Senate stripped the coal poison pill. Now GOP members of the House are “committed” to put coal back in the Christmas stocking. They are willing to let the extension of the payroll tax cut die to attack the so-called Boiler MACT rules that would save tens of thousands of lives a year, according to The Hill and Politico:

– Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH): “We are committed to the House-passed bill, including the boiler MACT language.”

– House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) told The Hill that “he’d seek inclusion of the boiler MACT language in a final deal.”

– Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA): “We are hoping that does stay in.”

– Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH): “There were voices saying we should amend the Senate bill and put boiler MACT back in and send it back to them last night.”

– Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA): “Certainly I’d hope that we’d be able to get it in but, that being said, I understand the fluidity of negotiations and we’ll just have to see.”

Boehner, Upton, Murphy, LaTourette, and Griffith have received a combined $1,789,000 in contributions from the coal industry since 1999.

[Note: the headline and stats were tweaked after publishing to more accurately reflect the distinction between electricity and overall energy. I originally wrote that renewables made up 20% of all energy, not electricity.]

According to new figures released from Germany’s energy working group, AGEB, energy consumption in the country dropped 4.8% in 2011 from 2010.

German consumption of oil fell 3%, gas by 10.2%, lignite coal by 0.7% (although hard coal rose 3.7%), and nuclear by 22.9%. At the same time, use of renewable energy climbed by 4.1% and represented about 20% of the country’s electricity and 10.8% of total energy in 2011.

An increase in residential and industrial efficiency combined with milder temperatures in 2011 provided the conditions for the decrease in consumption.

So is that increase in renewable energy and efficiency killing the German economy? Analysts expect German GDP growth to be around 3% in 2011, about the same projected for the U.S.

Joelle Novey

Faith groups are playing an increasingly important role in raising awareness about climate change and other environmental issues. From the Keystone XL pipeline to the Durban climate talks, people of faith are are putting themselves in the middle of the action and encouraging citizens and policy makers to be better stewards of the earth.

Below is an interview with Joelle Novey, executive director of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light, a faith-based group that works with hundreds of congregations to bring religious values to environmental issues. Sally Steenland, director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, spoke with Novey about their role in building a national religious response to the climate crisis.

This is an abridged version of the interview. You can find the full interview and listen to an audio version at the Center for American Progress website.

Sally Steenland: Your organization, Greater Washington Interfaith Power & Light, was recently involved in the protest against the Keystone XL pipeline. What did you do? And why do you oppose the pipeline?

Joelle Novey: Interfaith Power & Light is working with over 14,000 congregations across the country to respond to the climate crisis, and our entire network was very involved in speaking out against the Keystone XL pipeline, especially some of our colleagues in pipeline states like Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska.

We oppose the Keystone XL pipeline first of all because it would bring the dirtiest oil, extracted from the Canadian tar sands, over more than 1,500 miles and six states, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, endangering aquifers from which many Americans get their drinking water. The extraction of this oil is very intensive on the climate, even more so than regular oil extraction. Climate scientist James Hansen has said that the full exploitation of these unconventional fossil fuels, like tar sands oil, would mean “game over” for the climate. So we were very concerned for these reasons.

But there was also a kind of reckoning that needed to happen. The president said in his 2008 campaign that this would be the generation that turned away from fossil fuels—and his administration could make the decision about Keystone without congressional help. Not only was it looking like the pipeline would be approved, but the president hadn’t used the word “climate” in a speech in several years. So there was a need to ask, “Are we as nation going to reconcile with the climate crisis?”

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Our guest blogger is Anthony Swift, policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

One of the most important facts that is missing in the national debate surrounding the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is this — Keystone XL will not bring any more oil into the United State for decades to come. Canada doesn’t have nearly enough oil to fill existing pipelines going to the United States. However, existing Canadian oil pipelines all go to the Midwest, where the only buyer for their crude is the United States. Keystone XL would divert Canadian oil from refineries in the Midwest to the Gulf Coast where it can be refined and exported. Many of these refineries are in free trade zones where oil may be exported to international buyers without paying U.S. taxes. And that is exactly what Valero, one of the largest potential buyers of Keystone XL’s oil, has told its investors it will do. The idea that Keystone XL will improve U.S. oil supply is a documented scam being played on the American people by Big Oil and its friends in Washington DC.

The fact that Canada has excess pipeline capacity is well known. In a Department of Energy report evaluating Keystone XL’s impacts on U.S. energy supply over the next twenty years, the agency found that it will take decades for Canada to produce enough oil to fill existing pipelines. On page 90, the report concludes that the United States will import the same amount of crude from Canada through 2030 whether or not Keystone XL is built.

From Canada’s perspective, the problem with existing pipelines is they all end in the U.S. Midwest and only allow one buyer – the United States. As Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently said, “we export 97 percent of our energy to the U.S. and we would like to diversify that.” However, the Canadian government has put the brakes on the two pipeline proposals to export tar sands through its provinces due to the need to take more time to listen to its own public’s concerns about water and safety.

Keystone XL would be Canada’s first step in diversifying its energy market. The pipeline would divert large volumes of Canadian oil from the Midwest to the Gulf Coast, where it would be available for the first time to buyers on the world market. To sweeten the deal, many of the refineries on the Gulf Coast happen to be located in foreign trade zones, where they can export Canadian oil to the world market without paying U.S. taxes. Oil Change International investigated this issue in a report that found the Keystone XL pipeline was part of a larger strategy to sell increasing volumes of Canadian crude on the international diesel market.

When Canadian regulators at the National Energy Board (NEB) considered the Keystone XL proposal in 2008, they asked TransCanada to justify another pipeline when there was already so much spare capacity. TransCanada conceded that Keystone XL would take oil from existing pipelines, increasing shipping costs. However, TransCanada argued that this cost would be more than offset as shifting Canadian oil from the Midwest to the Gulf would increase the price that Americans paid for Canadian oil by $3.9 billion.

In fact, TransCanada refused to support a requirement that oil on Keystone XL be used in the United States in a recent Congressional hearing. Earlier this month, Representative Edward Markey asked TransCanada’s President Alex Pourbaix to support a condition that would require the oil on Keystone XL to be used in the United States. Mr. Pourbaix refused, saying that a requirement to keep oil on Keystone XL in the United States would cause refineries to back out of their contracts. That very well may be the case as Valero, one of the largest prospective purchasers of Keystone XL’s crude, has already told its investors the its future business is in international export.

Simply stated, Keystone XL is a way to get Canadian oil out of the United States, not into it.

Go to www.stoptar.org to take action.

Photos: Peter Essick, National Geographic. Edited by Treehugger.

Canada was once seen as a progressive leader on environmental issues. Today, the country is becoming an international pariah when it comes to climate change — facing fierce criticism from environmental groups and world leaders over its decision to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol and push dirty tar sands around the world.

It’s not just verbal criticism. The Europeans are currently considering a law that would label the carbon content of tar sands crude in the EU as 22% higher than conventional crude. That would discourage refiners, who have to meet 20% carbon reduction requirements by 2020, from importing the fuel.

And back in the U.S., the fierce opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline rages on, spurring a strong movement within the country against the resource.

Canadian officials are doing their best damage control, claiming that the environmental footprint of digging up tar sands is getting smaller. According to the Postmedia Network, Canada’s environment minister Peter Kent claimed at the Durban climate talks that tar sands are “a responsibly and sustainably developed resource, of which we are proud.”

But internal government briefing documents released earlier this month and reported on by Postmedia show a different kind of messaging behind the scenes. In a background memo, send to Canada’s Deputy Environment Minister Paul Boothe, officials admitted the lack of “credible information on [tar sands'] environmental performance.”

“Environment Canada also advised that the absence of scientific evidence supporting their claims was affecting the industry’s ability to raise capital from and sell into (the) foreign market,” reads the memo.

PostMedia obtained the documents through a freedom of information request:

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Coal activists around the country have stepped up their efforts in recent years to fight the destructive mining process known as mountaintop removal, targeting politicians, coal companies, and banks that support and finance such projects. Activists in Charlotte were arrested earlier this year protesting Bank of America’s ties to mountaintop removal, while others staged a tree sit-in near Coal River Mountain in West Virginia to prevent a mountaintop removal project there.

In Kentucky, a state where mountaintop removal has destroyed more mountains than in any other state, protesters have staged sit-ins at the governor’s office and the statehouse throughout the year. Those activists visited the office of Gov. Steve Beshear (D) again yesterday, this time hoping to deliver a little holiday cheer and a few gifts for the governor who trumpeted his support for mountaintop removal and opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency during his re-election campaign in 2011, public radio station WFPL reports:

Governor Steve Beshear got an early Christmas gift from anti-mountaintop removal activists today. Protesters spent several hours in the governor’s office waiting for a chance to present him with lumps of coal.

The protest was an extension of a weekly event that’s been going on since February, but this time it had a holiday twist. Lexington teacher Martin Mudd dressed up as Santa Claus, and says he brought gifts for the governor.

“Santa brought the governor some lumps of coal and switches because he’s been a naughty boy in not doing everything that he can to protect the people of eastern Kentucky and our mountains and water,” he said.

Beshear’s support for the coal industry, and mountaintop removal in particular, has often placed him at odds with coal activists. In 2009, he angered activists by firing Ron Mills, the head of Kentucky’s mining permit division, after Mills refused multiple permits for Alliance Resource Partners, a Tulsa-based company with multiple mining sites in Kentucky. Beshear signed the permits over Mills’ objections, and Mills told the Lexington Herald-Leader that Alliance executives had lobbied for his firing.

But his support for mountaintop removal has drawn the most ire, and while yesterday’s protesters weren’t able to reach Beshear — both he and Lieutenant Gov. Jerry Abramson (D) were out of the office — they left a list of demands with their gifts. Among them: end mountaintop removal, employ workers left jobless by the coal industry through environmental reclamation projects, and help Eastern Kentucky build a sustainable economy that isn’t built on a destructive mining process clearly linked to cancer, birth defects, and numerous other chronic illnesses.

After Google announced the phase out of its RE<C initiative last month, some in the press drew the conclusion that the tech giant was pulling out of renewables altogether. We quickly pointed out that it was a simple shift in Google’s strategy — moving from R&D to deployment, where the company could make a bigger impact.

Well, here’s more evidence of Google’s flair for renewable energy deployment. Adding to the $850 million in clean energy deployment investments, Google is putting another $94 million into four solar photovoltaic projects representing 88 MW of capacity around California. The projects will be built by a leading North American developer Recurrent Energy.

(Here’s a little factoid about the relationship: Recurrent CEO Arno Harris is the former general manager of EI Solutions, the company that installed a 1.6 MW PV system on Google’s headquarters. That was back in 2007, when a 1.6 MW system was a huge deal. Now it’s a regular occurrence to quickly install PV projects with tens of MW of capacity.)

This latest round of solar investments brings Google’s total clean energy portfolio to $915 million. Electricity from these installations will be sold to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District under a Feed-in Tariff over a 20-year period. The global financial firm KKR will co-invest with Google in the projects.

This rounds out the year well for the U.S. solar market, which saw 140% growth in the third quarter of this year, bringing installs to over 1 GW.

Developers are rushing to take advantage of the expiring Treasury Grant Program, which provides a 30% cash payment through the Treasury rather than a 30% investment tax credit. That program expires at the end of this month, and Congress does not look prepared to extend it. If the grant is not extended, solar analysts say the market could drop off substantially in 2012 —potentially preventing the creation of another 37,000 jobs, according to a report commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Related Posts:

• Solar Industry: Extending the Treasury Grant Program Could Add 37,000 New Jobs by 2013
• Solar is the “Fastest Growing Industry in America” and Made Record Cost Reductions in 2010
• Google Phases Out Clean Energy R&D in Favor of Deployment, Citing the “Compelling” Cost Reductions in Solar PV

This year saw a major shift in the green building sector. According to figures released earlier this month, the majority of green buildings around the world using the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria are retrofits of existing buildings rather than new builds.

This is a positive shift. While green construction of new buildings is important, it only adds to existing building stock — potentially overshadowing the investment opportunities in existing commercial buildings. Some of the easiest emissions reduction opportunities are in the 60 billion square feet of commercial buildings already built around the U.S. alone.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) says the increase in retrofits started picking up in 2008 and have now surpassed new builds into 2011 by about 15 million square feet.

Since 2008, the downturn in new construction has shifted activity away from new buildings. While the green building sector has fared better than its conventional counterpart — growing 50% from 2008-2010 and representing 25% of all construction activity last year — the new build sector has mirrored the broader slowdown.

Also adding to the shift, some very large buildings have gotten make overs under the LEED system. From the Empire State Building to Tapiei 101, the largest building in the world, building owners have invested tens of millions of dollars into efficiency upgrades. (According to the USGBC, The Empire State Building project will save $4.4 million in energy costs and provide a return on investment in three years.)

According to a report from McGraw Hill Construction, green retrofits will grow to a third of the overall commercial retrofit market in the next three years — representing up to $18 billion in economic activity.

Related Post:

• Green Jobs Make Up 35% of Design and Construction Industry: “People Will Never Go Back to Building Inefficient Buildings”

Other stories below: Philippine Death Toll Rises in Worst Cyclone in Three Years; India May Jump in Solar Trade War

Shell spills 13,000 gallons while drilling near Deepwater Horizon site

Shell International spilled 13,000 gallons of oil and drilling fluids into the Gulf on Sunday while drilling an exploratory well near the site of last year’s Deepwater Horizon accident, according to a federal report on the spill.

The area where the well was being drilled is about 20 miles from the site of the BP oil spill. Shell is working in water more than 7,000 feet deep. The well was being drilled by the Deepwater Nautilus, according to federal records. That rig is owned and operated by Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig.

While a report Shell filed Monday morning with the National Response Center states that the company spilled 7,560 gallons of oil and 5,829 gallons of synthetic drilling fluids, company spokesperson Kelly op de Weegh said late Monday afternoon that no oil was spilled.

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Yet again, Congress has been unable to extend vital tax credits for the wind industry, causing incredible uncertainty in the fast-growing wind sector and threatening thousands of jobs across America. With the production tax credit set to expire next December, manufacturers are already seeing a cut back in orders and developers are thinning their portfolios. Wind companies need clarity on future investments, and a looming tax credit expiration hurts business.

A new study released this week by Navigant Consulting and prepared for the American Wind Energy Association finds that an expiration of the production tax credit could cause the loss of up to 37,000 jobs.

So who are the American workers with jobs in the wind industry impacted by political inaction? And what do they have to lose?

Center for American Progress video producer Andrew Satter traveled to Iowa and spoke to people working in Iowa’s wind industry – a sector that enjoys strong bi-partisan support, maintains over 3,000 jobs, and generates $50 million in revenue for the state each year.

That economic activity helps support middle-class workers like Nathan Crawford, a wind technician with Alliant Energy who tells us how much he enjoys his job.

“It’s pretty cool that I get to do this every day,” says Crawford. “The wind industry has been able to bring me and my wife back close to home.”

But with national political leaders dragging their feet, they threaten these good-paying, middle-class jobs in America’s heartland. That is the true price of inconsistency in the clean energy policy.