This fact was first featured in the ThinkProgress Progress Report: “Five Facts About Gas Prices.”

Some birds are adjusting their migration patterns and adapting to climate change better than others, researchers found. [Bloomberg]

A crucial flood monitoring system used for 46 years on the Connecticut River in Middletown was shut down Friday because of a lack of federal funding, according to a meteorologist from the National Weather Service. [Patch.com]

Tensions with Iran are adding at least 30 cents to a gallon of gasoline in the United States, and experts say gas prices have only just begun to rise. [CNN]

BP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp are liable for civil damages under federal pollution laws over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a U.S. judge ruled, exposing them to billions of dollars in potential fines. [KGMI]

For the second time in recent months, northern Georgia has been hit with what is believed to be a tornado that struck the Kingston Highway area Wednesday night, leaving one person dead and many residents preparing to clean up. [Rome Newswire]

The family holding company that controls Danish toymaker Lego has agreed to buy 32 percent of a German offshore wind energy project from Denmark’s DONG Energy for more than $500 million, DONG said on Thursday. [Reuters]

Hurricane-force winds and blowing snow are wreaking havoc in Denver. [Associated Press]

The UK Ministry of Defense is to de-classify submarine data to help shed light on climate change in the Arctic. [BBC]

Canadian Solar, one of the world’s largest solar companies, announced the supply of 2,800 solar modules for a rooftop system in the Danish city of Virum. [MarketWatch]

Promise Energy, an affiliate of Adam Capital – a leading clean energy finance company – has announced a major US distribution agreement with Baymak, a division of BDR Thermea – a global leader in solar heating and storage equipment. [Promise Energy]

Germany’s government will reduce solar power incentives by between 20 percent and 30 percent from March 9, rather than from April 1, which is what had been expected, a statement released by the Economy and Environment ministries said on Thursday. [Reuters]

Thousands of coastal residents, business people and property owners will be affected by a trial starting Feb. 27 in New Orleans federal court to determine who must compensate BP spill victims. [Bloomberg]

President Obama is heading to Florida on Thursday to promote an energy strategy that the administration says will reduce dependence on foreign oil in the long term, with the subtext that the federal government can do little to halt the current rise in gasoline prices. [AP]

Energy Secretary Steven Chu will appear before a U.S. Senate committee on March 13 to discuss an Obama administration-ordered analysis of his agency’s clean- energy loan program, which gave money to failed Solyndra LLC. [Bloomberg]

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) offered an amendment to the bill during the Feb. 15 vote, giving the House a chance to “ensure that if the Keystone XL pipeline is built, the oil that it transports to the Gulf of Mexico and the fuels made from that oil remain in this country to benefit Americans.” But the amendment failed 173-254.

Not surprisingly, the 254 members who voted against the amendment have collected seven times more total campaign cash from oil and gas interests. The 254 members (230 Republicans) took in $37.3 million in career campaign contributions from oil and gas companies and executives.

On average, each member who voted against banning exports collected $146,808 from the oil and gas industry. This is contrasted with the $5.2 million total for the 173 in favor (9 Republicans) of the export ban – or an average of $29,951. In other words, legislators who want to export refined gasoline and diesel from oil sands received five times more oil money than the legislators who want to keep these fuels here.

* Data from the Center for Responsive Politics at OpenSecrets.org

The vote shows that House Republicans will not even support their own spin about the supposed benefits of increasing U.S. oil and gasoline supplies from the Keystone XL pipeline. In fact, the pipeline does nothing to impact production and Time magazine concurred that “Keystone would have little immediate [price] effect, especially since there’s already sufficient pipeline infrastructure in place for the next few years.” At best, gasoline prices in the Gulf Coast region would be only one and three-quarter cents lower per gallon, while prices would increase in the Midwest because the current oil glut keeps prices there lower.

Although the evidence shows the pipeline won’t help Americans, Republicans continue to fight to boost Big Oil’s profits at the same time the industry raked in record-breaking profits of $137 billion in 2011.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) “instructed fellow Republicans to embrace the gas-pump anger,” while Rick Santorum conspiratorially claimed Obama is intentionally pushing up prices to cut carbon emissions. Not to be outdone, Newt Gingrich released a 30-minute video today about how “the Obama administration is so anti‑oil” that they’ve forced the price of gas to go up.

But there’s little truth to claims that Obama has curbed U.S. oil production and driven up gas prices in the process. As NPR noted this morning, the number of drilling rigs in U.S. oil fields has quadrupled under Obama and domestic oil production hit an 8-year high in 2011. For the first time in 60 years, the U.S. is now a net fuel exporter.

Oil demand was actually down 4.6 percent last week over last year, while the supply of gasoline has actually increased slightly since a year ago. So why are gas prices so high? As McClatchy’s Kevin Hall explains today, there is a systemic problem: speculation.

Energy futures markets serve a legitimate role in helping producers (like oil companies) and big end users (like airlines) hedge against price volatility, but lately, they’ve been taken over by Wall Street speculators who never intend to actually use the fuel they’re betting on. As Hall reports:

Historically, financial speculators accounted for about 30 percent of oil trading in commodity markets, while producers and end users made up about 70 percent. Today it’s almost the reverse.

A McClatchy review of the latest Commitment of Traders report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates oil trading, shows that producers and merchants made up just 36 percent of all contracts traded in the week ending Feb. 14 while speculators who will never take delivery of the oil made up 64 percent.

Many experts, lawmakers (Democratic and Republican), and government regulators have expressed similar warnings.

Finally, after many delays, the government board responsible for regulating commodity futures markets finalized a rule in October to limit speculation, a power it was given by the Dodd-Frank Wall street reform law. However, the rule won’t go into effect until next October, as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) needs to collect “one year of interest data” first. The financial industry is fighting the new rule, but just today, the CFTC took action against a company in different market, providing an example of how the energy regulation can effectively work.

by Shauna Theel, cross-posted from Media Matters

In a segment falsely blaming Obama for rising gasoline prices, Fox News’ America’s Newsroom aired the following chart yesterday. It shows three data points — including the vague “last year” — plotted nonsensically on the x-axis:

“Last year” refers to gas prices last February; Fox’s chart omitted what happened in the 13 months between February 2011 and last week. Here’s how Fox’s source, AAA, displays the data (green line):

This piece was originally published at Media Matters for America.

“It’s staggering,” said Marshall Adkins, who directs energy research for the financial services firm Raymond James. “If we continue growing anywhere near that pace and keep squeezing demand out of the system, that puts you in a world where we are not importing oil in 10 years.”

This fact was first featured in the ThinkProgress Progress Report: “Five Facts About Gas Prices.”

This fact was first featured in the ThinkProgress Progress Report: “Five Facts About Gas Prices.”

David Wojick

CO2 is not pollution, it is the global food supply. Watching a child grow is watching atmospheri­c CO2 being reprocesse­d.

Wojick has now spoken out, defending his intention to teach children the conspiracy theory that man-made climate change is “one of the great scientific debates of history,” instead of a scientific fact built upon decades of research. In a Huffington Post comment, Wojick described his work as a taxpayer-funded consultant for the Department of Energy on science education, and his desire to fight “the company line about dangerous human induced warming“:

It is true that DOE has not funded me to do climate research, but they have funded me to do science education research. Under a DOE SBIR grant my team of teachers developed a model of the concept structure of K-16 science education. The result for DOE was a search algorithm that sees the grade level of science education writing. The prototype is running on http://www­.scienceed­ucation.go­v. They also fund me to study the cognitive structure of science itself, in order to improve their science communicat­ion database systems.

My expertise in the climate science debate comes from 20 years of study. My Ph.D. is in the philosophy of science, especially the logic of complex issues. My funding comes from free lance writing and policy analysis. While climate scientists study climate, I study their reasoning.

These two research thrusts came together when I noticed that almost all of the Web-based educationa­l resources on climate change merely parrot the company line about dangerous human induced warming. There is very little on the scientific debate, which I see as one of the great scientific debates in history. So I have set out to fill this void. The debate is now so widespread that any science teacher who cannot demonstrat­e knowledge of it will quickly lose credibilit­y. But the grand challenge is that scientific controvers­y is not typically taught in K-12, even though it is the heart of the scientific frontier. This is the fun part.

Previous comments on Huffington Post expose Wojick as an ideological conspiracy theorist, who seems to earnestly believe that the global scientific consensus on climate change is the “global warming scare,” a “catastroph­e theory with an agenda,” a “political and ideologica­l struggle,” and perhaps even “Eco-Marxism.” He makes the baseless claim that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an “advocacy organization,” rather than the neutral scientific body it actually is.

Wojick repeats some of the most absurd canards of climate deniers, claiming that “CO2 is not pollution, it is the global food supply,” that increased CO2 “might even be beneficial,” that there has only been warming “for one 20 year period,” and that the role of CO2 in global warming is “unknown.”

This is the ideology that the Heartland Institute hopes to bring to classrooms across America. As yet, none of the corporations supporting the think tank, including GM, Pfizer, and PepsiCo, have committed to ending their support for this anti-science group.

Read excerpts from his conspiracy-theory comments below:

This sounds like Eco-Marxis­m, which fortunatel­y has very little political traction in the US. It is, however, indicative of the political underpinni­ng of the global warming scare. This is why it is far more than a scientific debate. It is a catastroph­e theory with an agenda.

You are lumping a lot of things together to make it sound scary, when it is not. Increasing CO2 may not be a problem, it might even be beneficial­. Note however that ice core CO2 measuremen­ts are not particular­ly reliable on decade to century scales. We know that previous interglaci­al periods have also seen CO2 spikes, which are natural. We know they have gone to 300 ppm but maybe much higher.

On the contrary, science is still struggling to understand climate change. Temperatur­es oscillate up and down naturally and we do not know why. What role, if any, the CO2 increase has had in the oscillatio­ns over the last 100 years is unknown. The public debate reflects the scientific uncertaint­ies quite accurately­. This is both surprising and gratifying­.

CO2 is not pollution, it is the global food supply. Watching a child grow is watching atmospheri­c CO2 being reprocesse­d.

Climate change is one of the greatest scientific controvers­ies in history. Many people, including scientists­, accept the hypothesis of human induced (and dangerous) global warming, while many others, including scientists­, do not. Despite tens of billions in research over more than 3 decades, the science is still perfectly inconclusive, so each side finds plenty of evidence to support its position. The blogs on both sides display a great deal of scientific depth. To deny this is to deny the obvious.

However, it is not a sporting event, rather it is a political and ideologica­l struggle. The science and the ideology are inseparabl­e, because the weight of evidence is in the eye of the beholder. Reasonable people of good will often look at the same evidence and come to opposite conclusion­s, and so it is with climate change. The press is right to report it as a contest, for it is a struggle of ideas.

People now understand that the IPCC is an advocacy organizati­on, created specifical­ly to advocate the scientific hypothesis of human induced global warming.

It has only warmed for one 20 year period in the last 70 years, despite continuous CO2 rise (1978-98). This falsifies the CO2-warmin­g theory.

This fact was first featured in the ThinkProgress Progress Report: “Five Facts About Gas Prices.”

Republican presidential candidates have a few things to learn about the value of our public lands.  A few weeks ago Mitt Romney told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he doesn’t know “what the purpose is” of public lands.  Ron Paul called for eliminating public lands by having “the best parts sold off to private owners.”  Rick Santorum told Idaho residents that public lands should go “back into the hands of the states and even to the private sector.”

In preparation for the Republican debate in Mesa, Arizona tonight, ThinkProgress Green has organized the most important facts about public lands in the state.

- Some of America’s most treasured natural places are located on Arizona public lands. Grand Canyon National Park, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Sonoran Desert National Monument are just a few examples of the dozens of places in Arizona that are protected for all of us to enjoy. Arizona’s 22 national parks saw 10.5 million visitors in 2010. And tourism at the Grand Canyon alone supported more than 6,000 jobs in 2009. [NPS, 2012 and Headwaters Economics, 2011]

-  Arizonans view public lands as essential to their state’s economy. A recent poll from the Colorado College State of the Rockies Project found that 90 percent of voters in Arizona believe that “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Arizona’s economy.”  [Colorado College, 1/30/12]

-  Arizonans feel that public lands are essential to their quality of life. The Colorado College poll also asked whether voters agreed with the statement that “our national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife areas are an essential part of Arizona’s quality of life.”  The response was overwhelming, with 97 percent of Arizonans agreeing. [Colorado College, 1/30/12]

-  Interior Department activities in Arizona leverage $2.4 billion and 29,000 jobs every year.  This includes oil, gas, mining, recreation, timber, grazing, and other uses.  This number does not include lands managed by the Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

-  Recreation opportunities abound on Arizona’s public lands.  Families living in Tucson can take a day trip and a picnic to Saguaro National Park and the Santa Catalina Mountains located just 30 minutes outside of the city.  City dwellers in the Phoenix area can hit the Tonto National Forest, one of the most visited urban national forests in the U.S.  And sportsmen can take advantage of a variety of wide open spaces across the state, featuring unique animals such as javelinas and Gila trout.  Recreation on Interior Department lands in Arizona provided $1.97 billion in economic benefits in 2010. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

-  Outdoor recreation – a $5 billion economy in Arizona– often takes place on public lands. Tourists travel to Arizona from around the country and world to experience a wide range of outdoor recreation opportunities.  The Outdoor Industry Association found that the active outdoor recreation economy contributes over $5 billion annually to Arizona’s economy and supports 82,000 jobs across the state.  Hiking, climbing, camping, hunting, fishing, and mountain biking are just a few of the outdoor activities enjoyed on public lands. [Outdoor Industry Association, 2006]

-  Hunting and angling—a $1.3 billion economy in Arizona—often take place on public lands. Millions of acres in Arizona are open to hunting for game and waterfowl and to fishing.  The Arizona Game and Fish Department reported that sportsmen in the state spend $958 million every year, which creates $1.34 billion in economic impacts and 17,000 jobs. [Arizona Game and Fish Department]

-  Oil, gas, and minerals from Arizona’s public lands provide $900 million per year in economic impacts. Mining and drilling on Interior Department-managed lands in Arizona create a tremendous amount of economic opportunity. [Interior Department, 6/21/11]

Click to download the CAPAF response letter to the Heartland Institute (PDF).

The text of the letter sent to the Heartland Institute is below.

Dear Ms. Martin:

I am General Counsel of the Center for American Progress Action Fund (“CAP Action”). This letter responds to your February 19 message regarding our reporters’ coverage of documents related to the Heartland Institute. Please be assured that CAP Action takes the accuracy of its reporting seriously.

Your letter asserts that the document entitled “2012 Heartland Climate Strategy” is “fabricated and false.” CAP Action has no interest in attributing a fabricated document to Heartland. Given the seriousness of this charge, and the fact that this document’s “tone and content closely matched that of other documents that [Heartland] did not dispute,”¹ we ask your assistance in verifying that the document is in fact “fabricated” rather than, for example, a draft of which you were not immediately aware. Please let me know the efforts that Heartland undertook to ensure that the document “was not written by anyone associated with Heartland,” as well as the “obvious and gross misstatements of fact” it contains. We have removed this document from the website while awaiting your response.

Your letter also notes that “Heartland has not authenticated” the remaining documents in the week since they were made public. To my knowledge, Heartland has never claimed that these documents were fabricated, and your February 15 admission that they were sent by a Heartland staff person to “an unknown person” posing as a Heartland board member suggests they are genuine. So does Heartland’s February 15 apology to the donors identified in the documents. Subsequently, the newly-admitted source has indicated that he received these documents directly from Heartland and has not altered them. Nevertheless, we await the outcome of your continued efforts to “authenticate” these documents.

Finally, your letter suggests that publication or even discussion of the Heartland documents “is improper and unlawful” because Heartland deems them “confidential.” The Supreme Court has flatly rejected this notion, repeatedly declaring that the First Amendment protects the right to publish information obtained lawfully – even if underlying sources act improperly, erroneously, or in violation of the law. See, e.g., Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, 535 (2001). As CAP Action has reported, our bloggers received the documents via an anonymous email. Our reporters did nothing to purloin any documents, they did not encourage anyone else to do so, and they did not know the sender’s identity until many days later, on February 20, when the Huffington Post article titled: “The Origin of the Heartland Documents” was published. Faced with a substantially similar set of relevant facts in Bartnicki, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited recovery of damages for dissemination of an illegally-made recording that was left in a defendant’s mailbox because “a stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern.” Id.; see also Jean v. Massachusetts State Police, 492 F.3d 24, 29 (1st Cir. 2007) (applying Bartnicki). The same is true here, although we note that CAP Action takes no position as to whether the documents were lawfully obtained by the source.

CAP Action has taken extraordinary steps to ensure that Heartland’s perspective on these documents is included in our coverage. As your letter notes, CAP Action immediately and conspicuously linked to Heartland’s February 15 press release regarding the documents and has subsequently noted Heartland’s assertions in other blog posts in order to ensure that your position on these documents was reported fully and fairly. If you would like to provide us with additional information, including answers to the questions above, we will certainly consider it.

This is not a full recitation of the relevant facts and CAP Action reserves all its rights, remedies and defenses concerning these issues.

Sincerely,

Debbie Fine

General Counsel

¹ Justin Gillis and Leslie Kaufman, Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science, N.Y. Times, February 16, 2012, at A23.

Download the CAPAF response letter to the Heartland Institute.

In remarks to a crowd of about 250 people Tuesday night, former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) appeared to suggest that President Obama has a plan to keep gasoline prices high in an effort to keep Americans driving less and, as a result, reduce carbon dioxide emissions. [Washington Post]

An unprecedented wave of severe weather hammered Canada’s national parks and historic sites in 2011. [Global News]

Peter Kendall, President of the National Farmers Union, said ongoing drought in the South East and Anglia, the “bread basket of Britain”, will cut food yields and force up prices. [Telegraph]

Something resembling a “fog of war” prevailed at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s headquarters in the first hours and days after the Fukushima accident began last March, the N.R.C.’s chairman said Tuesday, as the agency released a cache of transcripts of internal conference calls beginning hours after the earthquake. [NYT]

Hurricane force winds are expected through Thursday morning in Colorado, bringing unseasonably warm weather. [KGWN]

Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers still aren’t giving up on extending the wind production tax credit, which expires at the end of the year. [Politico]

As a winter storm blows through Western Washington, warnings have been issued for overflowing rivers and avalanche danger in the Cascades. [News Tribune]

The prospects for shale gas production in the European Union appear to be weakening, as both Bulgaria and France have banned fracking. [WSJ]

A day after a winter storm dumped several inches of snow on a handful of southern states, crews worked Monday to restore power to tens of thousands of customers as police responded to dozens of accidents on slippery roads. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) is once again raiding the state’s clean energy fund, this time diverting $210 million from the program that pays to help residents and businesses save money on their utility bills by reducing energy consumption. [NJ Spotlight]

The pain at the pump is a further sign, certainly, that the proposed 54.5-mile-per-gallon vehicle standard that President Obama expects to finalize this summer is needed more than ever. [Inquirer]

A narrowing gap between the supply and demand for oil is increasing the likelihood that prices will “spike” higher, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. [Businessweek]

Buddy Trahan, a Transocean Ltd. rig supervisor who barely survived the BP Deepwater Horizon rig disaster, asked a federal judge to free his stalled personal- injury lawsuit from the oil-spill litigation set for trial in New Orleans on Feb. 27. [Businessweek]

This afternoon presidential contender Mitt Romney’s campaign announced the endorsement of Rob Keck, the Director of Conservation at Bass Pro Shops and a “conservationist and renowned hunter.”  In his statement, circulated by the Romney campaign, Keck said that:

Mitt also understands the importance of wildlife conservation, as well as hunting and angling’s economic and political engine that powers America. He will ensure that this tradition continues and is strengthened.

“He will fix America and lead the way in helping protect and preserve our rich hunting and fishing heritage,” Keck concluded.

But just two weeks ago, Romney admitted in an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal that he doesn’t know ‘the purpose’ of public lands, which are incredibly important to hunters, anglers, and western economies.

As Dietmar Grimm of Trout Unlimited wrote recently in response to Romney’s unfamiliarity with public lands:

Unfortunately, it seems there is a fundamental misunderstanding among the candidates of what public lands do for us beyond their extraction values. In contrast, we as sportsmen and women know that public lands are much more. Every time we go into a fly or tackle shop before we go out on the water, we see the value we’re creating as sportsmen conservationists. Every time we head out to our jobs in our local communities, whether it is in the gas field, a local restaurant, or at a local community college, we see the value we’re creating as sportsmen conservationists.

As a money man like Romney should know, hunting and fishing on public lands provide enormous economic benefits.  In 2006, hunter and anglers visiting Interior Department-managed lands spent $2.4 billion in equipment expenditures plus even more in hotels, gas, and food costs. However, the connection that hunters and anglers have with public lands goes far beyond their economic value.  As Sean of the hunting and fishing blog Up the Poudre wrote:

Political winds blow hard during election years, and seldom align perfectly with the values of the people for which speech writers and pundits entertain. Red, blue, green, or other, it doesn’t matter. Common sense needs a place at the table. It was disheartening to listen to Mitt Romney last week, discuss his idea of value as it pertained to public land in the west.

In his endorsement, Keck also says he is “very concerned about the future of America and the ability we have to pass along our rich hunting and angling heritage to the next generation.”  But Romney has not shown any indication that he is willing to make tough decisions to preserve hunting and fishing for the next generation.  In fact, he has gone so far as to deny the greatest generational threat to this uniquely American tradition -– man-made climate change.  As Todd Tanner of Climate Hawks, a group founded to “harness the power of sportsmen to address climate change,” told Field and Stream recently:

Let’s say you are walking down a trail in the wilderness with your wife and kids, and you come upon a grizzly sow, standing on a carcass. She charges, flat out. You’re in front of your family. What do you do? Just give up? Pretend it’s not happening? Let her maul you and everything your care about? Of course you don’t. You take action. That is how I see climate change. It’s real, it’s threatening everything we love. Not taking action is not an option.

Despite those attempts, “pro-life” lawmakers like Reps. Bill Johnson (R-OH) and Ed Whitfield have blasted the proposed regulation as “far-left liberal ideology.” And this week, more than 30 advocates from the religious right, led by notables like the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, slammed EEN for its attempts to protect the environment, the unborn, and any human who could be affected by poisonous mercury emissions:

The 30-plus religious-right advocates, in a joint statement Wednesday, said that “most environmental causes promoted as pro-life involve little threat to human life itself, and no intent to kill anyone.”

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) criticized the Rev. Mitch Hescox, EEN’s president, at Wednesday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the EPA rule, which Republicans and some business groups call burdensome.

“The ‘life’ in ‘pro-life’ denotes not the quality of life, but life itself. The term denotes opposition to a procedure that intentionally results in dead babies,” said Shimkus, echoing the statement from the conservative leaders.

The religious right’s “pro-life” stance may cover invasive procedures on women, preventing access to contraception, and a host of other injustices. What it doesn’t cover, apparently, is a regulation opposed by the GOP’s big-business interests that would keep infants and children from getting poisoned by the air they breathe.

Q: What will be the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, in your opinion?

WILKINS: It will absolutely be approved if a Republican gets elected president. I am hopeful it will be approved [under Obama]. There are two schools of thought on this: If Mr. Obama gets re-elected, he will listen to his base and never approve it. The other school of thought believes Mr. Obama will approve it as he no longer has to rely on his environment base – I don’t know which one it is.

A long-time South Carolina legislator, Wilkins chaired the 2004 Bush re-election efforts in that state before being picked as ambassador to Canada. He then joined the Nelson Mullins lobbying firm, where he advocates for Alberta, Canada oil and timber interests. Wilkins is a registered lobbyist for the province of Alberta, the tar sands company Nexen Inc., Alberta Energy, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Wilkins supported the candidacy of Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) before joining the Romney campaign in January. Announcing his endorsement of Romney, Wilkins cited the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

When you have a worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth; by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven, for example, the politicization of the whole global warming debate — this is all an attempt to, you know, to centralize power and to give more power to the government.

Watch it:

On Monday, Santorum expanded on his conspiracy theories, saying that global warming is “political science,” not “climate science.”

An America-led plan to try tackling short-lived greenhouse gases, announced on February 16th, is not a breakthrough; but it is progress. [The Economist]

China probably won’t allow United Nations carbon credits in its cap-and-trade program unless they are approved by a domestic regulator, according to an official at the Shanghai Environment & Energy Exchange. [Bloomberg]

Gas prices should be largely a byproduct of presidential policy—not its aim. [Time]

Chilean authorities say flooding from heavy rains dislodged anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, floating two of the explosive devices onto the Pan-American Highway near the border with Peru. [AP]

With the start of the high-profile oil disaster trial set for next Monday, and the specter of potential liability that some experts have estimated at $40 billion, BP and other defendants are stepping up negotiations to end the litigation before Judge Carl J. Barbier of Federal District Court picks up his gavel. [NYT]

AAA says the average gas price nationwide was $3.56 on Sunday, up five cents in a week, and the pain is expected to get worse in the next few months. [Philly.com]

Part of the House transportation legislation that passed Thursday would not just allow but require opening the California, Florida and east coasts to oil and gas drilling to help pay for highways. It would also open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and many Western states to shale-oil extraction, a highly water-intensive process. [SF Chronicle]

The Bureau of Land Management has recommended 237,100 acres of public land in Arizona are suitable for renewable energy development, part of an effort to speed up the process for clean-energy companies looking to set up shop in the state. [AZ Capitol Times]

Adapting the techniques it uses to transform steel sheets into tanks of 15,000 gallons or more, oil-tank company Mass Tank Sales Corp. will make 20-story towers that support wind turbine blades. [Boston Globe]

The United States and Mexico reached an agreement Monday to cooperate on oil and gas development in waters along the nations’ maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico. [My San Antonio]

Energy Conversion Devices Inc. (ECD), a player in the solar and alternative energy space, became the latest green energy firm to file for bankruptcy last week. [Epoch Times]

Fears of $5 per gallon gasoline are in the back of some motorists’ minds, jeopardizing the nascent economic recovery and fueling campaign rhetoric during a presidential election year. [Chicago Tribune]