While the prospects of comprehensive energy legislation remain grim in Washington, real action to address climate change and grow the clean economy is being taken on the state level.

California in particular is a shining example of state-based leadership on climate, having established its own cap-and-trade mechanism — a key element in the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (also known as AB 32) — that will soon be linked with the Province of Québec which will decrease overall greenhouse gas emissions and provide greater flexibility to California businesses. The state also has a Renewable Portfolio Standard of 33 percent by 2020 (the state utilities have already met 20 percent of its electricity needs through renewables), and a net metering program allowing customers to receive financial credit for power generating by their onsite system.

Thanks to the foresight of California policymakers and ample natural resources, the state leads the nation in solar projects, solar megawatts installed, and the average cost per watt of solar. In 2011, $1.9 billion was invested in the state to install solar on homes and businesses, and there are currently more than 1,500 solar companies working throughout the manufacturing chain in California. California even ranks second in wind installation, while also leading the nation in most wind capacity installed in 2011.

Clearly, Californians have much to be proud of when it comes to taking strong action to reduce carbon emissions and fighting the urgent threat of climate change.

This week, Southern California energy providers came to DC to highlight the state’s great achievements and recommend action that could be taken at the federal level needed to maintain long term energy reliability for California while at an event hosted by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. The panelists called for three specific items of legislation that federal lawmakers can enact to not only support California policies, but create economic and environmental benefits for the entire country:

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by Kate Gordon, via Huffington Post

A new statewide poll in California has mixed results for those of us dedicated to fighting climate change. While the good news is actually great news, the bad news is a call to action.

Let me start on the upbeat side, which recognizes the magnitude of the issue.

The Public Policy Institute of California’s 12th annual poll on “Californians and the Environment” found that a strong majority of Californians, 78 percent, thinks that the world’s temperature has probably increased over the last 100 years, versus 17 percent who said it probably hasn’t. Most respondents, 60 percent, said the effects of global warming have already begun, and even more, 71 percent, support the state law requiring emissions reductions. Their feelings are borne out by hard science, as we know from NASA scientist James Hansen’s recent op-ed, in which he definitively links the extreme weather of the past few years with climate change.

More of the encouraging results:
• Majorities favor policies requiring increased energy efficiency for residential buildings, commercial buildings and appliances (77 percent);
• requiring industrial plants, oil refineries, and commercial facilities to reduce emissions (82);
• encouraging local governments to change land use and transportation planning so people could drive less (77);
• requiring all automakers to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases even further in new cars (78);
• and requiring fuel providers to reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels at least 10 percent by the end of the decade (79).

But now for the head-scratcher.

California actually already has a law in place to lower emissions: AB32, which aims to reduce carbon levels to their 1990 levels by 2020. But a major mechanism to achieve those goals, a cap and trade program, remains somewhat of a mystery to a majority of state residents. The poll found that 57 percent had never heard of it — despite the hundreds of news stories on the topic in 2012 alone.

As Californians learn more about AB32, it’s critically important that they get the right information.

Well-financed opposition groups are revving up a noisy campaign to block cap and trade from taking effect. Using untruths, half-truths and scare tactics, they’re charging that it amounts to a tax, that it would drive businesses out of California, that it would drive up energy costs for consumers.

Let me be clear: Not true. Not true. Not true.

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On Wednesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is holding hearings to provide an “update” on climate science. While presumably the Senators will discuss the new Koch-funded study that changed a prominent climate change “skeptic’s” mind, the Republicans on the Committee probably won’t want to hear it.

Almost to a man, the GOP Senators on this key committee have consistently denied the brute fact that humans are causing climate change and/or worked to obstruct any possible solution to the mess we’re making:

1. James Inhofe, Oklahoma: Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Committee, is one of America’s most famous climate deniers. He has written a book alleging that climate science is a conspiracy “perpetrated” by the United Nations and that any climate change that is happening is part of God’s irreversible plan for the Earth. When confronted with the fact that 97% of climate science accepted anthropogenic warming, he – surprise! – denied it.

2. David Vitter, Louisiana: Vitter has referred to evidence for climate change as “ridiculous pseudo-science garbage” and, though his home state was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and is at serious risk from future warming-caused storms, attempted to block federal funding for efforts to mitigate the worst byproducts of global warming.

3. John Barrasso, Wyoming: Barrasso appeared on Glenn Beck’s show to suggest he had a “smoking gun” suggesting the attempt to regulate CO2 emissions was simply an EPA power grab. Relatedly, Barrasso claimed the EPA’s main goal was no longer protecting the environment, but rather “remaking society,” and introduced legislation stripping the agency’s power to regulate carbon emissions.

4. Jeff Sessions, Alabama: Senator Sessions reserved his strongest ire for congressional regulation of carbon pollution, calling cap-and-trade a “conceit” that “we can manage the climate.” He has also, in the process of denying the moral importance of addressing the consequences of global warming, described CO2 as “a naturally occurring gas that plants breathe and they can’t grow without” as if that were some sort of evidence that it couldn’t harm the environment (which, of course, it isn’t.)

5. Mike Crapo, Idaho: Crapo’s official website features a page full of misinformation about climate science, claiming among other things that “the underlying cause of…climactic shifts is ultimately not well-understood” and implying that “[n]atural factors such as solar activity, volcanic eruptions and orbital changes” may explain our current period of warming (nope). He has also decried air pollution and then, in the same breath advocated expanded oil drilling in the United States.

6. Mike Johans, Nebraska: Like his compatriots, Johans has rejected the scientific consensus of anthropogenic warming, calling it “contested science.” Johans was also the author of a procedural maneuver designed explicitly to block the majority from overriding Republican obstructionism on cap-and-trade.

7. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee: Alexander is a comparative standout from the group – he believes climate change is both real, anthropogenic, and a serious problem – but that’s only if you’re grading on a curve. He opposed cap-and-trade but voted to block the EPA from regulating emissions because “that’s Congress’ job.” Though he appears to think a carbon tax is a somewhat better alternative, he has dithered on any real action to try to implement it.

There’s nothing about being a Republican or a conservative that requires legislators to be this blinkered about the climate change crisis: Former GOP Representative Bob Inglis recently founded an initiative to develop and push Republican ideas for pricing carbon.

Unfortunately, the vitriolic reaction to similar ideas from the Republican establishment and the views of the GOP leaders most responsible for establishing the party’s position on the global warming crisis suggests that we’ll have to wait for some time for Republican sanity on climate change.

Speaking at the Center for American Progress Action Fund today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said he believes a price on carbon pollution can provide a unique solution to both the country’s fiscal challenges and its looming climate crisis, uniting climate and deficit hawks. His presentation put the challenge to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House Republican budget chief, who has claimed that Congress has a “moral obligation” to reduce the country’s debt. With former Republican congressman Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), Waxman explained how tackling climate pollution can address fiscal, energy, environmental, and economic challenges simultaneously:

A price on carbon can give you a substantial amount of money to help deal with our fiscal problems. A price on carbon can move us away from our reliance on fossil fuels which add to the greenhouse gas emissions in our climate, and by doing that we can become less dependent on oil. We would be able to be a challenger in the economic future of clean energy.

Watch it:

“Do people want to cut Medicare and Medicaid?” Waxman asked. A rising price on carbon pollution, Waxman said, could raise over $1 trillion over several decades.

Gilchrest rebuked Ryan for ignoring the climate crisis in his depiction of the “defining moment“:

Paul Ryan said this is a defining moment for future generations as far as a fiscal sense for reducing the deficit. This is a defining moment on the planet of seven billion people extracting resources faster than they can be replaced, becoming a geologic force by pumping more carbon dioxide in decades than nature is able to store in the earth over millions of years. The defining moment is realizing that the market, capitalism, our civilization is actually a subset of the earth’s ecosystem. We’re not independent of the living machine that gives us life on earth. We’re dependent on it.

“The U.S. is facing a range of unprecedented fiscal and environmental challenges,” said Waxman. “We’ve got a confluence of events happening all at once.”

Waxman and Gilchrest recently co-authored a Washington Post op-ed with Reps. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Sherry Boehlert (R-MD) calling for climate-change policies to be considered for deficit reduction.

Mitt Romney’s top donor is Environmental Defense Fund board member Julian H. Robertson Jr., who has given $1.3 million to the Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future even though Romney has viciously attacked the climate cap-and-trade policies EDF supports. A spokesperson for the hedge-fund billionaire said that Robertson is confident Romney is lying to the public when he campaigns against climate action as the “Soros agenda,” and will “do the right thing” if elected:

In terms of the environment and climate-change controls, which [Julian Robertson] does believe is one of the most important issues the country and the world faces, he has confidence that Romney, once he’s in there, will do the right thing.

Robertson has been a long-time supporter of Romney, saying he’s “the smartest guy I’ve ever seen” in 2007. Robertson vigorously supported Obama’s cap-and-trade bill in 2009, because of the “danger of global warming.”

If Romney intends to support climate-change controls as president, he certainly hasn’t given any such indication on the campaign trail:

“Unlike Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney never sat next to Nancy Pelosi in an ad funded by George Soros on behalf of Al Gore’s global warming initiative. As recently as 2008, the Soros agenda had no better friend than Newt Gingrich.” [2/2/12]

“In my administration, coal will not be a four-letter word.” [3/5/12]

“I can tell you the right course for America with regard to energy policy is to focus on job creation and not global warming.” [11/2/11]

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In a letter to the White House Office of Management and Budget, top House Republicans demanded the long-delayed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation for greenhouse gas pollution for very large emitters be killed. House energy committee chair Fred Upton (R-MI), former chair Joe Barton (R-TX), and energy and power subcommittee chair Ed Whitfield (R-KY) asked OMB acting director Jeffrey Zients to stay EPA’s regulation of new and modified power plants that produce more than 100,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide pollution:

We understand that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is currently reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new and modified power plants through the New Source Performance Standards program. We write to request that you withhold the regulation from issuance. We are concerned about the regulation’s impact on jobs and the economy, and that it will not comply with all applicable Executive Orders, including the President’s Executive Order 13563 and its predecessor, Executive Order 12866.

“Our regulatory system must protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation,” begins Obama’s Executive Order 13563. “It must be based on the best available science.”

The EPA rule is the long-delayed result of a suit brought against the George W. Bush administration by several states in 2003, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The Bush White House then blocked the efforts by the EPA to comply with the law, and the Obama administration has slowly rolled out a watered-down rule that won’t reach full implementation until 2016. Scientists have warned that the United States needs to rapidly reduce its carbon pollution no later than 2015 for human civilization to have a reasonable shot at maintaining a safe climate, based on the best available science.

However, in the fantasy world of Upton, Barton, and Whitfield, global warming doesn’t exist — so even the EPA’s soft limits on carbon pollution are a “back door cap-and-trade regime” that will “burden struggling businesses and families,” instead of one of the most important accomplishments of Obama administration to protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation.

Electric utilities are the top contributors this cycle to Upton, Barton, and Whitfield. During this campaign cycle alone, the letter’s authors have received a combined $431,550 from electric power companies.

Download the anti-climate letter from Upton, Barton, and Whitfield to the OMB.

Report on a ten-state initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions shows the program is a success after three years.

By Maria Gallucci, excerpted from InsideClimate News

The state of Massachusetts is quietly reaping the benefits of cap and trade, the much-maligned process for curbing greenhouse gas emissions that federal lawmakers and many state governments resoundingly rejected in recent years. According to a recent study, cap and trade has created 3,800 jobs and nearly $500 million in economic activity for Massachusetts since 2008.

Massachusetts belongs to theRegional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the first and only mandatory carbon emissions trading scheme in America. A report analyzing data from the first three years of the effort found that of the 10 participating Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states, Massachusetts benefited most economically, because it used the bulk of its money to help fund its aggressive energy efficiency agenda.

“Energy efficiency investments have a much bigger multiplier effect than any other category of spending,” said Paul Hibbard, vice president of the Analysis Group, the Boston-based consulting firm that prepared the report. When homeowners and businesses used RGGI dollars to retrofit and weatherize buildings, they not only ended up saving on energy costs and spending money elsewhere in the economy—they also put contractors and installers to work.

RGGI “is a very successful program … and we look forward to continue achieving those results,” Mark Sylvia, commissioner of Massachusetts’ Department of Energy Resources, told InsideClimate News.

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The Washington Post gives former House speaker Newt Gingrich a rare upside down Pinocchio for this whopper on Saturday:

“I’ve said publicly, sitting on the couch with Nancy Pelosi is the dumbest single thing I’ve done in the last few years. But if you notice, I’ve never favored cap and trade, and in fact, I actively testified against it. I was at the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee the same day Al Gore was there to testify for it, I testified against it and through American Solutions we fought it in the Senate and played a major role in defeating it.”

In fact, as the WashPost points out, in a February 2007  Interview on PBS’s “Frontline” Gingrich said:

“I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.”

That is a pretty unequivocal endorsement of cap-and-trade.

Gingrich is a major-league flip-flopper, like Mitt Romney, but somehow he gets more of a pass by the GOP base since they know he is very conservative in his core.  The Post summed up Gingrich’s flip-flop this way:

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In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich claimed that he “never favored cap and trade,” four years after he expressed “strong support” for a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon pollution. Gingrich told questioner Ken Cuccinelli, the Virginia attorney general, that the climate action ad he did with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as part of Al Gore’s We Campaign was the “dumbest thing” he’d ever done:

I said publicly sitting on the couch with Pelosi is the dumbest thing I have done. But I never favored cap and trade and actively testified against it. I was in the U.S. House and Energy Committee the same day Al Gore was there to testify for it and I testified against it. Through American Solutions we fought it in the Senate and we played a major role in defeating it.

Watch it:

In 2007, Gingrich told Frontline he would “strongly support” a mandatory cap and trade program:

I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.

Gingrich may never have “favored” cap-and-trade. Instead, he strongly supported it.

Gingrich’s positions on global warming and federal climate policy have twisted in the wind over more than two decades, with his positions mostly coinciding with whether the party holding the presidency is a Republican or a Democrat. Here’s ThinkProgress Green’s exclusive history of the epic series of reversals Gingrich has made since 1989, while carbon pollution and the earth’s temperature have skyrocketed:
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