In this post, I’ll debunk David Brooks’ error-riddled op-ed, “A Sad Green Story.” His piece is so myth-filled, it would be better termed a fairy tale.

Brooks, of course, is the conservative who wants to be loved by progressives. But for every seemingly mavericky thing he says – “I totally accept the scientific authorities who say that global warming is real and that it is manmade” — is another filled with errors, such as his “Flip-Flop on Green Jobs.”

Today’s piece is so bad, it’s hypocrisy has already been skewered by the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein, and its litany of false statements have been debunked by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Media Matters — which I’ll excerpt below.

First though, like every fairy tale, this one begins once upon a time in a land far, far away:

The period around 2003 was the golden spring of green technology. John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced a bipartisan bill to curb global warming. I got my first ride in a Prius from a conservative foreign policy hawk who said that these new technologies were going to help us end our dependence on Middle Eastern despots. You’d go to Silicon Valley and all the venture capitalists, it seemed, were rushing into clean tech.

Yes, it was a happy time in the Bizarro world, Htrae. But soon, a darkness fell over the land:

From that date on the story begins to get a little sadder.

Al Gore released his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. The global warming issue became associated with the highly partisan former vice president. Gore mobilized liberals, but, once he became the global warming spokesman, no Republican could stand shoulder to shoulder with him and survive. Any slim chance of building a bipartisan national consensus was gone.

Then, in 2008, Barack Obama seized upon green technology and decided to make it the centerpiece of his jobs program. During his presidential campaign he promised to create five million green tech jobs. Renewable energy has many virtues, but it is not a jobs program….

This is a story of overreach, misjudgments and disappointment.

You’re crying? I’m so sorry. But don’t worry, kids, this story never happened. It’s just make believe. Look, here, I have the real story. Sure, it also has an unhappy ending, but at least it has the advantage of being true.

You see, there was this couch, and, in an effort sponsored by Al Gore himself, the former Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich sat on it with his Democratic counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, and they both endorsed climate action. You’re crying, again? Oh, I see, yes, he is a giant newt, but his bark is much, much — googolplex much — worse than his bite. Where was I?

Yes, take a look at this chart, it’ll make you feel much, much better … for a while, anyway.

Percent of Americans Who Believe the Effects of Global Warming Have Already Begun to Happen, by Political Ideology, from McCright and Dunlap

Political polarization on climate jumped in 2009 — long after Gore’s 2006 movie.

Many, many Republicans embraced cap-and-trade after the movie and didn’t flip flop on climate until 2009, suggesting again it was something other than Gore’s advocacy to blaim (see Tim Pawlenty: “Every one of us” running for president has flip-flopped on climate change).

Let’s remember that the GOP presidential nominee in 2008 ran on a platform of climate action and cap-and-trade — even his conservative VP, Sarah Palin, endorsed it.  That’s a key reason again that you see in the top chart that the liberal-conservative polarization did not accelerate until 2009, when a certain person got elected with overwhelming majorities and the prospect of an actual climate bill became quite real.

Extensive polling data and analysis simply doesn’t support this myth that Gore polarized the debate. Indeed, on the basis of his 2012 peer-reviewed analysis, Dr. Robert Brulle told me,

“I think this should close down forever the idea that Al Gore caused the partisan polarization over climate change.”

I’ve asked many other leading experts on social science and public opinion — including McCright and Dunlap, authors of “The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public’s views of global warming, 2001–2010″ — and they all agree the data don’t support this myth.  Stanford’s Jon Krosnick also agrees there is no data to support it.

It is a fairy tale, and one that people as intermittently smart as David Brooks should stop telling.

Ezra Klein notes that “pricing carbon” is “an idea Brooks supported then and supports now,” and then he skewers Brooks:

Read more

by Peyton Fleming

I’m on a bus driving across West Texas and all appears well. Miles and miles of white-speckled cotton fields line both sides of the road. Splotches of green grassland are a welcome sign from last year’s devastating drought. Dozens of giant wind turbines churn away far off in the distance.

But appearances are deceiving.

West Texas is on the front lines of a changing climate, and scarce water is the most obvious symptom. Everyone – ranchers, farmers, water engineers – is talking about it.

A cyclone of hotter temperatures, more people, water-sapping cotton farming and a devastating 2011 drought have crippled groundwater supplies. And, though the drought has lifted, West Texans are being forced to change their ways like never before.

“It’s quite emotional today,” said Jim Conkwright, general manager of the High Plains Underground Conservation Water District #1, headquartered in Lubbock.

Conkwright is referring to parched conditions across much of the vast Ogallala Aquifer, which have forced first-ever limits on how much water farmers can pump from their wells. This year’s limit is 21 inches per acre per year; in 2014, it drops to 18 inches.

Adding salt to the wound, farmers are being required to install water meters to ensure they don’t exceed  their limits. “These are dirty words,” Conkwright said, of the new rules. “This is a very very hot topic. It may result in board members being unseated.”

Farmers aren’t the only ones being affected by the new norm of drier, hotter weather in this historically arid region.

Ranchers at Koch Industries’ Matador Ranch – owned by climate contrarians the Koch Brothers – cut their cattle herd in half and are using a new more resilient grass seed – instead of native grass – on several thousand acres of the 130,000-acre ranch. Ranch managers attribute the changes more to the vicissitudes of changing weather, not to a warming planet.

The City of Lubbock saw one of its key water reservoirs dry up. “Lake Meredith is dead,”  said City Engineer Wood Franklin, where customers have been living for many months under Stage Two drought conditions which limit lawn watering to once a week.

The stringent restrictions were lifted in August only after the city activated a new reservoir, Lake Alan Henry, that took several decades to build at a cost of $220 million.

Investors smell opportunity too – in the form of lucrative water rights.

Last year, T. Boone Pickens and his Mesa Water Inc. sold the water rights beneath 211,000 acres – atop the Ogallala Aquifer – for over $100 million to the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, which serves 11 communities, including Amarillo and Lubbock. Pickens tried selling to Dallas for a higher price, but the $3 billion pipeline was too costly.

“Just as soon as it rained, you couldn’t get ‘em on the phone,” Pickens told the Associated Press, of his negotiations last June with Dallas. “You were always waiting for another drought to start negotiations again.”

The fact that the drought has abated is putting the region’s handling of the water crisis at a crossroads.

Many, like Lubbock’s water engineers, argue for keeping the pedal down on tough water conservation measures. Lubbock’s Water Resources Director Aubrey Spear expressed disappointment that the Stage Two drought restrictions, which helped cut water use by about 25 percent, were lifted so quickly.

“Water conservation is something we’ll want to stress continuously, not just during droughts,” Spear said.

Conkwright expressed similar disappointment that a two-year moratorium is in place for assessing civil penalties against farmers who don’t install water meters and report their water use. “It sends the wrong signal,” he said.

As for West Texas farming in the future, he says, “dry-land farming.”

Peyton Fleming, Strategic Communications Director at Ceres, is attending the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) annual conference in Lubbock, Texas. This piece was originally published at Ceres and was reprinted with permission.

If you’ve turned on the television, walked by a bus stop, or visited a social networking site in the last 10 months, there’s a very good chance you’ve been targeted by the American Petroleum Institute’s “Vote 4 Energy” campaign. It’s one of the most prominent and consistent ad buys amongst the tidal wave of spending from fossil fuel groups this election season.

Launched at the beginning of the year, the campaign was rolled out in conjunction with an energy plan that calls for unrestrained oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Outer Continental Shelf, onshore and offshore in the Arctic, and public lands around the country. The plan also calls for developing the Keystone XL pipeline and increasing production of tar sands — one of the most environmentally-destructive and carbon-intensive resources — by 250 percent.

API’s vision, which brings “drill, baby, drill” to the absolute extreme, is a one-size-fits-all energy plan that treats fossil fuel extraction as the only solution to creating jobs and economic progress.

The plan isn’t just a high-end guidepost. It has been copied by Mitt Romney, who recently laid out an energy plan featuring virtually identical proposals.

Oil expert Michael Levi has called out this strategy for being a “pipe dream” based on false promises that an all-out approach to fossil fuel drilling will dramatically lower gas prices and make America truly energy independent.

Whether or not it’s realistic, API’s messaging has put President Obama on the defensive.

In the 2008 election, Obama was very blunt about the environmental imperative for transitioning away from fossil fuels: “We can’t simply drill our way out of the problem. And we’re not going to be able to deal with the climate crisis if our only solution is to use more fossil fuels that create global warming,” he said in a presidential debate against John McCain.

Today, as the oil and gas industry spends more than $150 million on the presidential campaign to promote fossil fuels, Obama has completely stopped talking about climate change and is battling Romney over who will promote more oil drilling. This stunning reversal is a direct consequence of API’s public campaign and private lobbying in Washington.

The saddest part of the whole exercise is that talk about climate change has been completely lost. Because when you actually factor in the pressing need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, the API plan is revealed for what it truly is: a climate disaster in the making.

By building out a massive new round of fossil fuel infrastructure that will last for many decades, we’re locking in gigatons of new carbon dioxide emissions that we simply can’t afford to emit. But somehow, an extreme energy plan that completely ignores the reality of global warming is now the “center” of the debate in Washington political circles.

That’s why I really like a new report released today by my colleagues at the Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation. In an attempt to strike a new middle ground and counter API’s powerful messaging, the authors break down a more realistic approach to energy production and job creation through regional-specific solutions like efficiency, advanced automobiles, coastal restoration, and renewable energy.

The report isn’t meant to be a one-for-one jobs plan that directly counters every one of API’s employment assumptions. It also recognizes that fossil fuels are an enormously important part of our economy and will likely play a substantial role for some time to come. Instead, it tries to center our sights on a path forward that addresses environmental realities and recognizes the diversity of the American economy.

Here’s the basic premise:

Read more

by Katie Valentine

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is willing to break the climate silence.

In a speech on energy diplomacy yesterday afternoon at Georgetown University, Clinton talked about the importance of sustainability and climate issues on the international policy agenda.

“We…have an interest in promoting new technologies and sources of energy – especially including renewables – to reduce pollution; to diversify the global energy supply; to create jobs; and to address the very real threat of climate change,” said Clinton.

Clinton said the world is in a state of profound change when it comes to energy, citing the surge in natural gas, the increase in the energy consumption in developing countries, and new drilling technologies that are playing a role in opening up places such as the Arctic and the South China Sea for oil extraction. She lauded improvements and expansions in renewable and traditional energy that have occurred under the Obama administration – gains that many Americans don’t realize, she said.

“Our use of renewable wind and solar power has doubled in the last four years. Our oil and natural gas production is surging. New auto standards will double how far we drive on a gallon of gas, and for the first time, we’ve introduced fuel efficiency standards for heavy trucks, vans and buses, all of which will cut costs. That means we are less reliant on imported energy, which strengthens our global, political and economic standing and the world’s energy marketplace,” she said.

Though using varied energy sources from the U.S. and abroad is important, Clinton said that renewable energy is key to the world’s economic and environmental progress, as well as its security interests.

“The transformation to cleaner energy is central to reducing the world’s carbon emissions and it is the core of a strong 21^st century global economy.” she said.

Clinton outlined the work that the State Department has done over the past four years in three areas: energy diplomacy; preventing monopolies and promoting competition; and energy poverty.

Energy Diplomacy

Clinton brought up the State Department’s work dealing with drilling for oil in the Arctic – an issue she called a “potential environmental catastrophe.”  She said protecting the Arctic’s ecosystem while setting ground rules to avoid conflict over the area’s oil resources is a critical part of the department’s work.

Read more

So the Politico has been running an event series on “Energy & The Presidency.” The final event poster from the famously center-right group of political journalists gives new meaning to the term “false balance”:

So 6 out of 7 of the “Special Guests” are not exactly friends of future generations:

• Jack Gerard, CEO of the anti-climate, pro-pollution American Petroleum Institute (API)
• Karen Harbert, President and CEO of the anti-climate, pro-pollution U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21^st Century Energy
• Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who in a 2010 campaign ad, shot a bullet at the climate and clean energy bill!
• Jeff Holmstead, former assistant EPA administrator … for George W. Bush.
• Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who in 2010 called climate change scientists “frauds” practicing “modern version of the rain dance“!
• Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), a “climate science skeptic” who has worked tirelessly to delay or kill EPA clean air regulations

Yes, there is one enviro – there almost always is – Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), who is certainly a clean energy champion.

Looks like Politico could use some binders full of environmentalists. (Binders can be purchased separately here.)

Looks like American Wind Power isn’t getting their money’s worth. I’ll say this for Politico, though: They obviously don’t feel beholden to their sponsor, unlike, say, the Washington Post, which was widely criticized last month for running an energy debate that was a “one-sided discussion spread across two pages” — and for concealing API’s sponsorship!

UPDATE (11 am): Politico has now added the well-known environmentalist, Frances Beinecke, President of National Resources Defense Council. So now instead of 6-to-1, it is 6-to-2. That is progress, yes?

The wind energy industry faces a lame duck fight in the House of Representatives over extending the expiring production tax credit. The tax credit has broad bipartisan support, and considering that 81 percent of U.S. wind projects are installed in Republican districts, GOP lawmakers have a good reason to support it.

But with Koch Industries and fossil fuel groups mobilizing to defeat the credit, its future after 2012 is uncertain. The American Energy Alliance, which has Koch ties, told Politico Pro this week that it aims to make the credit a toxic issue for House Republicans: (Article requires subscription access):

“Our goal is to make the PTC so toxic that it makes it impossible for John Boehner to sit at a table with Harry Reid and say, ‘Yeah, I can bend on this one,’” said Benjamin Cole, spokesman for the American Energy Alliance.

American Energy Alliance has a strong link to Koch Industries: AEA’s president Thomas Pyle was former director of federal affairs for Koch Industries, and it is affiliated with the Koch- and ExxonMobil-backed Institute for Energy Research. Pyle is a former lobbyist for the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. AEA is also running a half-million-dollar TV ad in Virginia slamming Obama on coal issues.

A host of groups in the Koch network, including American Tradition Institute, Americans for Prosperity, and American Legislative Exchange Council, have undermined wind energy before. The Guardian reported on an ATI secret memo that suggested forming “dummy businesses” and a “counter-intelligence branch” against the wind industry.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, the wind tax credit supports 75,000 wind jobs — up to 6,000 jobs in Boehner’s home state alone — and has helped raise $20 billion in private investment in wind.

Conservatives claim an end to the wind tax credit will put energy on a level playing field; however, they have fought to maintain $4 billion in annual tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. The oil industry has outspent clean energy advertising by four times this election cycle, and send 90 percent of their political contributions to Republicans.

TransCanada Corp. has temporarily shut down its existing 2,100-mile Keystone pipeline after tests showed possible safety issues, a federal agency said Thursday. [Associated Press]

An undersea camera confirms that an oil slick discovered in the Gulf of Mexico came from a 100-ton device on the seafloor that BP had used several weeks after the 2010 oil spill in a failed attempt to cap its runaway Macondo well, the U.S. Coast Guard  said Thursday. [Fuel Fix]

Coal has improbably risen to become one of the top issues of the presidential campaign, with dueling ads about coal in swing states and attacks by each candidate on the other’s position. [Wall Street Journal]

Washington Post Wonk Blog takes a look back at how Obama and John McCain talked about this issue in the previous election. The tone was strikingly different. [Washington Post]

Although electric vehicles have not taken off as some had hoped, there are now enough of them on the road that some behavioral differences between drivers of all-electric models and plug-in hybrids have become evident, in addition to those between E.V. users and owners of conventional models. [New York Times]

Next week, Newsweek will reveal its fourth annual Green Rankings. First, however, The Daily Beast is ranking the greenest legislators across America—to identify the ecofriendly politicians to parallel these ecofriendly companies. [Daily Beast]

United Nations Certified Emission Reduction credits for December declined to a record as greenhouse-gas cutting projects in developing countries boosted their requests for supply near all-time highs. [Businessweek]

A California businessman chartered a fishing boat in July, loaded it with 100 tons of iron dust and cruised through Pacific waters off western Canada, spewing his cargo into the sea in an ecological experiment that has outraged scientists and government officials. [New York Times]

Since the summer, forecasters have called for El Nino to develop this fall, but so far, it has defied such predictions. El Nino’s baffling behavior has left NOAA forecasters scratching their heads and unable to make a solid call about what kind of winter to expect over large parts of the United States. [Weather Gang]

Why did Earth take five million years to recover from the Permian extinction, versus a few hundred thousand after other mass extinctions? Apparently, it was just too darned hot. [National Geographic]