by Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts

LKQ, an auto-parts company that had been a major contributor to the Heartland Institute, has decided to end their association with climate denial. According to calculations by Forecast the Facts, their decision means that the Heartland Institute has now lost over $1 million in expected corporate support for 2012 from 19 different corporations. According to leaked documents, Heartland expected LKQ to contribute $150,000 in 2012.

LKQ announced last week on its Facebook page that it decided to “immediately sever all ties to the group”:

LKQ has never engaged with The Heartland Institute on any issues related to climate change. In fact, LKQ Corporation is an inherently green company whose widespread, large-scale recycling efforts conserve energy and preserve valuable natural resources.

LKQ informed The Heartland Institute on May 8 of its decision to immediately sever all ties to the group. We believe that this is an appropriate step that serves our company and its shareholders.

LKQ’s Facebook announcement was overshadowed by the Heartland Institute’s climate-denial conference in Chicago, which garnered the public support of the Illinois Coal Association. As Climate Progress reported, the conference featured birther jokes and conspiracy theories, but not a single climate scientist.

Blue-chip corporations General Motors, PepsiCo, State Farm, and Eli Lilly have now responded to public outcry over Heartland’s outrageous behavior, which includes classroom climate denial, Unabomber billboards, and its embarrassing parody of a scientific conference. Corporations that continue to support the Heartland Institute include Pfizer, Comcast, and Microsoft. Greenpeace has begun a petition to challenge Nucor, a major steel company that directly funds Heartland’s climate-denial work, to drop its support.

by Jessica Goad

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney campaigned in Craig, Colorado this morning, where he slammed the Obama administration for its energy policies. Romney implied in his speech that there are no clean energy jobs in Colorado, an assertion that is blatantly untrue.

And then of course there’s his plan for energy. You see, he said he was going to create some 5 million green energy jobs.  Have you seen those around here anywhere?  No, as a matter of fact he’s gone after energy.

There are actually tens of thousands of clean energy jobs in Colorado. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the state had 72,452 jobs in “green goods and services” in 2010. In addition, the American Wind Energy Association also says that Colorado’s wind energy industry alone supported 4,000-5,000 jobs in 2011.

But these wind energy jobs could be at risk.  Vestas, the wind turbine manufacturer, which operates four production plants in Colorado, says it will be forced to lay off more than 1,600 workers if the production tax credit for wind is not extended. Up to 37,000 jobs could be at risk nationwide without an extension of this key tax credit.

President Obama was in Iowa last week urging Congress to renew the credit.

Romney has implied that he would like to see the credit expire:

…we should not be in the business of steering investment toward particular politically favored approaches. That is a recipe for both time and money wasted on projects that do not bring us dividends. The failure of windmills and solar plants to become economically viable or make a significant contribution to our energy supply is a prime example.

Meanwhile, Romney supports a Republican budget that would maintain billions of dollars in permanent tax credits for mature fossil fuel companies.

The benefits of Colorado’s renewable energy industry are not lost on residents of the state.  A January 2012 poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project found that 64 percent of state residents believed increasing the use of renewable energy will be good for job growth in Colorado.

Romney’s choice of location Craig, Colorado is not a coincidence. In February, the American Energy Alliance, the Institute for Energy Research, and Americans for Prosperity — Koch-funded oil and coal industry groups — ran a video attacking the president’s energy policies called “The Perfect Storm Over Craig, Colorado.”

These and other pro-fossil fuel groups have poured millions into ads attacking clean energy. In April, a ThinkProgress analysis found that Americans for Prosperity, Crossroads GPS, the American Energy Alliance, and the American Petroleum Institute had spent more than $16 million on energy ads against the president’s energy policies. Energy issues made up 81% of campaign ads in April.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is entrusted with maintaining the balance between business interests and the delicate ecology of Florida’s precious wetlands.

But in the last several years, officials at the DEP who have sought to regulate the expansion of development in order to protect these valuable natural resources have faced retribution from pro-business officials.

The latest is Connie Bersok, Florida’s top wetlands expert. Last week, she refused to authorize a permit to a company seeking to develop a pine plantation in the northern part of the state.

The company, Highlands Ranch Mitigation Bank, is one of several across Florida that helps restore lost wetlands in exchange for credits issued by the state. Those credits are then sold to private developers who want to build on top of current wetlands. In theory, this system is meant to ensure that every acre of lost wetlands is replaced.

But as the Tampa Bay Times has reported, the credit system is deeply flawed:

In a series of articles in 2006, the Times found serious problems with Florida’s mitigation banks. Some got more than half of their wetland credits for land that was actually dry. A 2007 study done for the DEP reported that fewer than half of the banks reviewed had achieved their restoration goals.

But mitigation banking is still a big business. Wetland credits in northeast Florida have sold for up to $100,000 each, [Glenn] Lowe said.

Bersok said that Highlands was not helping build the amount of wetlands claimed, thereby stating her “objection to the intended agency action and refusal to recommend this permit for issuance.” She was suspended for her decision.

Because companies can take advantage of loopholes, some state environmental officials are reluctant to grant permits to mitigation banks like Highlands Ranch. But those decisions have resulted in negative consequences for those who speak out:

“They’re scrappy, these guys,” said Glenn Lowe, who lost his job with the St. Johns River Water Management District after he refused to give Highlands Ranch what its owners wanted. Former water district executive director Kirby Green said Lowe and other employees lost their jobs because Gov. Rick Scott’s pro-business administration didn’t like the way they treated Highlands Ranch.

In fact, environmental protection is a pro-business strategy. Wetlands are an important part of Florida’s economy. In 2009, the Everglades National Park supported 2,792 jobs and over $165 million in economic benefits, according to analysis from Headwaters Economics.

ThinkProgress reached out to Connie Bersok, who declined to be interviewed because she is still employed by the DEP.

The Romney campaign released yet another ad today on Solyndra and the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program. Romney’s ad repeats the same half-truths and lies about stimulus funding that factcheckers have repeatedly debunked.

During the campaign, Romney has routinely dismissed the nation’s 3.1 million clean energy jobs while intensifying his attacks on the industry. Ironically, the clean energy industry is booming in his home state of Massachusetts, creating 64,000 jobs across the energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors.

In a story published over the weekend, the Boston Globe highlights how solar is “flourishing” in his home state:

In the past two years alone, solar energy-generating capacity in the state has more than doubled to 105 megawatts, ­according to the state Department of Energy Resources. That’s enough to power at least 15,750 homes.

The number of solar installation firms in the state has also exploded, to nearly 200 last year from about 43 in 2007. In total, state energy officials estimate that more than 1,300 solar energy firms — installers, manufacturers, and others — operate in Massachusetts, employing about 14,000.

In addition, Massachusetts has created a market for solar renewable energy credits, which solar project owners can sell to power plant operators to meet state regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.

The money from those sales helps further lower the cost of solar power.

Such policies have made solar economically competitive in the state, despite less than optimal sun, said Jim Dumas, principal at Solect Inc., a Hopkinton company with 10 employees. Solect is currently installing a 475-kilowatt solar system atop a commercial building in Northborough.

In April, the Center for American Progress filmed a short documentary on the explosion of activity in Massachusetts’ clean energy sector.

Even while solar grows quickly in Massachusetts, helping grow new businesses, Romney’s plan would reduce investments in clean energy. He would strike subsidies, loans, and research for the clean energy industry — all while endorsing a House GOP budget that maintains subsidies for oil and coal giants.

Despite a year of investigation finding no evidence of political misconduct, the GOP has hammered away at Solyndra. American Crossroads is up with its own ad today on Solyndra, following an earlier fact-challenged ad from its affiliate Crossroads GPS.

Factcheckers have called every one of these ads bogus. The Washington Post FactChecker labeled these ads a “depressing duty” because the same “erroneous assertions” had been debunked years ago. And Politifact gave a “false” to the claim that Solyndra contributed to higher gas prices.

In fact, an independent review of the loan guarantee program that supported Solyndra found that it will cost $2 billion less than originally anticipated.

The U.S. is being pummeled by a climate system on steroids. For the year to date, new heat records continue to beat cold records by a staggering 14.7 to 1, which trumps the pace of the last decade by a factor of 7!

And the U.S. southeast is being whipsawed from brutal drought to deluge (via tropical storm), which, curiously enough, is just what scientists have said global warming has started to do in the summertime, too.

Here are some charts that tells the story.

Beryl is Earliest “B” Storm on Record

“The chart shows the date of formation for the second named Atlantic tropical cyclone of the season from 1950 through 2012. The average date through 2011 was August 1, so Beryl is nearly 10 weeks earlier than average.”

While warm Gulf stream waters have helped spin up Beryl, the heat has been socking the mainland U.S. all year, as this chart from Capital Climate shows:

Following a March heat wave that was “unmatched in recorded history” for the U.S. (and Canada), heat records continued to trump cold records by a huge amount in both April and May. I like the statistical aggregation across the country, since it gets us beyond the oft-repeated point that you can’t pin any one record temperature on global warming.

A 2009 analysis shows that the average ratio for the 2000s was 2.04-to-1, a sharp increase from previous decades. Lead author Dr. Gerald Meehl explained, “If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even.”

Many of the country’s leading climatologists and meteorologists have looked at the data and concluded that like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace (see also “March Heat Records Crush Cold Records by Over 35 To 1, Scientists Say Global Warming Loaded The Dice“).

Climate Central has a great graphic of the record temperatures for any month that you can play around with, which I’ll post at the end. But first, as Capital Climate notes with the following chart, “the U.S. is well on its way to crush the record for warmest spring since national temperature data began in 1895“:

Read more

Gas prices may have dipped in the weeks leading up to the Memorial Day weekend, but consumers are still responding to high gas prices.

According to a new poll from Consumer Reports, 37 percent of Americans say that fuel economy is their top consideration when looking for a new car. That makes efficiency the most important factor for consumers by far.

The next closest consideration was safety, which was ranked as a top priority by 17 percent of Americans.

The poll also showed that nearly three quarters of respondents were open to considering new types personal transportation like electric vehicles:

The survey, conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, found that car owners were open to different ways of saving at the pump, from downsizing to looking at hybrids, electric cars, or models with diesel engines. In all, nearly three quarters (73 percent) of participants said they would consider some type of alternatively fueled vehicle, with flex-fuel (which can run on E85 ethanol) and hybrid models leading the way. Younger buyers were more likely to consider an alternatively-fuel or purely electric vehicle than drivers over the age of 55.

Electric vehicle sales in the U.S. have been slower than expected. While record numbers of Chevy Volts were sold in March, the following month saw a major dip in sales. Nissan has faced a similar pattern of sales with its Leaf.

But auto industry executives say it’s far too early to draw conclusions about the success of the electric vehicle in the U.S.

“I don’t want you to take a one-month or two-month sales result in one particular market to try to make your opinion about the evolution of a very important technology for the industry,” said Nissan’s CEO in April.

Despite the current lag in the EV market, it is clear that America’s relationship with the automobile is changing. Consumers are driving less, using less fuel, and buying more efficient cars. Indeed, many younger consumers are choosing not to buy automobiles at all.

by Adam James

As concerns mount over the accessibility and quality of meals in cities, urban agriculture is becoming a practical solution to give communities more choice — all while helping address greenhouse gas emissions from centralized agriculture.

With over 80 percent of the American population living in metropolitan centers, urban farming has the ability to dramatically enhance economic growth, increase food quality, and build healthier communities.

The Problem: Carbon Intensive Meals

“Would you like some CO2 with that?”

The globalization of food has dramatically increased the amount of carbon emissions in our meals — particularly in America.

For example,  food related emissions in the U.S. account for 21 percent of total emissions, or 6.1 tons of CO2 per year. Additionally, 15 percent of personal transportation emissions, 20 percent of home energy use emissions, and 23 percent of the aggregate remaining activities are food-related as well. Add it all up and you find that our food choices make up a very large portion of our overall footprint.

Consumer activities like traveling to the grocery store, eating at restaurants, and cooking make up 46 percent of total emissions from food.

The other 54 percent of emissions come from the production, distribution, and selling of food. This includes activities like packaging, storage, and transportation. The average meal has traveled 4,200 miles just to get to the table. And at the end of the line, food related emissions account for 28 percent of all U.S. landfill gas emissions.

So what can be done?

The Solution: Urban Farming’s Wide Range of Benefits

There are already plenty of resources on the energy intensity of food and how to calculate the emissions from a given meal. But people — particularly those in cities living in “food deserts” — can’t act on this information if they don’t have the resources.

This is where urban agriculture comes in. Urban agriculture is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as:

“[A]n industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to the daily demand of consumers within a town, city, or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urban area, applying intensive production methods, using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes to yield a diversity of crops and livestock.”

Basically, urban farming allows individuals or groups to establish gardens or mini-farms on small plots, using creative techniques to maximize, output, meet local needs, and help make efficient use of the land. Gardeners are finding all kinds of ways to grow food: On rooftops, in abandoned buildings, and on deteriorating plots of land.

These operations can help consumers lower their food emissions by giving them the choice to eat food grown within their communities, not thousands of miles away.

But that’s not all. In addition to offsetting emissions, there are at least three concrete benefits to urban farming: economic growth; community building; and improved health.

Read more

by Robert Stavins, via An Economic View of the Environment

Debate continues in the United States, Europe, and throughout the world about whether the forces of the marketplace can be harnessed in the interest of environmental protection, in particular, to address the threat of global climate change.  In an essay that appears in the Spring 2012 issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, my colleague, Joseph Aldy, and I take on this question.  In the article – “Using the Market to Address Climate Change:  Insights from Theory & Experience” – we investigate the technical, economic, and political feasibility of market-based climate policies, and examine alternative designs of carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and clean energy standards.

The Premise

Virtually all aspects of economic activity – individual consumption, business investment, and government spending – affect greenhouse gas emissions and, therefore, the global climate. In essence, an effective climate change policy must change the nature of decisions regarding these activities in order to promote more efficient generation and use of energy, lower carbon-intensity of energy, and a more carbon-lean economy.

Basically, there are three possible ways to accomplish this: (1) mandate that businesses and individuals change their behavior; (2) subsidize business and individual investment; or (3) price the greenhouse gas externality proportional to the harms that these emissions cause.

Harnessing Market Forces by Pricing Externalities

The pricing of externalities can promote cost-effective abatement, deliver efficient innovation incentives, avoid picking technology winners, and ameliorate, not exacerbate, government fiscal conditions.

By pricing carbon emissions (or, equivalently, the carbon content of the three fossil fuels – coal, petroleum, and natural gas), the government provides incentives for firms and individuals to identify and exploit the lowest-cost ways to reduce emissions and to invest in the development of new technologies, processes, and ideas that can mitigate future emissions. A fairly wide variety of policy approaches fall within the concept of externality pricing in the climate-policy context, including carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, and clean energy standards.

What About Conventional Regulatory Approaches?

Read more

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

German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity – equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity – through the midday hours of Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank has said. [Guardian]

The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world’s leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed….

Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone. It aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2020.

An advance guard of 18-wheelers is scheduled to roll into a business park in Cheyenne, Wyo., this week to unload components of a supercomputer called Yellowstone. This 1.5-quadrillion-calculations-per-second crystal ball will model future climate and forecast extreme weather. [Washington Post]

According to hurricane researchers, the spell of relative calm between major hurricanes is mainly due to the random variability that is inherent in the weather and climate. [Climate Central]

Southern California Gas Co. is trying out an unusual new technology that uses the sun’s rays to provide air conditioning as well as power. [Los Angeles Times]

The Army and Air Force are confident they can each meet a White House target to produce a gigawatt of renewable energy on their installations by 2025. But it’s going to depend on industry’s ability to make good business deals to construct those projects. [Federal News Radio]

So what does the presumptive GOP nominee really believe? And how would he address climate change if elected president? One person who may well know is Gina McCarthy, who Romney tapped for top environmental posts in Massachusetts. But these days she’s not talking—presumably because she’s working for President Barack Obama as a top-ranking political appointee at the Environmental Protection Agency. [Mother Jones]

With crude prices bouncing around above $90 a barrel, many companies are trying to wring the oil out of their operations. [Los Angeles Times]

The debate may be continuing about global warming, but the ground reality here is that dozens of streams and brooks of Kullu district have dried up completely, while many others are about to disappear. [Times of India]