It’s time to take back the narrative about clean energy.

Since the bankruptcy of a few high-profile clean energy companies, political opponents and media pundits have tried to label the entire industry a failure. This is a gross distortion of the on-the-ground reality — and it shows how disconnected people are from what’s really happening in this sector.

The clean energy industry is extraordinarily diverse, ranging from small contractors to massive industrial manufacturers. Recognizing the local value these sectors provide, states around the country are putting policies in place to attract new businesses and large amounts of private capital. And it’s working.

Massachusetts is the perfect example. After signing the Green Communities Act into law in 2008, the commonwealth has seen an explosion of new companies. There are now 64,000 people employed in Massachusetts’ clean energy sector today.

I traveled to the commonwealth with Andrew Satter, our senior video producer at the Center for American Progress, and brought back this piece from the front lines of the clean energy economy.

Jeff Masters, via Wunderblog

An unprecedented April heat wave brought a second day of sizzling temperatures to the Western U.S. yesterday, where temperatures ranging 20 – 30 degrees above normal have toppled numerous all-time April heat records.

All-time heat records for the month of April were set at 56 stations April 21 – 23, including at seven major cities. Image taken from wunderground’s new extremes page.

Nearly every weather station in the Inter-mountain West has broken, tied, or come within 1- 2 °F of their all-time record April heat record since Sunday. Most notably, the 113°F measured at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, California on Sunday, April 22 was tied for the hottest April temperature ever recorded in the U.S.

According to wunderground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, the hottest reliable April temperature ever measured in the U.S. was 113°F in Parker, Arizona in 1898. A 113°F reading was also taken at Catarina, Texas in April 1984. A hotter 118°F reading measured at Volcano Springs, CA in April 1898 is considered unreliable, since we don’t know much about the exposure conditions or if the thermometers were even in shelters at remote California desert stations back in the 1880s and 1890s. The previous hottest April day in Death Valley was 111°F. Yesterday, the high temperature in Death Valley “cooled off” to 110°F, merely the third highest April temperature ever measured there. The heat wave peaked Sunday and Monday, and temperatures will be closer to normal for the remainder of the week.

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New disclosures filed Friday show that the Romney campaign has now received about $3 million in “bundled” contributions collected by registered lobbyists. And about three-quarters of that total was collected by lobbyists who represent either polluter interests (oil, gas, and coal — or the energy companies that burn them), financial sector interests, or both.

Though Romney has not voluntarily disclosed any campaign bundlers who are not lobbyists, federal law requires that he identify major bundlers who are. To date, the campaign has identified 22 lobbyist bundlers who each raised $17,000 or more.

A ThinkProgress analysis of the data shows that 13 represent Big Energy and Big Finance — and between them, they collected more than $2.2 million in donations. They are:

• Patrick Durkin Sr. ($927,160), a lobbyist for British banking giant Barclays.
• Wayne Berman ($424,825), a lobbyist for Ogilvy Government Relations. His polluter clients include Chevron, Hess, and Kosmos Energy and his finance clients include Visa, Marwood Group, and The Travelers Companies.
• T. Martin Fioerentino Jr. ($325,045), a lobbyist for The Fiorentino Group. He represents Lender Processing Services, a prominent mortgage and consumer loan processing company.
• Austin Barbour ($210,700), a recent Romney campaign hire who, in 2011, worked as a lobbyist for Capitol Resources LLC. His clients included polluter Gulf LNG Energy. Barbour is the nephew of former Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS).
• Paul Mattera ($64,200), a lobbyist for Liberty Mutual Insurance.
• Drew Maloney ($56,750), a lobbyist for Ogilvy Government Relations. His polluter clients include GenOn Energy, Exelon Business Services, and Sempra Energy and he represents National Bank of Canada.
• Joseph Wall ($47,437), a lobbyist for Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs.
• David Tamasi ($39,785), a lobbyist for Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communication. His polluter clients include GDF Suez and his financial clients include Next Street Financial and the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association.
• Michael McSherry ($30,200), a lobbyist for Mercury Public Affairs. He represents Peabody Energy and Stifel Financial Corp.
• Kent Burton ($26,510), a lobbyist for National Environmental Strategies. His polluter clients include Murray Energy, Marathon Oil, Pacific Gas & Electric, and, as of recently, Shell Oil.
• Tom Boyd ($26,350), a lobbyist for DLA Piper. His financial sector clients include Experian Group, Charles Schwab & Co., and Discover Financial Services.
• Andrew Wheeler ($17,000), a lobbyist for Faegre Baker Daniels. His polluter clients include Murray Energy.
• Mark Isakowitz ($17,000), a lobbyist for Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock. His polluter clients include Noble Energy and BP America and his many finance clients include Hartford Financial Services Group, JPMorgan Chase, the Managed Funds Association, Mutual of Omaha, and Zurich Financial.

Romney’s strong support from powerful Wall Street and energy lobbyists is unsurprising given his proposals to repeal the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and undo environmental protections — and his support for continuing subsidies for Big Oil.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, Romney’s lobbyist-bundler list also includes Ignacio E. Sanchez ($86,700) of DLA Piper, a registered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates and a birther presidential candidate in the Dominican Republic.

President Obama does not accept campaign contributions donated or bundled by federal lobbyists or foreign agents. His campaign voluntarily discloses all of its major bundlers, as did Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and President George W. Bush (R) in their 2000, 2004, and 2008 races.

by Rachel Wilf and Jorge Madrid

All Americans can celebrate the Environmental Protection Agency’s commitment to ensure everyone can breathe clean air. But this commitment particularly benefits communities of color. Currently, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans are especially vulnerable to air pollution’s health effects. Within the last year, however, the EPA instituted new mercury and air toxics standards and restrictions on cross-state air pollution. Last week the EPA also proposed carbon emissions limits on coal plants—a historic first step to slow the growth of the major pollutant responsible for global climate change. The EPA’s new policies could improve racial health disparities by shielding millions of Americans of color from further exposure to pollutants.

Air pollution causes severe health problems. Mercury, a potent neurotoxin emitted by many coal-fired power plants, can impair brain development in children and harm hearts, brains, kidneys, and lungs in adults. And ozone and particulate matter have been linked to poor birth outcomes as well as respiratory and cardiovascular disease. By contributing to global warming, carbon emissions increase temperatures and amplify the health effects of ozone and other pollutants. Carbon emissions can also lead directly to a worsening of asthma symptoms.

For many people of color, this air pollution is an unavoidable feature of daily life because they are more likely to live and work in the nation’s most polluted cities. According to a recent nationwide study, non-Hispanic blacks are “consistently overrepresented” in the counties with the worst air quality in the nation. In 2006 Hispanics were 165 percent and Asian Americans 169 percent more likely to live in counties with unhealthy levels of particulate matter than were whites and were also more likely to live in areas with unhealthy ozone levels. An analysis of polluting facilities in California found that 62 percent of residents living within six miles of a petroleum refinery, cement plant, or power plant were people of color. And a startling 68 percent of African Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared to only 56 percent of the white population.

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Deepwater Horizon disaster ruined Florida's shores.

On the heels of the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, federal prosecutors have issued the first arrest related to the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. The Justice Department has charged former BP engineer Kurt Mix with destroying evidence on BP’s internal response to the disaster.

Mix, who worked on estimating the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf, allegedly deleted hundreds of text messages with a BP supervisor. This includes one that read “Too much flowrate —- over 15,000,” barrels of oil per day, which was three-times higher than BP’s public estimate of barrels of oil per day at the time.

Attorney General Eric Holder issued the statement [emphasis added]:

“The department has filed initial charges in its investigation into the Deepwater Horizon disaster against an individual for allegedly deleting records relating to the amount of oil flowing from the Macondo well after the explosion that led to the devastating tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Attorney General Holder. “The Deepwater Horizon Task Force is continuing its investigation into the explosion and will hold accountable those who violated the law in connection with the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.”

As the criminal investigations continue, Congress has still not yet passed legislation responding to a disaster that continues to have devastating effects on fish, beaches, and wetlands.

Two leading conservative political organizations say they are stepping up coordinated efforts to repeal state-level renewable energy targets.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — a “stealth business lobbyist” that works with corporate interests to help them write and implement “model” legislation — says it may soon start crafting laws designed to kill or weaken state targets for renewable electricity, heating and fuels.

ALEC has come under fire in recent weeks for its support of voter ID laws and the controversial Stand-Your-Ground law that opponents blame for the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. After progressive groups began an aggressive campaign to educate the public about ALEC, 13 companies have since pulled their membership from the organization.

Last July, Bloomberg News acquired tax documents showing that Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil and other energy companies paid membership fees to ALEC in order to help write legislation repealing carbon pollution reduction programs in states around country.

Bloomberg now reports that ALEC is looking to take aim at renewable energy programs in states:

ALEC, a group of state lawmakers and corporations recently criticized for its support of Stand-Your-Ground laws highlighted in the Florida shooting of Trayvon Martin, may write model legislation for state lawmakers to repeal or weaken the mandates later this year, said Todd Wynn, energy, environment and agriculture task force director for the group, in an interview. Stand-Your-Ground laws allows citizens to use force when threatened, even when they can retreat.

The group may also develop an “energy freedom” index that ranks states based on regulation, market intervention and taxes.

ALEC has already attempted to write legislation preventing targets for renewable energy on the federal level. As nothing substantive has happened nationally, it seems ALEC is now preparing to take its corporate-influenced legislation to the 29 states that actually have targets in place.

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Even as extreme weather worsens and the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change gets more alarming, it was hard to find any television outlets touching the subject this Earth Day.

However, there was one show that addressed climate change with a sense of urgency.

While CNN ran stories about “acts of green” and Fox News hilariously lamented that the earth “is not friendly to human beings,” former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm devoted a large portion of her show, The War Room, to the most pressing environmental story in history.

Granholm featured three segments on climate and energy issues, bringing in Al Gore, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Jeffrey Sachs to talk about the consequences of inaction. She also gave her own forceful monologue urging people to put politicians in office that “will allow your children to have a future on this planet.” As Granholm put it, “Your thinking small does not serve the world”:

“Across the political spectrum Democrats, Independents and Republicans now see that the climate is changing….

The climate is changing. But excuses for inaction have not. And nature doesn’t care about excuses.”

Watch it:

Al Gore appeared on the show, saying that he believes the small group of vocal climate deniers will eventually lose their voice: “We have got to win this. And we will win this. Because the reality is what it is.”

Watch it:

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by Michael A. Livermore

Between 2007 and 2011, use of the phrase “job-killing regulations” in U.S. newspapers increased by 17,550%. Recently, committees of the 112^th U.S. House of Representatives convened twenty hearings in its first twenty days that explored the link between regulations and the country’s job numbers.  Protections for our public health and environment in particular have been on the receiving end of this barrage.

Claims that regulations have a significant impact on American employment call for careful scrutiny. Because they are repeated so often, the idea that regulations “kill jobs” can start to sound true, or at least “truthy.”  But when you scratch the surface of these claims, too often they are based more on ideology than sound methodology.

Some of the most heated rhetoric in this debate can give the impression that regulations are creating a widespread jobs crisis and that the economy would be thriving were it not for President Obama’s environmental protection agenda.  But what are all these claims linking negative job effects to regulation based on?  In the scrum of politics it is often not clear: sometimes no analysis is cited, no data is included, no supporting documents are attached.

In some cases, studies are cited in attempt to estimate the employment effects of environmental protection.  But their limitations are not communicated clearly enough or given enough attention.

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Sarah Palin, John McCain’s “energy expert” in 2008, now appears to be setting the agenda for Mitt Romney. On Earth Day, Palin bashed the “holiest of days for EcoLiberals,” saying in a National Review blogpost that it should be celebrated with “drill, baby, drill.” On Monday, Romney followed Sarah Palin’s lead, telling an audience at a major coal company that he too opposes environmental regulations for drilling of coal, oil, and natural gas.

Romney even adopted Palin’s language in his speech at a Consol Energy research facility:

PALIN: “It’s time for the greatest nation on earth to tap into its full potential, and one surefire way to do so is to tap into what is beneath this earth.”

ROMNEY: “The course that I will put us on is to take advantage of what comes from above the ground as well as what comes from below the ground so that America can finally become energy-secure and independent of the oil cartel.”

“Romney’s energy and environmental platform calls for stripping EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and expanding oil-and-gas leasing to include areas that are currently off limits, including the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, among other measures,” The Hill’s Ben Geman writes.

Romney denied that global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels at a Consol Energy facility last year. Consol has given $5000 to the Romney campaign and $150,000 to the Romney SuperPAC.

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

Renewables “help jobs and growth”: The renewable energy industry supports 110,000 jobs in the UK and could support 400,000 by 2020, a report says. [BBC]

Barack Obama has launched a new green re-election site hoping to make up with environmental voters ahead of next November’s vote. Environmentalists for Obama is aimed at organizing green voters, who have had a complicated relationship with the Obama White House. [Guardian]

The extended closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant due to safety concerns has led some to speculate — or hope — that the plant will be shuttered for good, but the chief nuclear officer for plant operator Southern California Edison said he doesn’t believe the problems signal the plant’s demise. [Los Angeles Times]

The UK and US will work together to develop “floating” wind turbines to harness more offshore wind power at a potentially lower cost, the government said on Monday. [Guardian]