by Jackie Weidman and Whitney Allen

On November 27th, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced the new and returning House committee chairmen (and yes, they are all men). Some of these congressmen will run committees with jurisdiction over federal climate, energy, and environmental programs.  This includes funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Clean Air Act, balancing the use of our public lands between energy production and recreation, and determining the infrastructure needs of a nation that now faces unpredictable extreme weather threats linked to climate change.

The vast majority of these chairmen voted for legislation that would dismantle EPA’s ability to limit industrial carbon pollution, and for retention of special tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas, coal, and electric utility companies have cozied up to many of these chairmen, giving them roughly $3.8 million in campaign contributions over the course of their careers.

Meanwhile, many climate-related extreme weather events have severely afflicted Americans over the past two years, including in their home states.  Record-breaking drought and heat waves, severe floods, and heavy storms wreaked havoc for the families living in the chairmens’ backyards.  Scientists predict that these weather events will become more frequent and/or severe if the industrial carbon pollution responsible for climate change remains unchecked.

Let’s take a look at some of the Republicans who will oversee federal climate, energy, and environmental programs over the next two years, as well as their campaign contributions from the industries responsible for most climate pollution:

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by Katie Valentine

This summer’s historic drought hasn’t let up (in fact, it’s actually expanding in some areas) and it’s causing a lot of trouble in regions whose economies are driven by major bodies of water.

The drought, coupled with a seasonal dry period, has caused water levels on the Mississippi River to fall to near-record lows, which has hurt the Mississippi shipping industry badly. If water isn’t replenished soon (which doesn’t look likely, according to the NOAA Climate Prediction Center), the major waterway may be closed to cargo companies in the coming weeks. Right now, the river is about 13 feet deep in many places, which is 15 to 20 feet lower than normal. If it dips to around 9 feet – which National Weather Service hydrologists predict could happen by Dec. 9 – protruding rocks will make it nearly impossible for barges to pass. A closed Mississippi – or even closed portions – would mean companies would have to find other ways of shipping crops, fuel and other goods throughout the country.

These conditions have caused many members of congress and the business community to call on President Barack Obama to help Mississippi River shipping businesses get back to normal. They want the president to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to dynamite the rocky riverbed near two southern Illinois towns – Thebes and Grand Tower – to deepen the shipping channel, allowing ships to pass through on less water. They also want the Corps to stop reducing water flow from a Missouri River reservoir, which the Corps does each year to conserve water for the spring. Members of congress have sent a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers and spoken out about the issue, and on Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute, National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups and organizations sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to declare emergency in the region and calling for “immediate assistance in averting an economic catastrophe in the heartland.”

Ironically, many of these organizations have refused to acknowledge a growing problem behind the Mississippi’s water woes. Climate change will impact water levels in the U.S. for years to come: science has shown that a warming earth will likely lead to more frequent and more intense droughts like the one the U.S. is experiencing now.

“The drought that we are currently experiencing is consistent with an observed warmer climate,” said a group of Iowa scientists in a group statement earlier this month.

But these organizations actively fight against climate policy: the Chamber of Commerce, API and the National Association of Manufacturers were three of the major opponents of the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations. In a statement on behalf of API and several other groups, National Association of Manufacturers CEO Jay Timmons called the final regulations “devastating” and “a setback for businesses.” Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue has had little regard for the dangers of climate change during his tenure; in January of this year, he called for expanded fracking, shale oil, and tar sands development in the U.S., saying that the country needs to use the hundreds of billions of tons of fossil fuels it contains under its surface.

The Mississippi River isn’t the only body of water that’s still being affected by the drought. The Great Lakes are also losing water: levels have fallen to near-record lows in Lakes Michigan and Huron, and water levels in Lakes Erie, Ontario and Superior are below average. Like on the Mississippi, shipping is a major industry in the Great Lakes region, and water levels have a major effect on its success.

Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers’ Association, told the Wall Street Journal that the loss of water depth between this year and last means a 1,000-foot vessel is carrying about 1,200 to 1,500 fewer tons per load. The drought is also affecting other industries in the Great Lakes: low water levels in some places are causing marinas to be too shallow for boat docking, with the Army Corps of Engineers estimating that about 30 Great Lakes harbors will need attention in the next couple of years.

A recent Center for American Progress report, “Heavy Weather” indicates that droughts and heat waves in 2011-12 alone will cost the U.S. $40 to $88 billion. Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground reports that the damages could be as high as $150 billion.

With water levels down in many of America’s major waterways, it looks like the costs of this year’s drought will only increase.

Katie Valentine graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism. She is currently an intern on the international policy team at the Center for American Progress.

Based on the new study in Science, this chart shows changes in global sea level due to ice sheet melting since 1992. The background image shows thickening (blue) and thinning (red) of Antarctica’s ice sheets over the same period. Credit: ESA/NASA/Planetary Visions via NBC.

A major new international study reconciles “an ensemble of satellite altimetry, interferometry, and gravimetry data sets” to determine polar ice-sheet ice loss with the highest accuracy to date. The study, “A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance” (subs. req’d) was published in the journal Science Thursday.

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory news release explains the study’s significance:

An international team of experts supported by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) has combined data from multiple satellites and aircraft to produce the most comprehensive and accurate assessment to date of ice sheet losses in Greenland and Antarctica and their contributions to sea level rise.

In a landmark study published Thursday in the journal Science, 47 researchers from 26 laboratories report the combined rate of melting for the ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica has increased during the last 20 years. Together, these ice sheets are losing more than three times as much ice each year (equivalent to sea level rise of 0.04 inches or 0.95 millimeters) as they were in the 1990s (equivalent to 0.01 inches or 0.27 millimeters). About two-thirds of the loss is coming from Greenland, with the rest from Antarctica….

“Both ice sheets appear to be losing more ice now than 20 years ago, but the pace of ice loss from Greenland is extraordinary, with nearly a five-fold increase since the mid-1990s,” [JPL's Erik] Ivins said. “In contrast, the overall loss of ice in Antarctica has remained fairly constant, with the data suggesting a 50-percent increase in Antarctic ice loss during the last decade.”

The NBC Evening News had a very good story on this study and the general acceleration of ice sheet melt:

The JPL release is accompanied by this remarkable photo:

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When Big Oil’s lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, ramped up its election-year spending, API President Jack Gerard said “This is not about political party.”

But in addition to its misleading multi-million dollar public campaign, API also funneled at least half a million dollars through groups that ran attack ads against Democratic candidates.

That’s according to disclosures reported by Lee Fang at The Nation, which show that API used membership dues to finance several dark money groups:

• $50,000 to Americans for Prosperity’s 501(c)(4) group, which ran ads against President Obama and congressional Democrats.
• $412,969 to Coalition for American Jobs’ 501(c)(6) group, a front set up by API lobbyists to air ads for industry-friendly politicians, including former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA).
• $25,000 to the Sixty Plus Association’s 501(c)(4), which ran ads against congressional Democrats.

Public relations were also a priority for the lobby in 2011. Fang notes that API spent over $68 million for a public relations firm’s services, $5.4 million at a “coalition building” firm, and $4 million at an advocacy firm connected to the Bush White House that “works with corporations to help them communicate with workers on how to vote.”

The oil industry has long-held ties to Republicans. Gerard, personally connected to Mitt Romney, was a rumored favorite for a cabinet appointment. The industry donates to Republican candidates 90 percent of the time. The Supreme Court Citizens United decision opened up another avenue for API to fund political advocacy, now allowing the trade association to quietly fund political ads.

After the election, spending on API-branded ads has only picked up pace. It has already spent $3 million on ads since November 6, including $600,000 in 2014 battlegrounds that aim to protect billions of dollars in oil tax breaks.

The stubborn U.S. drought that hit the Southeast and Midwest hard this summer isn’t letting up. According to the latest drought monitor, conditions have worsened slightly across the country, with “exceptional drought” conditions expanding from 38 percent of the lower-48 states to 42 percent. Those conditions could last into February.

The map below, which shows a wide swath of “extreme” and “exceptional” drought, has become a very familiar image over the last nine months:

The U.S. drought could be the most costly extreme weather event to hit the U.S. this year. In a 2012 marked by above-average wildfires in the West, record heat waves across most of the country, a massive superstorm that rocked the East Coast, and a surprise derecho that knocked out power to millions of Americans, that’s saying a lot. Jeff Masters at the Weather Underground reports that the drought could cost the economy between $75 billion to $150 billion, making it more expensive than Superstorm Sandy.

“The drought that we are currently experiencing is consistent with an observed warmer climate,” said a group of Iowa scientists in a group statement earlier this month. “Iowans are living with climate change now and it is already costing us money.”

According to a new analysis of extreme weather from the Center for American Progress, there have been at least seven extreme weather events in 2012 that have caused over $1 billion in damages. In September, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the first eight months of 2012 were the most extreme for weather ever recorded.

by Hannah Green

This August, power shortages in India that left 300 million in the dark made it very clear that one of the world’s fastest growing economies was facing an energy crisis. Less clear is how realistically to solve it. Many firms are looking for new sources of oil to fulfill India’s growing energy demands, but this could prove to be painfully expensive.  On the brighter side, solar energy and other renewable resources are already being rapidly harnessed in the non-Western world, and they are becoming cheaper and cheaper.

As of June 2012, 31 percent of India’s energy came from renewable resources, including hydroelectric power, while only 9 percent of the United States’ did as of the end of 2011. In a 2009 McKinsey & Company survey, India was rated the top producer of solar energy in the world, just above the United States, with an annual yield of 1,700 to 1,900 kilowatt hours per kilowatt peak (kWh/KWp). However, demand for energy in India will only continue to grow, and the question is whether energy will continue to come mainly from fossil fuels or from renewable energy sources

Many hope so. Current local and imported supplies of gas and coal in India are insufficient to fulfill energy demands, and both investing in sufficient imported fossil fuels to keep India electrified or extracting new natural gas sources will hurt the Indian economy, according to a report by Boston Consulting Group. Hunting for shale gas is a risky and expensive venture, and creating Liquid Natural Gas facilities to ease the transport of imported oil would also require an investment of $12 – $25 billion. However, hydroelectric, wind, and solar power sectors are all growing. Hydroelectric power already accounts for 19 percent of India’s electricity, but at the moment less than half of available hydroelectric resources are being exploited.  Several solar power initiatives by state governments and the department of renewable resources are currently at work in India, the largest of which is the Jawarhal Nehru National Solar Mission, launched in 2010. The goal of the $19 billion plan is to harness 20,000 MW of grid power solar energy and 2000 MW of off-the-grid solar energy by 2020.

Part of the reason that solar power is becoming so affordable for India is that the demand for it is decreasing in the West. China’s solar power industry has recently faced an excess manufacturing capacity because of EU cutbacks on solar subsidies. That’s bad news for China, but good news for the Indian solar industry.

A report by the environmental research firm Clean Edge and non-profit Co-op America shows that 10 percent of United States energy could potentially come from solar power by 2025, but only a small fraction of that potential is actually in development.  Due to its larger land mass and smaller population, the United States has the potential to create much more solar energy than India does, and its energy demand continues to be much higher than India’s, despite having a quarter of India’s population. However, if current American and Indian government initiatives proceed as planned, the United States will likely continue to remain behind India as a producer of solar energy by 2030.

There are several reasons why renewable energy sources are growing faster in India in the short term than they are in the United States and Europe. India can’t afford to rely on expensive and unreliable fossil fuel imports the way that richer countries with solid infrastructure in place for traditional energy resources can. For rich countries to switch to renewable energy requires a choice: keep the infrastructure that’s in place and continue to use non-renewable energy (cheaper in the short term) or make the comparatively expensive switch to renewable energy.  In India, on the other hand, villages that are still off the grid have only to choose the option that is cheaper from the ground up.  It is often cheaper to install new solar energy plants than it is to connect to the existing grid in India. Thousands of Indian villages have already been newly electrified with solar power. In some villages that don’t yet have full electricity, small solar cells are a significantly cheaper and safer replacement for kerosene cells. Finally, other concerns, such as aesthetics, continue to impede the construction of renewable energy plants in the United States and Europe.  In India such things are given little consideration.

Countries that are making room for renewable energy now may well benefit in the long term. Recently there has been speculation as to whether India can keep up the rapid economic growth that has taken the world by storm in the past few years. It’s true that in the short term growth is slowing down. But long-term factors like energy blackouts, energy access, and global warming might eventually see India moving ahead once again. In coming years, leaders in renewable energy might not be those countries most capable of producing it, but those who can least afford not to.

Hannah Green covers economic and foreign policy issues, especially in South Asia and the Middle East.  She recently received her B.A. in history from Northwestern University, and is living Lucknow, India, where she studies Urdu and Hindi.