by Matt Kasper and Kiley Kroh

This election season, groups promoting fossil fuels spent an incredible amount of money – $270 million in the last two months alone – on television ads to influence presidential and congressional races. But voters made it clear that they support candidates who understand the critical importance of transitioning away from fossil fuels and toward the renewable energy sources of the future.

A post-election energy survey released by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) and Advanced Energy Economy Ohio Institute (AEE Ohio Institute) confirmed that energy was a “very important” issue to the majority of voters in Virginia (60%), Ohio (57%), Iowa (58%), and Colorado (66%) in their vote decision:

These same voters also overwhelmingly expressed more support for candidates who want to move their states away from consuming coal and toward the production of cleaner sources of energy such as wind, solar, and natural gas. According to the survey, 75% of voters in Iowa, 72% of voters in Colorado and Virginia, and 69% of voters in Ohio said they wanted to transition away from fossil fuels.

The future embraced by the fossil fuel industry is one in where America is nothing more than a land of fossil-fuel extraction. But after November 6^th, it is clear that this vision does not align with the swing state voters.

The Center for American Progress recently released “Regional Energy, National Solutions: A Real Energy Vision for America,” a report that directly counters the vision for America offered by the American Petroleum Institute and highlights the current success and future potential of the clean economy across the country.

The U.S. military gets this. Realizing the critical need to enhance our energy security, the Department of Defense has become a major proponent of clean energy solutions. The world’s leading private investors, too, agree that long-term climate change and clean energy policy is a tremendous economic opportunity.  And the American people continue to show an increasing understanding of climate change and support for clean, secure and affordable energy.

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by Frances Beinecke, via NRDC’s Switchboard

Americans elected clean energy and clean air champions up and down the ticket last week. Even though oil, gas, and coal companies spent more than $270 million on campaign ads in the past two months, the majority of people rejected their dirty agenda. Voters want healthy air and safe drinking water, not more pollution.

Our leaders should keep this in mind as they negotiate a way off the fiscal cliff as Congress reconvenes this week. If Congress fails to reach an agreement, automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would kick in, making it much harder for the government to deliver the health and environmental protections people value.

We would feel these punishing cuts in our daily lives. Imagine if the sewage treatment plant in your community didn’t pay for repairs and had to start dumping raw sewage into nearby beaches. Or imagine if you traveled to a National Park for an affordable family vacation and discovered the visitor center was shuttered and the campgrounds closed down. Or imagine if air monitoring stations in your city ran out of funding and it became harder to tell when it was safe for children to play outside or when asthma-causing pollutants were running high.

Our country’s budget deficit is a serious problem, but crippling programs Americans count on is not the answer.

The natural resources section of the budget—including programs protecting our air, water, lands, and parks—makes up only 1.4 percent of federal spending. Their funding has already been cut, since most efforts to control the budget so far have concentrated disproportionately on discretionary spending. Slicing too deeply into programs that have already taken a hit would be both harmful for the environment and unproductive for deficit reduction.

America can get on a path to deficit reduction without making our air dirtier or our water unsafe to drink. To achieve this goal, Congress must negotiate a deal that prevents automatic budget cuts from taking place. Congress needs to take a balanced approach in such a deal. That means revenue increases need to be an important part of any solution. The president has been very clear on that point, and he is right to make it a condition for any deal.

One part of raising revenues should be ending the practice of favoring mature oil and gas corporations—among the richest in the world—with billions of dollars in subsidies. Our tax policies should be helping companies install new clean energy technology across the country.  Congress should extend the very successful production tax credit for wind energy, which has broad bipartisan support.

Congress is facing a fundamental choice about the kind of country America is going to be. Some GOP lawmakers would use the genuine need to cut the deficit as a cover for shrinking the size of government and destroying environmental programs and safeguards.

But President Obama and many other leaders believe government has a legitimate role to play in creating a vibrant society and a healthy environment. Last week’s election repudiated the anti-government, budget-shredding agenda in favor of more balanced, sustainable approach. Congress should heed these results.

Frances Beinecke is the President of the Natural Resources Defense Council. This piece was originally published at NRDC’s Switchboard and was reprinted with permission.

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist raised a lot of eyebrows on Monday when he told National Journal that a carbon tax might be on the table if it were swapped with a cut to the income tax.

“It’s possible you could structure something that wasn’t an increase and didn’t violate the pledge,” he reportedly said.

As president of Americans for Tax Reform, Norquist has convinced hundreds of members of Congress to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes. While his influence appears to be waning in Washington, Norquist’s tax pledge is still considered gospel for many Republicans. That’s why his willingness to consider a tax on global warming pollution is a big deal in political circles.

But one day later, after being criticized by the American Energy Alliance, the advocacy arm of a Koch-supported energy think tank devoted to promoting fossil fuel development, Norquist has completely reversed his statement, saying there virtually “no conceivable way” he could support a tax on carbon.

“Grover, just butch it up and oppose this lousy idea directly. This word-smithing is giving us all headaches,” wrote AEA in its newsletter, while promoting a newly-published study labeling carbon taxes “political cronyism.”

Americans for Tax Reform issued this statement this morning:

Americans for Tax Reform opposes a carbon tax and will work tirelessly to ensure one does not become law.

Taxing American energy consumption not only opens up a new revenue stream for proponents of big government, but threatens to forever damage the American economy.

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist describes a carbon tax this way:

“The creation of any new tax such as a VAT or energy tax — even if originally passed with offsetting tax reductions elsewhere — would inevitably lead to higher taxes as two taxes would be at the disposal of politicians to increase taxes. Two smaller tapeworms are not an improvement over one big tapeworm. Tapeworms and taxes grow.

There is no conceivable way to add an energy or VAT tax to the burdens American taxpayers face that would not violate the pledge over time.  If someone first passed and implemented a constitutional amendment with 2/3 of the House and Senate and 3/4 of the states concurring to forbid the restoration of the income tax, we might more safely consider passing a VAT or energy VAT. And then it would be foolish and economically destructive thing to do.”

Meanwhile, conservatives who understand the threat of climate change continue to discuss the prospects for pricing carbon in Obama’s second term, possibly as part of a grand bargain on a deficit deal. While some consider taxing carbon pollution a “pipe dream,” others believe it’s one of the only opportunities to get Congressional Republicans to support a carbon reduction policy. Norquist’s immediate reversal shows just how difficult it will be to bring enough Republicans around on the issue and get something done.

The Obama Administration said last week that it has no intentions to introduce a carbon tax proposal.

Two charts tell the story. First, here’s last week’s U.S. Drought Monitor:

David Miskus of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center explains why this drought persists:

… a persistent ridge of high pressure located over the central Rockies kept the Southwest, Great Basin, and southern halves of the Rockies and Plains unseasonably mild and dry. The weakened Pacific storm systems were diverted northeastward into south-central Canada by the ridge, then southeastward by the eastern trough into the northern Plains, lower Missouri Valley, the Delta, and across the Southeast.

No doubt this persistent high-pressure system and the prolonged drought are just more coincidental weather events in this year of record low Arctic sea ice and coincidental uber-extreme events (see Arctic Death Spiral: How It Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events “Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves“).

The three-month drought outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center isn’t pretty:

Sadly, the scientific literature makes clear this is going to be the new normal in the coming decades for the U.S. Southwest and “Breadbasket of the World” if we don’t rapidly and sharply reverse global carbon pollution trends:

• We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming
• James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now
• My Nature Piece On Dust-Bowlification And the Grave Threat It Poses to Food Security
• The Shape Of Droughts To Come: “The United States will suffer a series of severe droughts in the next two decades, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Moreover, global warming will play an increasingly important role in their abundance and severity….”

With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaving the State Department, speculation around who will become America’s top diplomat continues. News outlets are now reporting that Susan Rice, America’s ambassador to the United Nations, is likely to be nominated for the position.

Rice is will assuredly face stiff resistance from Congressional Republicans who are have criticized her statements about the attacks on a U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Repeating what intelligence officials told her before making public appearances on television news programs, Rice initially said the attacks were part of a spontaneous demonstration, not a coordinated attack.

If Rice is nominated, expect the Benghazi affair to take center stage. But there’s much more to Rice’s diplomatic career to consider — particularly her stance on climate change, a geopolitical and military threat that Hillary Clinton has called “one of the defining issues of the 21st century.”

At this point, we don’t know a lot of specifics about how Rice would direct the State Department’s climate policy. However, if her climate-related statements as UN ambassador are any indication, she will likely come out strong on the issue. This comes at a particularly important time for international climate talks, as the U.S. begins new negotiations with China, India, and other large emerging economies on establishing binding carbon reduction commitments after 2015.

New leadership at the State Department would also determine how the agency’s climate office is structured. Under her tenure, Secretary Clinton created a devoted climate negotiating team for the first time. The next Secretary of State could either keep that position in place, or roll climate back into a more generic roll within the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.

Rice is known as a tough talker who brings a “pugnacious” style to diplomacy. And her only major speech on climate change as UN Ambassador illustrates how she might bring that upfront style to the issue. In July of last year, Rice chastised China and Russia for blocking the UN security council from adopting language linking the threat of climate change to international security. She called it “pathetic.”

“We have dozens of countries in this body and in this very room whose very existence is threatened. They’ve asked this Council to demonstrate our understanding that their security is profoundly threatened. Instead, because of the refusal of a few to accept our responsibility, this Council is saying, by its silence, in effect, ‘Tough luck.’ This is more than disappointing. It’s pathetic. It’s shortsighted, and frankly it’s a dereliction of duty.“

Watch the video of her comments (hat tip to Brad Johnson):

Rice’s speech reflects an aggressive, forward-thinking approach to climate diplomacy. Below is an excerpt from the transcript of that speech, which you can read in full here.

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by Tom Kenworthy

The presidential and congressional elections of last week brought good news for those who value sensible land conservation policies. But there was more good news on the state and local levels as well.

Even in a time of fiscal constraints, voters in 21 states gave overwhelming approval to ballot measures providing some $767 million for new parks, open space, water quality protections and the preservation of farms and ranches, according to The Trust for Public Land.

Of the 57 measures that went to the voters on election day last week, 46 won — a success rate of 81%.

“From Maine to Texas to San Francisco, we saw voters across the political spectrum say yes to taxes and spending for conservation which helps their communities,” noted the trust’s president Will Rogers.

Examples:

• By a 3-1 margin Alabama voters approved a 20-year extension of the state’s Forever Wild land conservation initiative that will pump another $300 million into land protection efforts
• In Salt Lake County, Utah, a $47 million bond to fund regional trails and parks was endorsed by 56 percent of voters.

• Two thirds of Houston’s voters approved a $166 million bond to finish a system of bayou greenways.

• In El Paso, Texas, three out of four voters chose to support a $245 million bond, part of which will fund park improvements and land purchases.

Even as some congressional Republicans have stymied federal land conservation efforts in recent years, support for local and state programs has been extraordinarily resilient.

The Trust for Public Land has been tracking those campaigns since 1988, and reports that voters at the local and state levels have approved expenditures more than 75% of the time over more than two decades. All told, they have taxed themselves to the tune of more than $58 billion because they know that open space and parks improve their quality of life and are an important contribution to healthy economies.

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund

by Lorne Stockman, via Oil Change International

The International Energy Agency released its annual flagship publication yesterday, the World Energy Outlook. The IEA made an historic statement in the executive summary.

It said, “No more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2 °C goal,” the internationally recognized limit to average global warming in order to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Let me rephrase that.  Over two-thirds of today’s proven reserves of fossil fuels need to still be in the ground in 2050 in order to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change.

We congratulate the IEA for recognizing this crucial point and encourage the organization to prioritize this message in its presentations and public messaging. It is especially important given that the world’s fossil fuel industry is working overtime to increase its proven reserve base.

Let’s take the Canadian tar sands industry as an example. As the chart below shows, the tar sands industry has enough projects producing, under construction and approved to blow well past the climate limits prescribed by the IEA. Nevertheless even more projects are lined up for regulatory approval leading to a possible trebling of production capacity over and above the IEA limit.

Globally, the oil industry as a whole is also lining up enough production capacity to cook the climate several times over.

According to one analysis, there could be as much as 110.6 million barrels of oil production capacity in 2020, while the IEA says that less than 90 million b/d is plenty, see the chart below.

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The oil industry’s long record of success in defending its tax breaks faces new tests as lawmakers and the White House negotiate to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” [The Hill]

Renewable energy is set to rival coal as the main generator of the world’s electricity by 2035 as the costs of technology fall and subsidies rise, the International Energy Agency said. [Bloomberg]

Coal remains a critical component of the world’s energy supply despite its bad image. In China, demand for coal in 2010 resulted in a traffic jam 75 miles long caused by more than 10,000 trucks carrying supplies from Inner Mongolia. India is increasing coal imports. [New York Times]

The US can shed its longstanding dependence on Saudi Arabian oil within the next decade, redrawing the world’s political systems and potentially leading to runaway global warming. [Guardian]

Kior Inc., a producer of transportation fuels from wood waste and non-food crops, began production at its first commercial plant as other U.S. biofuel companies including Gevo Inc. and Amyris Inc. struggle to transfer their technologies from the lab to the factory. [Bloomberg]

Thousands of military homes in southern New Mexico and West Texas will be fitted with solar panels as part of a $1 billion plan by a California company to bring solar to military installations across the country. [Associated Press]

The re-election of President Barack Obama will likely mean a continuation of the U.S. government’s policy promoting electric and hybrid vehicles, Elon Musk, the chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc, said on Monday. [Reuters]

The heads of major UK companies joined calls on Monday for the government to bring in a target to slash emissions from the power sector by 2030. [Guardian]

The European Union will freeze for a year its rule that all airlines must pay for their carbon emissions for flights into and out of EU airports, the EU executive said, following threats of international retaliation. [Reuters]