It’s one of the most remarkable interviews ever seen on Fox News. Yesterday, a conservative guest debunked all the destructive myths their pundits having been perpetuating, decrying their “fetish for demonizing the Volt.”

Conservatives, led by Fox News, have been pushing a variety of lies about the Chevy Volt. They’ve falsely asserted that it is unsafe and a creation of the Obama administration, using absurd terms to discourage sales like, “exploding Obamamobiles.”

This relentless partisan campaign against American products and American jobs has been so successful that GM CEO Dan Akerson suggested it contributed to lower than expected demand, “We did not design the Volt to become a political punching bag and that’s what it’s become.”

Yesterday, in an astonishing burst of candor, Fox & Friends has set the record straight with its story, “Can the Chevy Volt help win the War on Terror?”

Their conservative guest, Lee Spieckerman, CEO of Spieckerman Media, a self-described “drill, baby, drill guy,” debunks every single right-wing myth about the Volt, noting:

I love Fox news, and I feel like I’m kind of attacking my own family here. I love O’Reilly, I love Neil Cavuto, I love Eric Bolling, but like a lot of my fellow conservative, they seem to have kind of a fetish for demonizing the Volt.

They are perpetuating the myth that the Volt was some kind of Obama administration green energy fantasy that as you say was forced on General Motors during the bailout.

It’d been in development two years before Obama was elected. And it was championed by … Bob Lutz, who is a conservative and a climate change skeptic. So you know it’s a myth.

The tax break for buying the Volt was implemented by the Bush administration. It was not  something that was implemented under the Obama administration.

So unfortunately, there have been a lot of myths perpetuated.

Fox debunking itself — now that is must-see TV, something I’m not certain you’re ever going to see again.

Watch it:

The Fox host, Steve Doocy, actually says, “I’m glad you brought up the myth that so many people think that Barack Obama came into office a shoved this down GM’s throat.” Yes, Fox is shocked, shocked that people believe a lie that they themselves have been repeating endlessly.

And who could have imagined Fox would run a chart about “how much energy we could save” with the Volt. Alternative fuel vehicles are good for national security? It’s like Fox has temporarily been taken over by … its own pundits before 2009 (see Fox News Argued Getting Off Of OPEC Oil With Alternative Fuels Was ‘A National Security Issue’. Then Obama Won).

Spieckerman called the Volt “an anti-terrorist weapon” after pointing out:

“I don’t see what’s so conservative about wanting to send $35 billion a year to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela for his oil or to send $70 billion to Middle Eastern OPEC countries.  I don’t see how that’s conservative…. The Chevy Volt is by far the best way to bring all American energy … to our  automobiles….  It is the safest car on the road.”

Spieckerman also calls the Volt, “the iPhone of the American automobile industry,” explaining that it will come down in price like computers and flat screen TVs have.

I can’t wait for the segment on how conservatives should support a price on carbon pollution because it would save energy, cut the deficit, and boost national security.

After releasing a fantastic piece last December on the link between climate change and “mind-boggling” extreme weather, PBS is taking its coverage of the issue one step further.

The PBS NewsHour has just rolled out a new series, “Coping With Climate Change,” using multi-media reporting to explore the impact that our warming planet is having on American communities. With U.S. media coverage of climate change tumbling 20% in 2011, PBS deserves a lot of credit for this new reporting effort — producing an extended, ongoing series to flesh out the economic and environmental challenges exacerbated by global warming.

The latest story focuses on the unprecedented drought in Texas, which climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said recently was “enhanced by global warming, much of which has been caused by man.” Last week, agronomists in Texas reported that the warming-fueled drought cost the agricultural sector $7.6 billion.

PBS takes a look behind those numbers and tells the story of how water shortages in two Texas communities are putting residents in crisis mode. Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist at Texas Tech University, explains why human-caused global warming could make the crisis even worse:

“What climate change is doing is it’s increasing our temperatures, and higher temperatures mean faster evaporation,” she says, “So you need more water to provide the same amount of irrigation for crops if temperatures are higher. And that’s what we see happening here in Texas and in many places around the world.”

The impact of the drought in Texas is gut-wrenching. And with climatologists making the link between the catastrophe and a warming planet, the story is even more powerful. Watch it:

Related Posts:

• Silence of the Lambs 2: Media Herd’s Coverage of Climate Change Drops Sharply — Again
• PBS Covers Link Between 2011′s “Mind-Boggling” Extreme Weather and Global Warming: It’s Like “Being on Steroids”

A biogas facility in Denmark

Denmark is known for being a world leader in wind electricity. But there’s so much more to the country’s renewable energy sector that deserves attention.

A recent package of targets passed by the Danish parliament illustrates why diversity is key to a strong clean energy policy.

This week, lawmakers in Denmark agreed upon a new set promotion programs for efficiency and renewable energy that will put the country on a path to getting 100% of electricity, heat and fuels from renewable resources by 2050.

With a 50% wind penetration target, Denmark is still putting a lot of stock in wind. But the recent package is notable for its comprehensive approach to combined heat and power, biogas, geothermal heat pumps, and biofuels — with strong national financing mechanisms to tie all of these sectors together.

Of course, any good clean energy policy should aggressively promote efficiency. With a target for reducing final energy consumption 7% in 2020 compared with 2010 levels, Denmark is putting conservation and efficiency at the top of its priority list. Here are some of the initiatives just agreed upon:

• Energy companies must realize specific energy savings exceeding today’s requirements, e.g. by consulting energy experts and by offering subsidies to e.g. households and businesses.
• Energy companies must increase efforts by 75% from 2013 to 2014, and by 100% from 2015 to 2020 compared to 2010-12.
• A comprehensive strategy for energy renovation of all Danish buildings will
  be developed.

The focus on industrial heating and cooling is also a major part of the plan. Here in the U.S., we tend to focus all our attention on electricity generation and almost no attention on thermal energy. But like other European nations, Denmark is ahead of the curve in encouraging changes in this sector. The plan includes:

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AP Photo: Jessica Hill

Below is a summary of the full testimony (PDF here) from CAPAF’s Daniel J. Weiss to the House Committee on Natural Resources.

High oil and gasoline prices exact a real economic toll on American families, as well as on travel-related businesses. They make everything more expensive, including driving and air travel. Families may take shorter trips to offset higher fuel prices.

Fortunately, we are better able to withstand oil and gasoline price spikes. U.S. gasoline demand is the second lowest since 1997, due to the vehicle fuel economy standards adopted by President Barack Obama in 2009.

We are also producing more of our own oil. The United States imported only 45 percent of our oil in 2011, down from 57 percent in 2008. And the Energy Information Administration determined that in 2011 the United States produced more oil from its federal lands and offshore waters than each of the last three years of the previous administration.

But we still rely too much on a fuel whose price is set on a global market controlled by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a cartel. We remain vulnerable to volatile prices or international events beyond our control. And the price of oil is responsible for nearly three-quarters of the price of gasoline.

More domestic drilling has economic benefits but it will not lower gasoline prices. An Associated Press analysis of three decades of production and price data determined that there is “no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.”

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The top five oil companies in the United States have already made $5.8 billion in windfall profits from spiking gasoline prices this year. Yesterday, Senate Republicans agreed to debate a bill that repeals $2 billion in annual tax breaks for these super-wealthy oil giants. The move was purely a political calculation — don’t expect the GOP to end taxpayer welfare for their Big Oil allies. GOP senators like Rand Paul (R-KY) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) have used their time on the Senate floor today to push error-riddled arguments coming straight from their oil industry donors.

Paul argued Big Oil deserves even more favors from government, because they’re doing such a good job extracting wealth from American families:

Instead of punishing them, you should want to encourage them. I would think you would want to say to the oil companies, “What obstacles are there to you making more money?” And hiring more people. Instead they say, “No, we must punish them. We must tax them more to make things fair.” This whole thing about fairness is so misguided and gotten out of hand.

Watch it:

“We as a society need to glorify those who make a profit,” Paul concluded.

In his floor speech, Kyl claimed that ending the tax breaks would be “discriminatory.”

The five major oil companies are some of the largest and most profitable corporations in the world, increasingly at the expense of the rest of humanity. The big five companies enjoyed record levels of $137 billion profits last year, while paying absurdly low tax rates. Exxon is the most profitable, making $1300 per second in 2011, but it only paid a 13 percent tax rate, according to a Reuters analysis. The oil industry claims it pays a higher tax rate — but it counts foreign taxes and deferred taxes.

The industry is set to make even higher profits from record gas prices. A Center for American Progress analysis shows that for every penny rise in gas, the big five companies gain $200 million more in profit. Republican senators are asking to boost Big Oil’s profits at the expense of the 99 percent.

Meanwhile, the oil industry is not using its profits to hire more people. Paul falsely claimed the oil companies employ 9.2 million people — in fact, there are only 2.2 million jobs in the entire oil industry, and 40 percent of those jobs are minimum-wage work at gas stations. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP have shed their U.S. workforce by 11,200 between 2005 to 2010, according to a report last year. Big Oil isn’t investing in renewable energy or in reducing oil spills, either.

Strangely, while Kyl and Paul called an end to oil subsidies indefensible, they used the opportunity to label clean energy tax credits “crony government.” During his clean energy rant, Paul said:

It doesn’t seem to right that your tax dollars are sent to companies just because they’re big contributors.

Republicans have received 88 percent of donations from the oil industry’s coffers. In the Senate, Republicans have taken over $13.8 million from oil, compared to the Democrats’ $3.3 million, meaning Senate Republicans have taken four times the amount in Big Oil contributions as Democrats. Kyl is the No. 29 largest recipient in the Senate from oil and gas in career contributions with over $330,000and Paul has received over $106,000 from oil.

The Deepsea Challenger submersible begins test dive near Papua New Guinea. The sub is the centerpiece of a joint scientific project by explorer and filmmaker James Cameron, the National Geographic Society and Rolex to conduct deep-ocean research. Photo: National Geographic

by Lisa Speer, via NRDC’s Switchboard

Yesterday, filmmaker James Cameron became the first solo explorer to reach the ocean’s deepest point, traveling nearly seven miles down through some of the darkest, most mysterious waters on Earth. Cameron’s successful venture to the bottom of the Mariana Trench comes at a pivotal time for the deep ocean. As world leaders prepare for a June meeting in Brazil to discuss the future of our planet’s resources, the fate of the deep ocean is at stake.

In just 12 weeks, heads of state from around the world will gather in Rio de Janeiro for a major global summit on the planet’s future. Known as the “Earth Summit,” this meeting addresses the health of our climate, air, food sources, fresh water, and oceans. This meeting is vastly important—the last time world leaders gathered like this to discuss broad environmental concerns was a full ten years ago. It is essential that leaders at the 2012 Earth Summit address the future of some of our most vulnerable ocean space, the high seas.

Half of the Earth is covered by a vast global commons—that portion of the deep ocean that lies beyond the jurisdiction of any one country. Known as the “high seas,” this area of international waters (present in all regions of the globe) constitutes two thirds of the world’s oceans. The only way to ensure the health of the high seas is through international cooperation. And as this enormous area is increasingly threatened by deep sea mining, overfishing, ocean warming, acidification, and plastic and noise pollution, protecting the high seas is getting harder and harder every day.

Adding to the hurdles of protecting this crucial ocean area is the outdated and gap-ridden legal regime under which human activities—including fishing, shipping, energy production, and others—are managed.

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Politico: "The renovation may further hinder Romney's ability to connect to the average voter."

To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the 1% are different than you and me.

For Mitt Romney, who’s in the 1% of the 1%, that means a “four-car fantasy home,” as Politico put it after seeing the amazing blueprints for Romney’s proposed California beach house.

The “cars will have their own separate elevator,” and the redesigned house will have “a 3,600-square foot basement — a room with more floor space than the existing home’s entire living quarters.”

What exactly is this elevator? Politico explains:

But it may not help Romney — whose wealth has caused him trouble connecting with average folks — to be seen building a split-level, four-vehicle garage that comes with a “car lift” to transport automobiles between floors, according to 2008 schematic plans for the renovation obtained by POLITICO that are on file with the city of San Diego.

Ya think?

Remember, Romney plans to make the impact of rising gasoline prices on average American families a major component of his campaign — after shaking his Etch a Sketch and erasing his 2006 support for high gasoline prices to discourage consumption.

What might this elevator look like? Here’s a picture of what seems like a similar design on the web:

Sweet.

In case you were worried that the city might not okay Romney’s plans, Politico reports the project has “its own lobbyist, hired by Romney to push the plan through the approval process.” The lobbyist has been paid “$21,500 since 2008″ to lobby four city officials.

This is how capitalism works. The 1% of the 1% hires the 1% to grease the wheels, so to speak. Trickle down economics at work.

The next time gasoline prices surge, remember that Romney feels your pain — or at least he can hire someone who will feel your pain.

by David Roberts, reposted from Grist

After long anticipation and many delays, EPA is expected to issue its first limits on carbon pollution from power plants this week.

With Republicans increasingly desperate in the face of economic recovery, they are sure to treat this as a lifeline, a focus for renewed attacks. They will try to make the rule a stand-in for government overreach, job-killing regulations, and Obama’s secret plan to raise gas prices. Also probably Sharia.

These conservative attacks will be meritless, flying in the face of the considered judgment of credible, independent analysts. But the political media is unlikely to play “truth vigilante” by fact-checking them. Instead, expect endless horserace coverage of political tactics based on tired conventional wisdom — dissociated, for example, from the fact that EPA air rules are wildly popular with the public, across partisan lines.

With that coming fact void in mind, here are the top five things you need to know about the rule and the attacks that will follow it.

1. This rule applies to new power plants, not existing or currently permitted plants, meaning it won’t have any real effect until well after the election.

The new rule, issued under the Clean Air Act’s New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) program, requires that new power plants emit no more than 1,000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt. Currently, natural gas plants come in below that, in the 800s, while coal plants emit an average of almost 1,800. (Technically, a plant can operate for the first decade without carbon controls, but it must show after 30 years that it has emitted no more than 1,000/mW on average over that time.)

The rule will not apply to plants already permitted and headed toward construction, of which there are about a dozen. Nor will it apply to existing plants; they are, per standard New Source Review practice, “grandfathered in” under the rule.

Power plants have very long lead times. Even if a new plant were conceived today, it wouldn’t reach the permitting or construction phase until well into next year. So in terms of the economy leading up to the election, the effect of the rule will be negligible.

2. The rule marks (but did not cause) the end of new coal plants in the U.S.

No new conventional coal plant can meet EPA’s new pollution standard. The only way to cut a coal plant’s emissions in half is to build it with carbon capture and sequestration, which adds as much as 30 percent to its cost. (There’s also the possibility of co-firing coal with biomass, but I haven’t looked into that much.)

Anything that raises the cost of new coal plants is bad news for coal fans, because new coal plants already aren’t getting built, for economic reasons. Cheap natural gas is undercutting coal. So is the steep drop in wind and solar prices, the growing popularity of demand-side alternatives, the increase in materials costs, a rise in the cost of capital, and investors’ concerns over carbon risks. All this has conspired to grind coal plant proposals to a halt:

EIA reports [PDF] no new conventional coal plants coming online after 2012, and only two gigawatts of coal plants with carbon capture and sequestration coming online around 2017; then nothing more through 2035, the end of the EIA forecast period.

A spokesperson for American Electric Power, whose 38,000 MW fleet is currently two-thirds coal, told Ron Brownstein, “We don’t have any plans to build new coal plants. So the rules won’t have much of an impact.”

Don’t let conservatives fool you: new coal is outmoded and uneconomic in the U.S. EPA has little to do with it.

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Coal pollution and climate change aren’t funny. But poking fun at the people who pretend coal is not an environmental problem can make for a good laugh.

That’s what the Sierra Club is doing in its latest ad campaign, Mr. Coal Guy. The organization, which has been on the front lines of shutting down coal plants around the country, partnered with the San Francisco ad agency Mekanism to put together a series of videos mocking coal industry messaging. Enjoy.

Last summer, the Sierra Club secured a $50 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to help end coal use in the U.S. Along with doing boots-on-the-ground legal and advocacy work in individual communities, the partnership has also helped fund messaging projects like this lighthearted ad campaign.

As long-delayed rules to enforce the Clean Air Act against coal pollution go into force, the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign has launched Mr. Coal Guy, a new social-media campaign with satirical videos that parody the coal industry’s multi-million dollar advertising campaigns. These videos feature Mr. Coal Guy, played by Mr. Show’s John Ennis, using iconic TV shows from the 1980′s to portray coal as fun, hip, and totally safe. In one video, Mr. Coal Guy provides the voiceover to a clip of Bob Ross’s timeless landscape painting to promote mountaintop removal coal mining (“scrapey scrapey goodbye lakey!”):

Another video portrays a coal-executive beach party celebrating “the fact that coal pollution never causes any health problems”:

The $300,000 campaign is “a funny send up of just how desperate dirty fossil fuel execs are to keep our country chained to the dirty, outdated 19th-century energy source,” says Mary Anne Hitt, the director of the Beyond Coal campaign. The campaign is on Facebook and Twitter at @mrcoalguy.

Other stories below: GOP uses Keystone XL as oil tax breaks bargaining chip; Gasoline prices hit record highs around U.S.

BP spill culprit for heavy toll on coral, study finds

After months of laboratory work, scientists say they can definitively finger oil from BP’s blown-out well as the culprit for the slow death of a once brightly colored deep-sea coral community in the Gulf of Mexico that is now brown and dull.

In a study published Monday, scientists say meticulous chemical analysis of samples taken in late 2010 proves that oil from BP PLC’s out-of-control Macondo well devastated corals living about 7 miles southwest of the well. The coral community is located over an area roughly the size of half a football field nearly a mile below the Gulf’s surface.

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