President Barack Obama delivered a State of the Union address that aggressively defended his successful work to save the American auto industry, the centerpoint of American manufacturing, and directly addressed the unfairness of our economic system that has led to rapidly growing economic inequality.

However, the president avoided a direct admission of the greatest threat to the future of the American economy: rapidly increasing climate change from unlimited fossil fuel pollution. Instead, Obama promoted an “all-of-the-above” energy future:

This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy – a strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.

Praising the boom in domestic oil and gas drilling, Obama announced that he is “directing my Administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources.” He called for “every possible action” to develop “a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years.”

The “one hundred years” supply of gas is questionable. More importantly, burning that supply would emit about 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

Unlike the tepid applause he received when he called for an expansion of offshore drilling, Obama received roars of applause when he said:

We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits and create these jobs.

Obama blamed Congress for federal inaction in his only mention of the fundamental threat of climate change, saying:

The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change.

The President of the United States is supposed to address the state of the union in his annual address — but Obama sadly ignored the costliest year of climate disasters in American history, with over a dozen billion-dollar-disasters caused by our poisoned weather and our nation’s lack of preparedness. His work to build a clean energy future deserves the standing ovation it received in the Capitol tonight, but that future will be smashed by the destructive power of a polluted climate if much greater effort is not made.

Read the president’s remarks on energy, the environment, and his single mention of the existence of climate change: Read more

As carbon pollution accumulates in the atmosphere, our weather is growing more intense and unpredictable, threatening the health of the union. Following the freakishly warm and dry start of this January, extreme storms then pummeled the nation:

WASHINGTON ICE STORM: “A monster Pacific Northwest storm coated the Seattle area in a thick layer of ice Thursday and brought much of the state to a standstill, sending hundreds of cars spinning out of control, temporarily shutting down the airport and knocking down so many trees that members of the Washington State Patrol brought chain saws to work. East of Seattle, a man was killed by a falling tree as he was backing an all-terrain vehicle out of a backyard shed, authorities said.” 90,000 customers of Puget Sound Energy lost power.

OREGON FLOODS: With a persistent flow of Pacific moisture targeting the Pacific Northwest, several inches of rain have fallen across the western third of Oregon. Widespread flooding has developed with Salem, Corvallis and Philomath just some of the cities that have dealt with the worst of the rising waters. Torrential rain swept away a car from a grocery store parking lot, killing a mother and her one-year-old son.

NEVADA WILDFIRE: A destructive wildfire erupted shortly after noon on Thursday and raced quickly through the dry countryside surrounding Reno, NV, propelled by wind gusts of 82 mph. At its height, the fire forced evacuation calls for some 10,000 people. The fire destroyed 29 homes over six square miles before a storm on Saturday brought precipitation after the region’s driest winter in recorded history. Reno had no precipitation at all in December.

JANUARY TORNADOES: Last Tuesday, a powerful storm front spawned one EF-1 tornado in metropolitan Louisville, Kentucky, and a second hit near Madison, Indiana. At least 10 tornadoes struck the South overnight Sunday as a powerful storm system moved across the Great Lakes and into southern Canada, killing two in Alabama. The tornadoes were spawned along the southern end of a front that arced through the eastern US like a comma’s tail, bringing severe thunderstorms, hail, and twisters to Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee before moving into Georgia later Monday morning.

Extreme weather is wreaking increasing damage on the people of the United States. With cutbacks in local, state, and federal government services, continued inaction on fighting greenhouse pollution, and ideological opposition to preparing for the ravages of unchecked climate change, the state of our union is under threat.

BREAKING:  Energy parts of speech posted below — one, resigned, mention of climate plus lots and lots of hydrocarbons.  It’ll be a long, long night….

I propose the following drinking game:

1. The first time the President uses the phrase “climate change” or “global warming,” down the drink of your choice.
2. The second time, empty out the liquor cabinet.
3. The third time, it’s a weekend in Las Vegas with Charlie Sheen or Chelsea Handler.

OK, perhaps this is best called a sobriety game, if this is anything like his last State of the Union Address (see Obama calls for massive boost in low-carbon energy, but doesn’t mention carbon, climate or warming).

Given that Obama is apparently going to push domestic hydrocarbon production but not a price on carbon, I’m adding this:

1. Every time Obama talks up domestic oil production, drink one cup of coffee.
2. Every time Obama talks up domestic natural gas production, drink one cup of non-herbal tea.

And remember, if you don’t get any sleep tonight, it’s not my fault!

UPDATE:  The energy parts of speech posted below

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The network of climate deniers who pollute America’s local newscasts with anti-science propaganda includes Neil Barton, the news director of NBC affiliate KETK-TV in Tyler, Texas. On Monday’s evening newscast, Barton responded with outrage to the Forecast The Facts campaign that challenges the American Meteorological Society to oppose science denial by television meteorologists. Barton complained that Forecast The Facts and ThinkProgress Green are “outing” those who say “pish-posh to the whole idea of global warming”:

Now, a new progressive website is outing weather people who don’t agree with far-left thinking. ThinkProgress.org is outing TV weather folks who have gone on record saying pish-posh to the whole idea of global warming. They put the weather person’s statements about why they won’t get on board under the heading “zombie quotes.”

Watch it:

Of course, the reality of man-made climate change isn’t “far-left thinking.” It’s a scientific fact recognized by the American Meteorological Society, along with essentially every other scientific society in the world.

KETK’s chief meteorologist, Scott Chesner, is a global warming denier as well. “Predicting the weather in the long range is an impossible feat the farther out in time you go, its just another reason why especially in terms of trying to predict man’s influence on the climate — totally preposterous!” Chesner said last December.

Barton (@KETK_NeilBarton), invited viewers to respond to him by email at pov@ketknbc.com.

KETK is owned by the private Communications Corporation of America, which also operates the region’s Fox network affiliate KFXK.

President of American Gas Association, 1981:  “In fact, gas energy — currently America’s largest domestically produced fuel — could prove to be the keystone to solving the nation’s energy crisis by serving as the ‘bridge fuel’ to the next century’s renewable energy technologies.”

VP of AGA, 1988, “refers to natural gas as a bridge fuel — the least harmful alternative while the world looks for other, longer-lasting solutions to the ‘greenhouse’ effect,” the Washington Post reported.

Chair of AGA, 2008:  “Natural gas will be the bridge fuel to the future…. The electric industry is expected to turn to natural gas as a bridge until clean coal and nuclear generation are available.”

It’s the longest bridge in history!  Heck, the Golden Gate Bridge only took 4 years to build!

The President will be touting natural gas in his State of the Union address tonight, according to sources.  Nothing wrong with touting gas — if you also tout a rising carbon price, which the president once did but no longer does.

Way back in June 2009, I pointed out the value of gas in the context of a climate bill with a rising CO2 price — see “Why unconventional natural gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet.”  But the key point of that post was that you could put gas in existing, underutilized plants to replace existing coal power cheaply to meet the key 2020 target Obama.

Building lots of new gas plants doesn’t make much sense since we need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few decades if we’re to have any chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. We don’t want new gas plants to displace new renewables, like solar and wind,  which are going to be the  some of the biggest, sustainable job creating industries of the century.

Late last year, some of the leading (center-right) economists in the country — Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus — concluded in a top economic journal that the total damages from natural gas generation exceed its value-added at a low-ball carbon price of $27 per ton! At a price of $65 a ton of carbon, the total damages from natural gas are more than double its value-added!

For the record, stabilizing at 550 ppm  atmospheric concentrations of CO2, which would likely still be catastrophic for humanity, would require a price of $330 a metric ton of carbon in 2030, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted back in 2008.

The fact that natural gas is a bridge fuel to nowhere was in fact, first demonstrated by the IEA in its big June 2011 report on gas — see IEA’s “Golden Age of Gas Scenario” Leads to More Than 6°F Warming and Out-of-Control Climate Change.  That study — which had both coal and oil consumption peaking in 2020 — made abundantly clear that if we want to avoid catastrophic warming, we need to start getting off of all fossil fuels.

Then came a remarkable new study by Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) that concluded:

In summary, our results show that the substitution of gas for coal as an energy source results in increased rather than decreased global warming for many decades.

Here was the key figure:

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by Kiley Kroh

Floridians have long been wary of offshore drilling – evidenced by a two-decade ban on drilling in state waters – due to the potentially devastating impact on the tourism industry.

During last night’s Florida Republican presidential debate, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was asked whether a few thousand jobs from increased offshore drilling is worth the risk to the state’s vital tourism sector.

Santorum responded by avoiding the issue, showing his strong support for more drilling in a roundabout way, while making a completely bogus connection to pipelines and tankers:

Moderator: “Senator Santorum, here in Florida, BP is still airing apologetic appeals on television, but there are proposals to expand offshore oil drilling. The state’s most optimistic estimates say more drilling would create 5,000 jobs, but an oil spill would threaten Florida’s tourism industry, which employs nearly 1 million people. Is that worth the risk?”

Santorum: “What threatens the tourist industry in Florida, as we’re seeing, is a very bad economy — and a very bad economy that became a bad economy why? Because of a huge spike in oil prices in the summer of 2008. So energy is absolutely key to keeping all of our country healthy, specifically Florida, which is a destination. This is a place that relies on people being able to travel and afford to travel to come down here,” Santorum continued, “it relies upon an economy being strong.”

“It is absolutely essential that we have as much domestic supply of oil, that we build the Keystone pipeline, that we create the jobs that — that that would create, and provide oil from domestic sources. Pipelines that run on the floor of the sea or pipelines that come through America are the safest way to transport oil. It is tankers that are causing — that cause much more problems. Pipelines are the safe way. Building those rigs, piping that oil into — into — into our shore is the best way to create a good economy for the state of Florida.”

Santorum’s response completely ignores the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster – a spill caused by an exploratory drilling rig, not a pipeline or a tanker. And many Floridians might take serious issue with his assertion that “building more rigs” for oil is the best way to grow their economy.

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In a “prebuttal” to President Obama’s State of the Union address, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and private-equity millionaire, laid out an understanding of American energy policy that bears only a tenuous relationship to reality. Romney attacked successful government investment in clean energy as failures, falsified the recent history of domestic oil and gas development, and wrote the Deepwater Horizon disaster out of memory. Like the rest of the Republican Party, Romney made sure to jump on the Keystone XL pipeline bandwagon, purporting it would create tens of thousands of jobs.

Romney, who as recently as last June told New Hampshire voters that it’s “important” to reduce greenhouse pollution, talked only of a future where oil and gas drilling faces no regulatory hurdles.

Below, ThinkProgress Green provides Romney’s speech with the facts it was lacking.

Energy Facts: Rebutting Romney’s Prebuttal

ROMNEY: When we needed stability and solvency, he gave us Solyndra.

FACT CHECK: Solyndra, an innovative solar panel manufacturer, was a private-investment darling to the tune of $961 million until silicon prices plummeted, making their technology too expensive for the marketplace. Bloomberg has found that the default rate, including the $535 million Solyndra default, on the $16.1 billion Energy Department loan portfolio is less than 3.6 percent. The Department of Energy has leveraged taxpayer dollars into nearly $40 billion in solvent projects, helping create 60,000 stable American clean-economy jobs.

ROMNEY: When we needed a climate for private investment, he gave us Cash for Clunkers.

FACT CHECK: The Cash for Clunkers program was “huge success,” Forbes declared. Before the $3 billion program was enacted, 1500 car dealerships had closed, laying off 50,000 people. Cash for Clunkers simultaneously provided a critical lifeline to the American auto manufacturers and car dealers at a crucial moment in the economy, spurred a major increase in the fuel economy of new car purchases, and made efficiency a major selling point in the minds of the American consumer. Cash for Clunkers provided consumers about one-sixth the price of the new cars, meaning it directly spurred about $15 billion in private spending.

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In the State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will highlight the administration’s fossil and renewable energy achievements, touting that the U.S. now produces more than half of its oil domestically and has expanded natural gas, solar, and wind development. The United States is on its way to becoming a global clean-energy leader, Center for American Progress Chairman John Podesta and Tom Steyer of Farallon Capital Management write in the Wall Street Journal:

In the hubbub around the president’s decision not to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline between Canada and the United States, Americans missed the big picture. While conservatives have been fighting to build a pipeline to import more foreign oil and deepen U.S. dependence, the U.S. is poised to transform its energy portfolio by developing domestic resources — renewable and mineral — that will let it become a net exporter of clean energy and energy technology in this decade.

Podesta and Steyer — who was a leader in the fight to protect California’s climate laws — are bullish on the domestic natural gas boom, though they note the “critical environmental questions associated with developing these resources.” They believe that “as long as we ensure high regulatory standards and stay away from the riskiest and most polluting of these activities, we can safely assemble a collection of lower-carbon, affordable and abundant domestic-energy assets that will dramatically improve our economy and our environment.”

Importantly, the United States has regained the title of the world’s top investor in clean energy. “Our companies make over 75% of all venture investments in clean technologies world-wide,” and “the clean economy grew by 8.3% from 2008 to 2009, even during the depths of the recession.” A commitment to clean energy isn’t just about generating good jobs:

Such jobs provide a strong middle-class income to workers who have technical skills beyond high school but who lack a four-year college degree. What’s more, U.S. clean-energy investment shows moral leadership, as we combine our advanced energy strategies with strong safeguards to protect our citizens and our planet from polluters and the worst impacts of global warming.

“Our economy can go from being weighed down by oil imports to soaring ahead, powered increasingly by domestically produced clean energy, and energy services and technology,” Podesta and Steyer conclude. “The Obama administration has taken a smart approach, but Congress must now work with the president to secure our leadership position going forward.”

Since Florida suffered more than $1 billion in loss from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, offshore drilling has been a controversial subject for the state. Rick Santorum was asked last night at the NBC debate why those few thousand drilling jobs are worth the millions of jobs and billions of dollars at risk in the tourism and recreation markets. Instead of answering, Santorum sidelined the question by attacking the president on the Keystone XL pipeline and arguing for more rigs, drilling, and pipelines:

Pipelines are the safe way, building those rigs, into our shores is the best way to create a good economy and a safer Florida.

Watch it:

But Santorum ignores that more than 1 million people are currently employed by Florida’s tourism economy and recreation contributes $67,595 million annually to the economy and generates 794,841 jobs in the South Atlantic region.

Santorum, however, says this industry is more threatened by high oil prices than by the risk of an oil spill. The question still remains for the GOP candidates why Florida should risk its beaches to save Americans mere pennies in gas prices.

In 2011, two deeply intertwined themes dominated international climate and energy stories: equity and the intersection of the economy and the environment.

“These two themes – equity and economy versus environment – will continue to shape stories in 2012,” says Manish Bapna, acting president of the World Resources Institute, in an interview on the Climate Progress podcast.

The Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, and protests in China all forced leaders and journalists to talk about issues of equity. And those movements all influenced climate and energy stories in some way.

“What’s quite interesting is that those notions around justice and around inequality played out not only politically…but also played out in the environmental arena,” says Bapna.

Protests in Tunisia and Egypt were sparked partly because of rising food prices – raising awareness of how climate change may impact agriculture and thus help drive political and social conflict.

The Occupy Movement helped breath new life into the Keystone XL protests, helping environmental groups delay – if not possibly stop all together – the tar sands pipeline that was considered a “done deal” last summer.

And in China, a wave of protests against oil spills, coal plants and air quality stimulated greater discussion of environmental issues in the country.

The events of 2011 came to a head at the Durban climate talks, where a last-minute agreement rested on fairness: “Equity has to be the centerpiece of the Climate discussion and our negotiations should be built on it,” said India’s Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan before agreeing to loose language that may bring developing countries on board for long-term emissions reduction commitments.

Meanwhile, as developed countries struggled with debt crises, high unemployment and sluggish economies, the political debate over the prudence of environmental protection raged on.

While some European countries rolled back support mechanisms for renewable energy, the region stayed committed to aggressive emissions reductions targets through 2020.

In the U.S., the picture was decidedly more negative. Energy became an extraordinarily contentious topic and conservatives pushed forward a political narrative that environmental protection and economic growth are diametrically opposed.

“This issue will undoubtedly be central to elections in the U.S.,” says Bapna. “And the way candidates respond will tell us a lot about how the President and Congress will deal with them in 2012.”

In this podcast, we speak with WRI’s Bapna about how concerns over equity and economic growth will influence a wide range of global issues, including climate policy in China, world-wide investment in renewable energy, and the conversation moving from the Durban climate talks and into the Rio +20 conference on sustainable development.

To listen to the interview, play the podcast above.

If you want to get automatic updates of our podcast, subscribe to us in itunes. You can simply go to itunes, search for Climate Progress, and click “subscribe free.” If you don’t use itunes, you can follow our RSS feed.

Congressional Republicans are now openly acting as advocates for foreign oil interests, colluding with TransCanada lobbyists to push their tar sands agenda. House and Senate staff for Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) and GOP Sens. John Hoeven (ND), Dick Lugar (IN), Lisa Murkowski (AK), and others gathered Monday afternoon for a conference call with TransCanada lawyers “to plot out how to push the Obama administration on the Keystone XL pipeline,” Politico reports:

“More or less everyone walked out of the room on the same page backing” a bill from Rep. Lee Terry to give FERC authority over the project instead of the White House and State Department, a Terry spokesman told Politico.

Terry’s bill has been called “bizarre” — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “does not oversee oil pipelines’ siting decisions or safety standards.” Furthermore, Terry risks the ire of Nebraskans, who have led opposition to the tar sands pipeline.

Today, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) is introducing the Keystone for a Secure Tomorrow Act of 2012 to immediately approve the pipeline.

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) is expected to “mention the need to approve the Keystone pipeline when he gives the Republican response” to President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight.

by Michael Conathan

This piece was originally printed as an op-ed in the Energy Guardian.

America’s oceans provide tremendous value to our economy, and are among the most valuable natural resources we possess. In an effort to maintain both the financial and environmental benefits of our marine resources, last week, the White House issued a draft implementation plan for the National Ocean Policy outlining the specific steps it will direct federal agencies to take to establish a more comprehensive, collaborative, and efficient approach to managing our ocean resources.

Since its initial release in 2009, the National Ocean Policy has been pilloried by the president’s political opponents as a misguided effort to circumvent congressional approval and impose new regulations that slow the pace of business and innovation. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

The policy creates no new regulations and relies entirely on existing authority to do precisely what Republicans have touted as one of their highest policy priorities—improve the efficiency of the federal government.

Much of the opposition centers on a concept known as coastal and marine spatial planning. In most cases, planning is considered a good thing. Business plans are the foundation of most successful ventures. And across the country, federal, state, and local governments have established land use plans that prioritize certain activities to protect private property and ensure we get the best value from public space.

Yet somehow, when these principles are applied to our oceans, even those who recognize the value of solid, well-conceived plans suddenly decry them as the tactics of government heavies, coming to kill jobs and abscond with our fundamental freedoms.

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by Zachary Rybarczyk

The destruction of ecosystems necessary to sustain California’s ranching and timber industries could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars per year by 2070, according to a new study.

By combining an economic analysis with environmental models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers from eight different institutions calculated the amount of environmental and economic damage to woodlands and shrub lands necessary to sustain California’s timber and livestock industries.

The costs could add more than $200 million each year in the next six decades.

The research was conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund, Duke University, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation Biology Institute, USDA Forest Service, Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Barbara. It concluded that global warming will lead to the destruction of non-irrigated vegetation and a “consistent decline” in the acreage of conifer forests, an environmental impact that will force the “gritty worlds of cattle ranching and forestry [to] take it on the chin.”

“It’s important for policymakers to better understand the value of services that nature provides to California’s economy, so that they can work to protect our natural resources and the economy in the face of climate change,”  said lead researcher  Rebecca Shaw, Ph.D.,  associate vice president of EDF’s ecosystems program and a working group member of the IPCC.”

Most of the costs to the livestock industry would be attributed to additional feed expenses necessary to overcome a lack of naturally growing grasses used by ranchers to forage their cattle:

“A less stable climate will reduce the ability of natural landscapes to support cattle grazing, so ranchers may have to grow or buy extra hay instead of getting it for free from nature, as they do now,” said lead report author Rebecca Shaw, Ph.D., associate vice president of EDF’s ecosystems program and a working group member of the IPCC.

The threat to forestry, agriculture and livestock is very real: In the last year alone, Texas has seen $5.3 billion in losses in the agricultural sector and $2 billion in losses in the livestock industry due to a serious, prolonged drought that was made worse by global warming.

The collaborative study on California was issued just as the state implements a carbon cap and trade system under the Global Warming Solutions Act – a program that will provide farmers and ranchers new economic opportunities by allowing them to sequester carbon and sell credits.

— Zachary Rybarczyk is an intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress

Related Post:

• Catastrophic $5.3 Billion Texas Drought Hits Global Cotton, Beef, Peanut Butter and Even Pumpkin Market
• Warming-Enhanced Texas Drought Is Once in “500 or 1,000 Years … Basically Off the Charts,” Says State Climatologist: Leading experts explain how human-caused warming exacerbates the drought

Other stories below: John Podesta on why we need to continue leadership in clean energy; Obama to tout natural gas in State of the Union

Coal Industry Losing Steam

This year’s outlook is grim for the U.S coal industry, which after two years of rising profits has begun closing mines, signaling a new wave of production cutbacks and, possibly, another round of industry consolidation.

The country’s biggest coal producers, which begin reporting fourth-quarter results on Tuesday with St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp., should provide insight into how bad this year could be. Most should meet Wall Street’s earnings expectations for the last quarter of 2011 on export gains over a year ago, while tempering investor expectations for 2012, say analysts.

The two biggest threats facing U.S. coal companies are the low price of domestic natural gas, which is making thermal coal a less-attractive fuel for their utility-customers, and the shaky economic picture in Europe, which is damping exports of metallurgical coal.

Demand among European steelmakers has fallen off, pushing down the benchmark price for the highest grades of coal by nearly 30% over the past year. Also damping prices is tougher federal emissions rules for U.S. utilities, resulting in more planned closures of coal-fired generating plants and eroding the market for thermal coal.

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