Climate hawks are starting to take a strong stand against the Senate frenzy to cripple Clean Air Act rules on behalf of global warming polluters. Four anti-climate amendments have been attached to unrelated small business legislation now under consideration. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), with the support of nearly the entire Republican caucus, submitted the Upton-Inhofe climate denial bill, while Democratic senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Max Baucus (D-MT), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) introduced their own bills to hogtie the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) have been leading the fight against limits of Clean Air Act enforcement of greenhouse pollution rules. Today, spokespeople for these climate hawks confirmed to ThinkProgress that they are committed to opposing any and all of these pollution riders, no matter which party has introduced the legislation.

A vote on at least the McConnell amendment is expected next week.

To call your senator and find out the stance on the four anti-science, pro-polluter amendments, check out the Credo whip count page.

In pursuit of the California Republican Party nomination for the 2010 Senate, Carly Fiorina has abandoned her support for cap-and-trade legislation. The former Hewlett Packard executive hopes to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who has championed clean energy legislation as the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee. In a new online advertisement created by Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-OK) nephew Fred Davis, the Fiorina campaign portrays Boxer as a giant floating head ominously looming over California. A gravel-voiced narrator claims that Boxer is “indifferent” that her climate policies “would take already painful jobless numbers and make them dramatically worse”:

NARRATOR: Proclaiming a cap-and-trade bill would clean the environment, indifferent that it would take already painful jobless numbers and make them dramatically worse.

BOXER: “That’s where you’ll have a little bit of an increase in electricity prices…”

NARRATOR: Even President Obama says electricity rates will skyrocket. And the Wall Street Journal says it is likely to be the biggest tax increase in history.

However, less than two years ago, Fiorina was singing a different tune. Speaking at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, MN, she praised Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) cap-and-trade plan as something that would “both create jobs and lower the cost of energy”:

I know John McCain. And in 2013, America will be more energy-independent because of his determination that we must power our own country, and his long-standing commitment to protecting our environment. John McCain will create a cap-and-trade system that will encourage the development of alternative energy sources. He will help advance clean coal technology, and nuclear power. And all of this will both create jobs and lower the cost of energy.

Watch a montage:

Like McCain’s plan, Boxer’s climate legislation marries a market-based cap on carbon pollution with support for alternative energy sources, including nuclear power and advanced coal technology. The revenues generated from a cap on carbon pollution will protect electricity consumers from the cost of investing in new jobs and ending dependence on oil, as Boxer has explained last year:

We must get these greenhouse gas emissions out of the air because if the planet continues to warm, we’re in a whole lot of trouble. Pretty much everyone agrees on that. Now, that means we have to move to clean energy and away from imported oil and those Middle East dictators. That’s good. We’ll move to clean energy. It will be better for our health and our families. That’s good. What about this transition period, as we move away from the dirty fuels and dirty coal to clean coal, to clean fuels, to solar, wind and geothermal? That’s where you’ll have a little bit of an increase in electricity prices. However, with a cap-and-trade system, you will have an incoming stream of revenues just as you do from the acid rain program, an incoming stream of revenues. And those revenues will make consumers whole. They will never pay any more. And that’s just the facts.

Analyses by the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Information Administration, Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Congressional Budget Office show that Boxer (and Fiorina circa 2008) is indeed telling the facts.

However, Fiorina 2010 seems to have decided to get her policy advice from one of her first endorsers, global warming denier Jim Inhofe.

In a major shift, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has changed the Clean Energy Jobs Act to significantly restrict the use of existing Clean Air Act provisions to regulate greenhouse gases. Unlike the climate bill passed by the House in June, the initial version of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, released by lead sponsor Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Boxer last month, did not strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s existing authority. The new language excludes global warming pollution from several sections of the Clean Air Act, limiting its regulation to operating permits for stationary sources emitting over “25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas”:

Notwithstanding any provision of this title or title III, no stationary source shall be required to apply for, or operate pursuant to, a permit under this title solely because the stationary source, including an agricultural source, emits less than 25,000 tons per year of any greenhouse gas or combination of greenhouse gases that are regulated solely because of the effect of those gases on climate change.

The 25,000 ton standard reflects the EPA’s plan for starting global warming regulation under a “tailoring rule” limited to the few thousand stationary sources of more than that amount of carbon dioxide a year — in large part coal-fired power plants. However, Boxer’s text is poorly written, as many greenhouse gases are thousands of times more powerful global warming pollutants than carbon dioxide.

The new text — like that of the House bill — completely forbids the regulation of greenhouse gases under the criteria pollutant, hazardous air pollutant, and international air pollution sections of the Clean Air Act.

Although several progressive and environmental organizations have made the preservation of existing Clean Air Act authority in the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act a key demand, Democratic members of the Committee on Environment and Public Works — which is now beginning to mark up the legislation — are split on this issue. Committee members Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) are signatories, with Chris Dodd (D-CT), of a dear colleague letter in favor of allowing greenhouse gas regulation as a pollutant circulated by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). However, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) had questioned the provision, and influential member Max Baucus (D-MT), the Finance Committee chair, strongly opposes EPA regulation.

Organizations that have called on the Senate to “save the Clean Air Act” include Friends of the Earth, 1Sky, and MoveOn, supported by youth and other grassroots activists.

Other changes to the original version of the legislation reflect industry-friendly demands from Democrats on the committee. They include: increasing free allowances to major oil refineries, putting the Secretary of Agriculture in charge of the agriculture offset program, and making owners of abandoned mountaintop removal sites (“private or public abandoned mine land”) eligible for “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Incentives.”

The chairman’s mark also adds some provisions which strengthen the bill: Rep. Doris Matsui’s (D-CA) tree-planting program language, incentives for rapid renewable energy deployment, and a program to reduce black carbon emissions from diesel.

Text in chairman’s mark of Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act restricting Clean Air Act regulation of greenhouse gases: Read more

In an Environment and Public Works hearing today, National Black Chamber of Commerce CEO Harry Alford accused Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) of being a racist. Alford, an opponent of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, attacked Boxer for being “racial” when she cited the NAACP’s support of clean energy and climate legislation. Saying he took “offense as an African American and a veteran,” he asked why she didn’t quote an “Asian” instead:

Madam chair, that is condenscending [sic] to me. I’m the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and you’re trying to put up some other black group to pit against me. . . .

All that’s condescending, and I don’t like it. It’s racial. I don’t like it. I take — I take offense to it. As an African-American and a veteran of this country, I take offense to that. You’re quoting some other black man — why don’t you quote some other Asian or some — I mean, you’re being racial here. And I think you’re getting on a path here that’s going to explode, in the Post. . . .

We’ve been looking at energy policy since 1996. And we are referring to the experts, regardless of their color. And for someone to tell me — an African-American, college-educated veteran of the United States Army — that I must contend with some other black group and put aside everything else in here. This has nothing to do with the NAACP, and really has nothing to do with the National Black Chamber of Commerce! We’re talking about energy. And that — that road the chair went down, I think is God awful.

Watch the exchange:

Alford, whose organization has received at least $275,000 $350,000 from ExxonMobil, was invited by the Republican members to testify. He purported to have “a deep understanding of small and minority-owned businesses” and spoke on behalf of the “black community” in his opening statement. He cited a flawed economic analysis of Waxman-Markey commissioned by his organization that estimates extreme costs for reducing our dependence on coal and oil.

As Sen. Boxer noted, it seems “relevant” that other organizations with “a deep understanding” of the “black community,” such as NAACP and 100 Black Men of Atlanta, see the threat of global warming and the opportunity in a clean energy future.

Later in the hearing, Alford argued, “Let me speak for the African-American community, because I am African American.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) stood with fellow Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to introduce principles for climate legislation, saying “We know that we have to act, and we intend to act.” David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s senior advisers, told E&E News that the effort by Congress to construct legislation to fight global warming is more than welcome:

We think that it’s healthy that there’s so much momentum in Congress to address this problem. It’s long overdue.

Boxer admitted that December is her working deadline for getting a bill “out of committee.” Other Senate chairs, including Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingman (D-NM) and Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) intend to weigh in on any legislation. “All of those committees,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told E&E News, “especially my old committee, EPW, have an important role to play for the Senate to produce a sound cap-and-trade bill that meets the president’s emission reductions objectives.”

At Climate Progress, Joe Romm therefore doubts climate legislation will be passed before 2010: “So this has to get through multiple Senate committees, pass the full Senate, be reconciled with whatever comes out of the House, and then pass both House and Senate again, and finally end up on Barack Obama’s desk.”

Meanwhile, President Obama continues to build a green-powered administration, with the selection of Robert Sussman and Lisa Heinzerling as senior EPA policy advisers, Todd Stern as the State Department climate envoy, climate justice leader Ron Sims as deputy secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and even new assistant White House chef Sam Kass, a strong supporter of local, sustainable, and healthy food.

Showing that Obama won’t just wait for Congress to act, yesterday the EPA and Department of Justice restarted a “national initiative, targeting electric utilities whose coal-fired power plants violate the law,” with a lawsuit against a Kansas utility whose coal-fired power plant has been in violation of the Clean Air Act for more than ten years. The case against Westar Energy had been held up by the Bush administration since 2003. A memo from Stephen Johnson’s deputy Marcus Peacock practically shut down all enforcement activity in 2005 .