Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Panel shall develop a strategy to protect, restore, and conserve natural resources so that natural resources become more resilient, adapt to, and withstand the ongoing and expected impacts of climate variability and change.

It would also encourage, but not require, state-specific adaptation plans.

Effects of climate change mentioned as examples in the legislation are droughts and heatwaves, storms and floods; wildfires; outbreaks of forest pests and invasive species; flooding and erosion of coastal areas due to rising sea levels; melting glaciers and sea ice; thawing permafrost; shifting fish, wildlife, and plant population ranges; disruptive shifts in the timing of fish, wildlife, and plant natural history cycles, such as blooming, breeding, and seasonal migrations; and ocean acidification.

The legislation is cosponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), also a member of EPW. Baucus has repeatedly opposed action to limit climate change pollution.

Download the SAFE Act (as prepared for introduction).

OHIO: At the behest of then-Vice President Dick Cheney, an exemption was inserted into a 2005 energy bill — dubbed the “Haliburton loophole” — which stripped the EPA of its power to regulate a natural gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing. This method, named fracking, entails drilling a L-shaped well deep into shale and pumping millions of gallons of water laced with industrial chemicals — chemicals which the energy companies are not legally bound to disclose. The poisonous fluid fractures the shale and releases natural gas deposits for collection. But the public health risk associated with fracking doesn’t seem to bother Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) and state Republicans. The Ohio House introduced a bill early last month that would create a panel to open any state-owned land for oil and gas exploration to the highest bidder. Subsequently, in Kasich’s budget proposal, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources would be given authority to lease 200,000 acres of state park land for oil and gas exploration. Faced with a litany of problems related to fracking — even including a house exploding in Ohio — Kasich has fully endorsed drilling in Ohio state parks, saying, “Ohio is not going to walk away from a potential industry.” State Rep. John Adams (R), the House bill’s sponsor, said drilling in state parks can help erase a projected $8 billion budget deficit, and “keep our parks and our lakes up to the standards that the citizens of Ohio want.”

PENNSYLVANIA: After injecting fracking fluid deep into the earth to extract natural gas, the waste that returns becomes a nasty byproduct of saltwater mixed with radioactive materials. Most states require energy companies to inject the waste thousands of feet deep back into the earth — a technique that caused earthquakes in Arkansas. But Pennsylvania, one of the major states at the center of the natural gas boom, dumps the radioactive leftovers directly into rivers and streams, where communities get their drinking water. As a result of the atrocious practice, Pennsylvanians have gotten sick from drinking tap water. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) doesn’t seem to be bothered whatsoever by releasing radioactive waste into rivers, recently saying that he wants to make Pennsylvania “the Texas of the natural gas boom.” In fact, Corbett’s draconian budget cuts funding for environmental oversight, and contains no increases in fines for environmental damages related to fracking. Corbett has even said that the regulation of the natural gas industry has been too aggressive. Not surprisingly, an analysis of Corbett’s campaign contributions has found that he has accepted more money from the natural gas industry than all other Pennsylvania candidates combined.

NORTH CAROLINA: With moratoriums on fracking in Arkansas, New York, New Jersey, and potentially Maryland, state Rep. Mitch Gillespie (R) plans to introduce a bill that would permit fracking in North Carolina. Currently, dating back to rules and regulations put into law in the 1940s, fracking is illegal in North Carolina. But Gillespie wishes to change the law, saying to the House Environment Committee, “It’s my intention to move ahead” with legislation, and natural gas is “a resource” that “North Carolina should be compensated for.” Energy companies are seeking to drill in southern Granville County through Durham, Chatham and Lee counties. But Robin Smith, N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ assistant secretary, said that fracking will “endanger water sources in the area,” citing problems that have occurred in Pennsylvania.

TEXAS: Not only is Texas the biggest polluter in the country but it isn’t complying with federal air quality standards. Texas leads the nation in carbon dioxide emissions, and in 2008, Houston was ranked the fourth worst city for ozone. Texas has not been in compliance with federal air quality standards since 1994, when the state submitted a system of issuing flexible air pollution limits to the EPA — which allowed for a portion of a refinery or chemical plant to emit more pollutants than federal standards authorize as long as the total emissions did not infringe on federal air quality standards. In June 2010, the EPA published its “disapproval” of Texas’ air quality standards, stating that the Texas program “does not meet several national Clean Air Act requirements that help to assure the protection of health and the environment.” Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and state Republicans responded by filing a lawsuit that challenges the EPA’s ruling. Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples also pushed back against the EPA’s decision, saying, “[u]ltimately, in this process, it is the consumer, American families, that will be picking up the tab for” stronger air quality enforcement. Gina McCarthy, the EPA’s top air official, responded to the agency’s critics, citing that “enforcement of the Clean Air Act has saved lives and allowed the economy to grow.” In fact, the EPA just released a study which concluded that the Clean Air Act will “prevent 230,000 premature deaths and result in $2 trillion in economic benefits in 2020.”

MAINE: Newly elected Gov. Paul LePage (R) — who infamously told the NAACP to “kiss my butt” and that he would tell President Obama to “go to hell” — announced that he will be trimming dozens of environmental protections in order to make Maine more “business friendly.” LePage will be changing a minimum of 36 environmental laws, including opening up 10 million acres of northern Maine for business development, weakening a new law that that requires manufactures take back and recycle old products, relaxing air emission standards, and replacing the state Board of Environmental Protection with an appeals panel. In another remarkably atrocious move, LePage wants to reverse a ruling that the chemical BPA — which has been linked to learning disabilities in children, obesity, and cancer — should be phased out of children’s products. Thankfully, in a significant policy defeat for LePage, a Maine legislative committee unanimously ruled to ban BPA last week.

MONTANA: Instituted in 1971, the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) is a “look before you leap” policy, “requiring state agencies to consider the environmental, social, cultural and economic impacts of proposals like mines, power plants, [and] subdivisions.” Allowing for public input and deliberation when considering new industrial projects, MEPA is largely considered a success. But state Sen. Chas Vincent (R) has proposed a bill to gut the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), citing that it’s what “venture capitalists” need. Moreover, state Rep. Joe Read (R) has introduced a bill declaring global warming a “natural occurrence and human activity has not accelerated it,” and that “global warming is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana.” In an effort to help business projects tied up in lawsuits, state Republicans have even proposed amending the Montana Constitution’s guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment” to a “clean, healthful, and economically productive environment.”

MINNESOTA: State Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R) convinced a committee to amend the House outdoors bill to include a provision that allows the for-profit logging industry to cut trees in Minnesota’s Frontenac and Whitewater state parks. The provision was ultimately taken out of the outdoor spending bill, and Drazkowski expressed regret, saying that black walnut trees — worth up to $5,000 — will be left to “rot on the stump.” But the fate of 24 existing state parks and plans for the development of Lake Vermilion State Park are still on the cutting block as the House and Senate begin negotiating their outdoor spending bills.

These assaults on the environment have very little to do with budget shortfalls, but they do conveniently provide a platform of austerity where state Republicans can justify their ideological attacks on behalf of corporate polluters — who are not just stripping states’ natural resources but also the health and the jobs of their citizens. The Republican attacks on the environment are just the tip of the iceberg, though. Koch’s ALEC is underwriting radical-right legislation across the country, having major influence in efforts to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, helped draft Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration law, and is the major driving force behind anti-union bills in many states. In short, state Republicans have fallen ill to a larger pattern — carefully orchestrated and implemented by Koch’s ALEC and AFP — where the environment and the safety of their citizens are sacrificed, in favor of lining the pockets of the wealthy.

-Paul Breer

In 2008, New Hampshire joined RGGI, which is a market-based regulatory program that cuts greenhouse gas emissions and has created 1,130 jobs as a result of the energy efficient benefits. While cleaning the environment, RGGI has cumulatively generated $28.2 million in revenue for New Hampshire.

Koch Industries, because they have manufacturing plants in the Northeast and release 300 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution every year, stand to profit greatly by repealing RGGI. To increase their bottom line, ALEC — a Koch-funded group that drafts model legislation for conservative state legislators — has written legislation to repeal regional climate programs:

WHEREAS, there has been no credible economic analysis of the costs associated with carbon reduction mandates and the consequential effect of the increasing costs of doing business in the State of ______;

WHEREAS, forcing business, industry, and food producers to reduce carbon emissions through government mandates and cap-and-trade policies under consideration for the regional climate initiative will increase the cost of doing business, push companies to do business with other states or nations, and increase consumer costs for electricity, fuel, and food;

Compare to the anti-RGGI bill sponsored and introduced to the House by state Rep. Richard Barry (R):

I. There has been no credible economic analysis of the costs associated with carbon dioxide emissions reduction mandates and the consequential effect of the increased costs of doing business in New Hampshire.

II. Businesses, industries, and food producers have been forced to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as a result of government mandates and cap and trade policies through the regional greenhouse gas initiative, which has increased the cost of doing business, pushed companies to do business with other states or nations, and increased consumer costs for electricity, fuel, and food.

When asked to explain the language in the bill at a public hearing, Barry nervously said that the bill’s sponsors did not write that particular section. State Rep. James Garrity (R), Chair of the House Science, Technology, and Energy Committee, responded by saying that “[o]ur committee does not feel that editorials belong in laws.”

After ALEC wrote the bill, Koch’s Americans For Prosperity began orchestrating broad campaigns to drum up support for the legislation:

– Koch’s AFP flooded New Hampshire with robocalls in support of the bill to repeal RGGI.

– At an event sponsored by ALEC, AFP Vice-President for Policy Phil Kepern publicly voiced his opposition of NH’s membership in RGGI. New Hampshire AFP Director Corey Lewandoski followed suit, saying, “It does nothing to reduce greenhouse gases because jobs and businesses just move to other states.”

ALEC’s text in the repeal bill was ultimately dropped, but the amended legislation to remove New Hampshire from RGGI overwhelmingly passed the House last week. If the bill makes it through the Senate and overtakes Gov. John Lynch’s veto, New Hampshire will be the first state to pull out of RGGI, threatening the wildly successful clean energy program’s future viability for the entire region.

There is a glimmer of hope: Not every state Republican is under the thrall of the Koch brothers. On Monday, state Sen. Nancy Stiles (R-Seacoast) broke party lines, saying she wanted to “save the standards for carbon emissions.”

See the Center for American Progress Fund’s new report on the Koch brothers empire.

-Paul Breer

February 15, 2007: “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.” [Frontline, 2/15/07]

April 4, 2009: “And now, in 2009, instead of making energy cheaper—which would help create jobs and save Americans money—President Obama wants to impose a cap-and-trade regime. Such a plan would have the effect of an across-the-board energy tax on every American. That will make our artificial energy crisis even worse—and raising taxes during a deep economic recession will only accelerate American job losses.” [Newsweek, 4/4/09]

Gingrich’s full record on global warming is actually a series of epic flip-flops over more than two decades, with his positions mostly coinciding with whether the party holding the presidency is a Republican or a Democrat. Since 1989, when Gingrich supported aggressive climate action against “wasteful fossil fuel use,” until today, as he proposes abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 353 ppm to 391 ppm (from 26 percent above pre-industrial levels to 40 percent above), and the five-year global mean temperature anomaly has nearly doubled from 0.3°C to 0.56°C.

FLIP

FLOP

FLIP

FLOP

U.S. allies and their militaries will face national security challenges similar to those faced by the United States and its naval forces as a result of climate change. [...] Among the many manifestations of climate change projected for the next several decades, sea-level rise is both highly certain to occur and highly certain to come with economic costs. [...] As a result of reduced multiyear ice, the Arctic Ocean is rapidly acquiring the types of maritime activities in the summer months that normally occur elsewhere in the world’s ice-free oceans.

The Department of Defense has also found that global warming poses a threat to national security, and concluded that climate-induced crises could destabilize entire regions and increase the power of terrorist organizations.

The military, as opposed to the climate denying Republicans, have realized that respected scientific bodies across the world have unequivocally concluded that global warming is occuring. Navy Rear Admiral David Tilley, a meteorologist and Navy oceanographer, has said that global warming is real, “an issue that affects our national security,” and the “greatest challenge of the 21st century.”

-Paul Breer

Likewise, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), upon becoming Speaker of the House in 2007, launched an initiative called “Green the Capitol,” which replaced Styrofoam and plasticware in the Capitol cafeteria with cups made of cornstarch and recyclable utensils. This January, following in Reagan’s misguided footsteps, the Republican-controlled House Administration Committee cut key parts of Pelosi’s “Green” initiative, and ordered the switch of recyclable materials to non-biodegradable Styrofoam to be used in the House cafeterias.

Yesterday, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and other Republican leaders, nine Democrats wrote that the health of Americans are being jeopardized because Styrofoam is a known carcinogen:

Over 20 years ago, McDonalds and other fast food restaurants replaced polystyrene foam with recyclable and paperboard containers. More than 100 cities have also chosen to ban polystyrene foam for health and environmental reasons. Adopting the same standard is the least we can do. …The International Association for Research on Cancer classified styrene as a potential human carcinogen.

Eliminating polystyrene-related health impacts will result in fewer lost work days and lower heath insurance costs for the House and its staff. This benefit alone should outweigh any cost savings from using polystyrene containers.

The irresponsibility of the decision to use polystyrene foam without considering other options is all the more egregious because the cafeteria is not merely used by House members and our staffers. The health of constituents and visitors to the Hill who eat in the cafeteria will be impacted by this short-sighted decision.

The House Republicans’ decision to reinstate Styrofoam is only part of their egregious environmental agenda. Every House Republican last week voted against stripping the five largest oil companies of taxpayer funded subsidies — which would have saved tens of billions of dollars. Even more indicative of the Republicans’ atrocious environmental agenda is the near unanimous support of the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would overturn the EPA’s finding that heat-trapping gases and carbon dioxide carry a severe threat to the environment and public health. The measure is expected to pass the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power today.

– Paul Breer

In a recent internet post, a contributor makes the claim that I supported cap-and-trade in late 2007 while running for President.

To put it simply, that’s just not true. . . . This kind of mandatory energy policy would have a horrible impact on this nation’s job market. I never did support and never would support it – period.

However, when he spoke at the Clean Air Cool Planet conference in Manchester, NH, on October 13, 2007, Huckabee was unequivocal in his support for “cap and trade of carbon emissions”:

The one thing all of us have a responsibility to do is to recognize that climate change is here, it’s real. What we have to do is stop pointing fingers about who’s at fault and saying whose responsibility it is to fix it and recognize it’s all our fault and it’s all our responsibility to fix it.

…

I also support cap and trade of carbon emissions. And I was disappointed that the Senate rejected a carbon counting system to measure the sources of emissions, because that would have been the first and the most important step toward implementing true cap and trade.

Watch it:

As Hot Air’s AllahPundit discovered, Huckabee’s support for cap and trade was picked up by “Bloomberg News, the Council on Foreign Relations, environmentalist websites, and even his own fan pages.”

Huckabee concluded his 2007 speech by repeating a metaphor from his book From Hope to Higher Ground, excoriating “thermometer” politicians who change their positions based on polls and popularity, instead of “thermostat” politicians who stand by their convictions and provide true leadership:

Leadership comes down to whether you want to be thermometers or thermostats. And that’s probably a term most of you in this room care about, thermometers and thermostats. Let’s remember this: a thermometer can read temperature and reflect what it is. It just can’t do anything about it.

Unfortunately, a lot of leadership in this country is like a thermometer. Polls will be taken, temperature will be gauged, and then speeches will reflect. What we do not need in this country is thermometer leadership. What we need is thermostat leadership. The thermostat reads the temperature as to what it is, but its primary purpose of the thermostat is to seek to adjust it to what it ought to be. And I would suggest, that regardless of your politics, that you insist that people commit to being more than thermometers, and they commit to being thermostats, to help to adjust not just the climate of this earth, but the direction of this country. Not accepting what it is, but leading to what it ought to be.

The Mike Huckabee of 2010 has evidently chosen to abandon the conviction-based approach of the Mike Huckabee of 2007.

(H/T Dave Weigel)

All of the steps Americans were going to take, businesses and individuals, the added costs that we were going to incur — Consumers Energy told us just because of cap-and-trade, energy costs would rise in Michigan by almost 40 percent by 2020. Are any of those incurred costs actually going to impact the rising temperature of debate? The answer was no. No matter what we did between now and 2050, it, it, there was no real science to verify that it would reduce the temperature rise that some predicted. And that’s why we do need hearings.

Watch it:

In fact, the threat of global warming pollution has been understood since the 1950s. The Environmental Protection Agency has found that the enactment of U.S. climate legislation would greatly impact rising temperatures, reducing the risk of warming by 2 C from 99 percent to 25 percent, and the risk of 4 C warming from 32 percent to practically zero. That is why the National Academies of Science recommended in May that the United States “act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Upton is just one of several top House Republicans who have called for a witch hunt against practicing climate scientists. After Upton’s remarks in January, the scientists have been repeatedly exonerated of the unfounded charges of conspiracy and corruption laid against them by the right wing. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), in line to take over the oversight committee, has repeatedly called for hearings, and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) hopes to use the global warming committee to investigate scientists. Upton’s challenger, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), also wants to launch McCarthyite show trials on climate science.

Upton enjoys a reputation as a “moderate on environmental issues,” but he has become as extreme as the rest of his Tea Party colleagues on global warming and other environmental rules.

The Wonk Room previously reported that Upton was “the only candidate to take over the House Committee on Energy and Commerce who doesn’t explicitly question the science of manmade global warming.” We regret the error.

In fact, Democrats who voted against clean energy were more than three times as likely to lose their seats than those who voted for it:

— Out of the 211 Democrats who voted for ACES, only 41 either lost or retired and saw their seats go Republican. Thus 81 percent of Democrats voting for the climate bill won their races.

– Of the 44 Democrats who voted against ACES, 28 lost, retired and lost the seat to Republicans, or in the case of Parker Griffith, flipped parties and lost the Republican primary. That means 64 percent of Democrats voting against the climate bill lost their seat.

– Of the eight Republicans who voted for the bill, only one was punished by the voters — Rep. Mike Castle (DE-AL), who lost his U.S. Senate primary to eventual loser Christine O’Donnell. Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Chris Smith (NJ-4), and Leonard Lance (NJ-7) were re-elected. Rep. Mark Kirk (IL-10) was elected to the U.S. Senate and Rep. John McHugh (NY-23) became Secretary of the Army.

By contrast, the fight against big oil’s Proposition 23 to kill California’s climate legislation buoyed Democrats Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Barbara Boxer to victory, helping to activate a broad coalition of progressive voters to come to the polls.

The pollution-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) claims not to question the science of global warming, arguing that its massive Astroturfing campaign against climate policy hinges purely on economic arguments. However, footage from the new documentary (Astro)Turf Wars reveals that AFP officials in fact are radical climate science deniers, promoting untenable conspiracy theories to challenge the overwhelming scientific consensus that fossil fuel pollution is dangerously warming the planet.

“We’re not arguing the science of climate change,” Steve Lonegan, AFP-New Jersey state director told Taki Oldham, (Astro)Turf Wars’ filmmaker, last year, at an AFP “Hot Air Tour” event challenging climate legislation. “What we’re saying is the price tag put on it is so destructive as to be reckless and irresponsible.” However, when Oldham asked Lonegan about the science, the AFP official launched into a denier tirade:

The science is not finished, the debate is not over, as the left who support this legislation would tell you. It is quite far from over. There is some very doubtful science into whether or not manmade global warming is causing significant climate change, or whether that climate change is bad or not.

Oldham also attended AFP’s annual summit in October 2009, where the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell, also funded by Koch, told AFP members that global warming is “phony”:

First I want to talk about global warming for a minute. Here’s the last 30 years. You’ll see for the last ten years we haven’t had any global warming. I think that shows the models are phony.

Watch it:

Ebell spoke at a panel moderated by AFP’s vice president of policy, Phil Kerpen, which also included radical climate conspiracy theorist Phelim McAleer and Koch front-group lifer Daniel Simmons.

When the Wonk Room noted that numerous Republican candidates who question climate science are also signatories of the AFP “No Climate Tax” pledge, AFP argued that “our pledge has nothing to do with science,” complaining, “Why can’t Think Progress approach this issue with intellectual honesty, instead of distorting our sincere efforts to fight government growth as some sort of scientific position?”

“We’ve strived to encourage an intellectually honest debate on the scientific basis for claims of harm from greenhouse gases,” Koch Industries spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia claimed in March, 2010.

Lonegan and Ebell’s denial of climate science is, in fact, the default policy position of AFP and Koch Industries:

– “The scientific establishment has dropped the ball. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” said Peggy Venable, AFP’s State Director for Texas, in 2009. “On the contrary it makes crops and forests grow faster. We exhale carbon dioxide.”

– AFP’s website flatly claims that the fact that global warming could cause an eventual 7-meter sea level rise is a “falsehood.”

– “Endangerment of public health and welfare is not ‘reasonably anticipated,’” AFP argued in an April 15, 2009 letter challenging the EPA’s endangerment finding.

– Koch Industries’ official position on climate policy explicitly questions the science of manmade global warming, arguing it may be “simply part of the earth’s natural cycle” and claiming that “the past 10 years or so of data” indicate “we have emerged from a warming cycle and are now entering a cooling cycle.”

In their contrasting fates lie broader lessons for the coming midterms: Live by the president and you could die by the president. Democrats who have been thorns in the president’s side are doing well in some of the toughest districts for their party, from Alabama to the steel belt of western Pennsylvania. But swing-district Democrats who have voted with the president in Congress are struggling, even if they’re now asserting their independence.

Weisman repeats his assertion throughout the article, saying “resistance to the agenda is rewarding some House Democrats as the midterm elections approach” and that there is a “pattern of opponents of the Obama agenda doing better than supporters in conservative and swing districts.” Weisman’s article is accompanied by an impressive-looking chart of 11 Democrats, purporting to prove that “[i]n swing districts, House Democrats who’ve resisted some party initiatives are polling strongly” — and those who supported Obama’s agenda are in trouble.

The problem is that Weisman’s claim relies on misleadingly cherry-picked data. As Weisman points out, there are Obama supporters in conservative districts that are expected by polling mavens such as 538′s Nate Silver or Charlie Cook to lose — Murphy, Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), and Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO). But there are also Democrats in conservative districts who supported all of Obama’s top priorities that are expected to win — such as Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL), Rep. Zack Space (D-OH), Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI), and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).

And just as there are House Democrats who sometimes voted against Obama’s signature agenda that are doing well — Altmire, Rep. Health Shuler (D-NC), Rep. Larry Kissell (D-NC), Rep. Walt Minnick (D-ID) — there are those who are struggling — Rep. Chet Edwards (D-TX), Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD), Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD), Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-AZ), Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ), Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), and Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA).

Although Weisman points out Rep. Travis Childers (D-MS) as someone who is “running strongly” and Rep. Bobby Bright (D-AL) as “strongly in the running,” Nate Silver projects both Childers and Bright are highly likely to lose.

In fact, one of the entries in Weisman’s chart — Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) — is shown as supporting all of Obama’s agenda and leading in her re-election campaign in a politically contested, economically devastated district:

Even Weisman’s own cherry-picked data refutes the premise of his article. The reality is that there’s just no apparent statistical correlation between these four votes and the re-election chances of Democrats in tough districts. The dominant factor affecting this mid-term election is the stagnant economy, which Republicans correctly calculated would hurt the majority party more than the minority, and thus obstructed a stronger recovery package, a stronger Wall Street reform package, stronger health care legislation, clean energy jobs, ending tax cuts on the rich, closing corporate loopholes, and a host of other policies which would have created more jobs faster.

It’s possible that some influence of voting record on political viability could be found after the election results are in, but Weisman’s article is unsupportable as written.

(91%) PA: Joe Sestak v. Pat Toomey
(74%) CO: Michael Bennet v. Ken Buck
(54%) WA: Patty Murray v. Dino Rossi
(46%) NV: Harry Reid v. Sharron Angle
(42%) CA: Barbara Boxer v. Carly Fiorina
(36%) WI: Russ Feingold v. Ron Johnson

An examination of the races is below:

PENNSYLVANIA: Joe Sestak v. Pat Toomey

538.com estimate: 91% likelihood of Republican pickup

The race to replace moderate-Republican-turned-moderate-Democrat Arlen Specter, a semi-reliable vote for climate action, involves Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) — a strong supporter of climate action — against frontrunner Pat Toomey, who believes there is “much debate in the scientific community as to the precise sources of global warming.”

COLORADO: Michael Bennet v. Ken Buck

74% Republican pickup

Sen. Michael Bennet, appointed to fill the seat left by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, is attempting to win his first election against Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck. Bennet supports climate legislation, while Buck has said, “While I think the earth is warming, I don’t think that man-made causes are the primary factor.”

WASHINGTON: Patty Murray v. Dino Rossi

54% Republican pickup

Climate activist Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), first elected in 1992, is in a tight race with real-estate businessman Dino Rossi, who believes “there’s still a lot of debate going on this, we see it out there and there’s going to be a big debate going on for the next two, three years.”

NEVADA: Harry Reid v. Sharron Angle

46% Republican pickup

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) — who believes “global warming is ruining our country” — is being challenged by Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, who does not “buy into the whole … man-caused global warming, man-caused climate change mantra of the left.”

CALIFORNIA: Barbara Boxer v. Carly Fiorina

42% Republican pickup

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who as head of the Environment and Public Works Committee has championed strong climate legislation, is in a tight race with former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who is “not sure” that climate change is real and supports Proposition 23, the oil-company effort to overturn California’s climate policy.

WISCONSIN: Russ Feingold v. Ron Johnson

36% Republican pickup

Sen. Russ Feingold — who believes “we must work to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases” because “global warming will have serious and possibly irreversible impacts in both the near and distant future” — is running for re-election against Ayn Rand acolyte Ron Johnson, who thinks global warming is “just sunspot activity.”

The rest of the races are unlikely to significantly change the Senate climate policy math. Some races involve long-shot deniers against safe incumbents, others involve the re-election of standing climate opponents, and some mean the replacement of a pro-pollution Democrat with a even more pro-pollution Republican — such as Blanche Lincoln’s and Evan Bayh’s seats.

The greatest determining factor for climate policy in the U.S. Senate is majority control, which determines what legislation moves through committee and onto the floor, and what issues are investigated. An Inhofe-led Environment and Public Works Committee would mean hearings about the “global warming hoax” instead of markups of climate legislation. Even if Democrats retain control of the Senate, which 538′s Nate Silver estimates is a 79% likelihood, the committee ratios will be adjusted to reflect lost seats, making it more likely that voting blocs of Republicans and anti-climate Democrats could overwhelm progressives on key votes.

Nuclear reactor developers have a compelling reason to support a cap on carbon pollution: the effects of climate change could make it to impossible to run nuclear reactors. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has drastically reduced power generation at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant this summer:

The Tennessee Valley Authority has lost nearly $50 million in power generation from its biggest nuclear plant because the Tennessee River in Alabama is too hot.

Browns Ferry is located on the Tennessee River in Alabama and uses river water for cooling. To protect wildlife in the river, TVA is not allowed to raise the river’s temperature above 90 degrees. But this year’s record heat have already raised the river temperature to near 90, so TVA can only use small amounts of water, which limits how much power they can produce. In fact, the air temperature has stayed below 90 only three days since June 9, far above the historical norm. In the 1990s, the TVA decided not to build extra cooling towers because they “estimated that the chance of exceeding the 90-degree temperature limit in the Tennessee River was very rare.”

This situation also gives us a stark reminder of how climate change will take money out of consumers’ pockets. TVA has had to buy more expensive power to make up for the lost production at Browns Ferry. They then pass this new cost onto consumers in the form of a fuel cost adjustment. The new fuel cost adjustment will increase consumer bills by $1 to $3. So, if your utility buys its power from TVA, that’s a $3 loss next month due to warming.

Fortunately, a comprehensive climate bill can fix this problem. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that climate legislation would significantly lower the risk of catastrophic climate change. Now we also know that the nuclear industry’s future depends on putting a cap on carbon.

Every piece of proposed energy legislation we saw this year included incentives for building new nuclear reactors, including loan guarantees, production tax credits, accelerated depreciation rules, and changes to permitting. These would all certainly be helpful, but they ignore the biggest incentive for the nuclear industry: putting a cap on carbon emissions.

Currently, coal-fired generation is less expensive than nuclear power, which adds to the risk of investing in new nuclear reactors. Putting a cap on carbon, however, would make coal-fired power more expensive than nuclear power, making it much more likely that an investment in a nuclear reactor will make money.

This dynamic is at play in Maryland, where Constellation Energy has applied for a loan guarantee for a new reactor from the Department of Energy. According to the Baltimore Sun, Constellation’s project is now at risk, whether or not they get a loan guarantee. Project chairman Michael J. Wallace told the Sun, “When we get the DOE loan guarantee, that certainly is a major step forward for us. We then need to go through calculations on all the other variables to see whether this project can go forward on an economically sound basis. And we have to continue to do that over the next several months.”

That is, a loan guarantee is certainly valuable, and is a critical ingredient in the project moving forward, but it won’t ultimately determine the project’s profitability. The project will sink or swim because nuclear power can compete with coal, which will only happen with a cap on carbon.

ZAKARIA: You hear all this. Doesn’t it worry you? I mean, I understand your position, which is you know, we don’t have a substitute for fossil fuels right now. But surely that isn’t an argument for stand-pattism. Don’t you want to do something about this?

MICHAELS: What I worry about more is the concept of opportunity cost. We had legislation, again, that went through the House last summer, which would have cost a lot and been futile. And when you take that away or when the government favors certain technologies and politicizes technologies, you’re doing worse than nothing. You’re actually impairing your ability to respond in the long run. And that’s my major concern along this issue —

ZAKARIA: But if you were to have a carbon tax, if you were to have a gas tax —

MICHAELS: You can put in the carbon tax.

ZAKARIA: No, but you would reduce the consumption — that which you tax you get less of. That which you subsidize you get more of. This is a pretty simple law of economics, right?

MICHAELS: Right.

ZAKARIA: So if you were were to put it in, you would get reduced CO2 emissions and the government would get some money which you may not think it would spend wisely but it has the potential of spending wisely. Why would you be opposed to that?

MICHAELS: The problem is one of magnitude and political acceptability thereof. When we had gasoline of $4 a gallon, we reduced our consumption a grand total of four percent. If you’re really serious about atmospheric carbon dioxide, you’ve got to reduce it about 80 percent. How high does that tax have to be to be 80%? How do you do that in a political republic? It’s very, very difficult. And I guarantee you that —

ZAKARIA: But is the answer therefore to do nothing?

MICHAELS: No.

Watch it:

Zakaria also got Michaels to admit that about “40 percent” of his funding comes from the oil companies whose profits are based on free pollution.

Of course, there’s no secret about what kind of economic policy would be needed to end our dependence on fossil fuels over the coming decades. The rest of the industrialized world has policies that put a gradually increasing price on carbon pollution, redirecting investment in the free market to cleaner alternatives. Michaels’ claim that the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed by the House of Representatives last year “would have cost a lot and been futile” is, of course, false. The legislation would have improved the economic security of working families, reduced the deficit, and spurred billions of dollars of investment in clean American jobs instead of deadly oil and coal — while making an international agreement to limit global warming pollution a reality.

Michaels was interviewed this morning with climate scientist Gavin Schmidt and economist Jeffrey Sachs, who plainly described the “catastrophic planet” we are creating by burning billions of tons of fossil fuels every year. Schmidt remained “a little optimistic that the forces of delay will eventually be put aside” and that we can “demonstrate that societies are smarter than just allowing business as usual to carry on.” “If we do this sensibly,” Sachs said, “we can do this at low cost, save the planet, and save the economy.”

Sachs agreed with Michaels that the challenge requires political will. He concluded that is “what we hired the President of the United States for,” but that “we’re still waiting to hear from the administration”:

If we end up with a different planet where people cannot grow food, where people cannot eat given where they’re living right now, we have a catastrophe. And the ironic point is the combination of the technologies we have already in hand and those that are close on the horizon, if we do this sensibly, we can do this at low cost, save the planet, and save the economy. But we need a strategy and a plan. That’s what we hired the President of the United States for also. That’s what we’re still waiting to hear from the administration. If we get it, I bet the American people will rally to it.

It remains to be seen whether President Barack Obama will live up to this civilizational challenge, or if he will continue to let the Pat Michaels of the world rule the political discourse.

Transcript:

ZAKARIA: It has been a scorcher of a summer. Record high temperatures all over the United States. Huge chunks of glacier the size of four Manhattan islands breaking off in Greenland. One third of Pakistan is now under water. Fires burning out of control in Russia. Floods in Europe. So is this just another summer on planet earth, or is it the apocalypse? Or is it global warming? And whatever it is, how will it affect all of us and our economies? To help me answer these questions, Jeff Sachs, of course, from the Earth Institute of Columbia. Gavin Schmidt is a NASA scientist who studies climate change. and Pat Michaels is a scientist who now works for the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank that strongly opposes caps to carbon dioxide. Welcome, gentlemen.

So you’re the scientist. Tell me what we should make of these high temperatures. There’s always a danger of taking one summer or one data point and extrapolating from it, but it does seem like a lot of stuff is going on.

SCHMIDT: That’s true. And some of the changes that we’ve been seeing, particularly in the heat waves in Russia, do seem to be very anomalous for a very long period of time. But you’re absolutely right. We have a very hard job to attribute any one single event or even a group of disparate events to something as kind of slow-acting but pervasive like global warming. So we know that the planet is warming. This decade is the warmest decade that we have in the instrumental record. It’s warmer than the ’90s. The ’90s were warmer than the ’80s. The ’80s were warmer than the ’70s. There are a lot more warm records breaking than there are cool records breaking. But there’s still the same amount of variability from one summer to the next summer or even from one winter to the next winter.

ZAKARIA: But all over time pointing upwards. That is, upward rise. The mean temperature is rising.

SCHMIDT: Right. So we think that’s because of the increases in greenhouse gases that industrial civilization and agriculture have put into the atmosphere. And what we anticipate is that because we’re continuing to add carbon dioxide to the system we’re going to continue to warm decade by decade by decade. The exact magnitude of where we’re going to go is going to depend a little bit on the system but also on the decisions that we make as a society to either reduce carbon emissions or just to carry on with business as usual.

ZAKARIA: So that strikes me as the scientific case for global warming. That is, that it is happening, it is caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and what we do about those greenhouse gas emissions will determine how hot the planet gets. Is there anything there you disagree with?

MICHAELS: It’s very clear the planet’s warmer than it was and that people have something to do with it. What you’re concerned about is the magnitude and the rate of the warming. And I think it’s quite demonstrable that the rate of observed warming is at the low end of the range of projections made by the United Nations. And furthermore, simply saying that one is going to reduce emissions could actually be the wrong thing to do at the moment if you don’t have the technology to really effectively do this and to do it globally. What you could wind up doing is spending large amounts of capital that would be dissipated when it could be invested in the future in technologies that frankly you and I don’t even know about. So —

ZAKARIA: What do you mean we can’t do it effectively? We know how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We stop using fuels that emit it. It may not be economically pleasant. But that’s different from — we know how to do it.

MICHAELS: We don’t have a replacement technology right now.

ZAKARIA: Well, we don’t —

MICHAELS: We simply don’t have it.

ZAKARIA: I agree with that. But that’s different from saying we don’t know how to do it. Stop using fossil fuels and CO2 emissions will go down.

MICHAELS: Yeah. But unfortunately, talk’s cheap. Yes, you can say you need to do something, but then you have to have a mechanism to do it.

ZAKARIA: Jeff, talk about the point Pat Michaels was making, which is fine, the earth is warming, human industrial activity and agricultural activity is causing it, but we don’t really know how to get off the fuels that — the whole way of life that produces these fuels and so we can mandate all these things, it doesn’t — nothing’s going to happen.

SACHS: I think what Pat said is absolutely correct, that you need a plan. But we need to get started now because every time we build a power plant today it lasts for 50 years. So what kind of power plants are we going to build? Will we get back to nuclear? Will we capture and store carbon dioxide? How many electric vehicles can realistically be on the road in five or ten or fifteen years? These are policy judgments. My view is that the costs of inaction are so frightening for the world. They’re beyond our imagining because the world is not good at handling the kinds of shocks that are ahead. They could be devastating for hundreds of millions of people easily. They could lead to war. They could lead to famine. And that’s not hyperbole. That’s a very realistic, hardheaded assessment of what can happen.

ZAKARIA: You hear all this. Doesn’t it worry you? I mean, I understand your position, which is you know, we don’t have a substitute for fossil fuels right now. But surely that isn’t an argument for stand pattism. Don’t you want to do something about this?

MICHAELS: What I worry about more is the concept of opportunity cost. We had legislation, again, that went through the House last summer, which would have cost a lot and been futile. And when you take that away or when the government favors certain technologies and politicizes technologies, you’re doing worse than nothing. You’re actually impairing your ability to respond in the long run. And that’s my major concern along this issue —

ZAKARIA: But if you were to have a carbon tax, if you were to have a gas tax —

MICHAELS: You can put in the carbon tax.

ZAKARIA: No, but you would reduce the consumption — that which you tax you get less of. That which you subsidize you get more of. This is a pretty simple law of economics, right?

MICHAELS: Right.

ZAKARIA: So if you were were to put it in, you would get reduced CO2 emissions and the government would get some money which you may not think it would spend wisely but it has the potential of spending wisely. Why would you be opposed to that?

MICHAELS: The problem is one of magnitude and political acceptability thereof. When we had gasoline of $4 a gallon, we reduced our consumption a grand total of four percent. If you’re really serious about atmospheric carbon dioxide, you’ve got to reduce it about 80 percent. How high does that tax have to be to be 80%? How do you do that in a political republic? It’s very, very difficult. And I guarantee you that —

ZAKARIA: But is the answer therefore to do nothing?

MICHAELS: No.

ZAKARIA: Then let me ask you what people wonder about, advocates like you. They say —

MICHAELS: I’m advocating for efficiency.

ZAKARIA: Right. But people say that you’re advocating also for the current petroleum-based industry to stand pat, to stay as it is, and that a lot of your research is funded by these industries.

MICHAELS: Oh, no, no. First of all, what I’m saying is —

ZAKARIA: Well, is your research funded by these industries?

MICHAELS: Not largely. The fact of the matter is —

ZAKARIA: Can I ask you what percentage of your work is funded by the petroleum industry?

MICHAELS: I don’t know. 40 percent? I don’t know.

ZAKARIA: Okay.

MICHAELS: The fact of the matter is the technology changes dramatically in 100 years. And we will very likely not be a fossil fuel-based economy in 100 years. And the way to get there is to not take capital out of the system but allow people to do investment. I have not a problem —

ZAKARIA: But you have —

MICHAELS: What’s that?

ZAKARIA: You’re confident we’ll be around in 100 years?

MICHAELS: Oh, yeah.

SACHS: Right now it’s free to put carbon dioxide up into the air. There’s no incentive not to. The cheapest thing in the world is to burn coal.

MICHAELS: that’s true.

SACHS: Okay. That can’t be —

MICHAELS: That can’t be forever.

SACHS: But that can’t be your answer also.

MICHAELS: Of course not.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you, if all this is true, and it doesn’t seem there’s an agreement on how to reduce CO2 emissions, it suggests a fairly bleak future because we’re not going to be reducing CO2 emissions in the short term.

SCHMIDT: Well, I remain a little optimistic that the forces of delay will eventually be put aside. And so I don’t see it as being — as a terribly bleak future because you know, I like to think that we’re smarter than that. And I’d like to demonstrate that societies are smarter than just allowing business as usual to carry on. If we do, we will end up, in the phrase of my boss, Jim Hansen, with a different planet. We will end up with a planet that won’t be recognizable in terms of where crops can be grown, that won’t be recognizable in terms of where rain is falling, that won’t be recognizable in terms of where glaciers are and where ice sheets are and —

SACHS: And to put that in human terms —

SCHMIDT: — and what the sea level is —

SACHS: That’s a catastrophic planet, not just a different planet. If we end up with a different planet where people cannot grow food, where people cannot eat given where they’re living right now, we have a catastrophe. And the ironic point is the combination of the technologies we have already in hand and those that are close on the horizon, if we do this sensibly, we can do this at low cost, save the planet, and save the economy. But we need a strategy and a plan. That’s what we hired the President of the United States for also. That’s what we’re still waiting to hear from the administration. If we get it, I bet the American people will rally to it.

MICHAELS: And every time we threaten an apocalypse and it doesn’t happen we cheapen the issue. Thank you.

Questioned by the Wonk Room why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) shied away from introducing a comprehensive climate bill for full Senate consideration as energy crises pile up during the hottest summer ever recorded, the senators noted the ability of Republicans to thwart the will of the majority through the abuse of parliamentary procedures. They recognized Reid’s decision to try for quick action with a limited package in what little time is left during this Congress. However, they relished the chance to debate the promise of a green economy before the November elections, seeing the issue as a political winner:

CARDIN: I think we need political clarity. I wasn’t so concerned about having a vote before August. But we needed the clarity of the bill.

FRANKEN: If you want to rev up people, and say Democrats believe in this — one of the gaps they’re talking about is the enthusiasm gap. So maybe, politically, that is the right way to go. I think that Harry tends to want to get half a loaf or a third of a loaf rather than no loaf at all. This bill could be considered a first step. A lot of that is strategic, in terms of positioning yourself for the election. I was sort of of the school that we should go for pricing carbon, and if we lose, we lose. But that’s not what we did.

UDALL: Our two classes — the class of 2006 and the class of 2008 — I think have a real passion for all of the things you talked about and a desire to do something. We’re rattling all the cages in the committees we’re on, doing the things that we can do. But there is kind of an institutional thing going on there that slows everything down. There’s no doubt about that.

MERKLEY: This generational factor is why, if we can create a course that at least puts us on the right track for the next six to eight years, we will have with each subsequent election more and more folks coming in — based on what I hear at the university level, and graduate school level, and based on the difference between our class and the several classes ahead of us — there is just a growing commitment and passion to fighting this fight on climate and energy.

Watch Udall, Merkley, and Franken discuss their efforts to bring new passion to the climate and energy fight:

The Democrats described by Sen. Cardin as the “new class” overwhelmingly support strong green economy legislation, unlike the older generation peppered with climate peacocks. In fact, according to Politico, every one of the 12 Democrats elected in 2008 would vote for cloture on comprehensive climate and energy reform. Of the ten Democrats elected in 2006, only Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) make polluter-friendly arguments against clean energy reform.

“This is going to be a generational battle,” Merkley explained. “We’re going to have keep working and pushing because even our most optimistic bill has fairly weak goals for 2020. We’re going to have to be a lot more aggressive between 2020 and 2050 if we’re going to address carbon dioxide.”

“We can’t give up,” Cardin said during his interview, “because the stakes are too high for our country.”

But we’ve always known from day one, that in order to pass comprehensive energy/climate legislation, you’ve got to reach 60 votes, and to reach those 60 votes, you’ve got have some Republicans. And as we stand here today, we do not have one Republican. I think that it’s possible to get there.

Although the top legislative body in the United States of America is yet again failing to defend our nation, the existential threat of global warming continues to worsen, and the coal and oil companies responsible for the pollution continue to reap profits from their rape of the earth. It is the ninth day of the latest 90-plus heat wave to hit Washington DC, part of the global heat wave caused by greenhouse gas pollution. Former vice president Al Gore responded to today’s announcement with a cold reminder of the actual realities the Senate is unable to face:

The need to solve the climate crisis and transition to clean energy has never been more clear. The oil is still washing up on the shores of the Gulf Coast and we’ve just experienced the hottest six months on record. Our troops are fighting and dying in the Middle East and our economy is still struggling to produce jobs. I continue to urge the President to provide leadership on this issue and urge the Senate to make this issue a priority for the remainder of this Congress. Ultimately — and sooner rather than later–these issues simply must be dealt with. Our national security, our economic recovery and the future of the United States of America — and indeed the future of human civilization on this Earth — depends on our country taking leadership. And that, in turn, depends on the United States Senate acting. The truth about the climate crisis—inconvenient as ever—must be faced.

That’s a tough one. They frame it in a different way. They just want a breather. And not an eternal pre-emption. These are all topics of negotiation. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here.

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Lieberman’s partner in developing a Senate climate bill, last Thursday said there was a little room for negotiation, but opposed any “rollback.” “If we put those requirements into a different form so that we are still adhering to them, that is a different issue and those are two different choices,” Kerry said. “But there is not going to be a rollback of current requirements.”

Other Democrats don’t find this one of the acceptable “topics of negotiation.” “I’d not want to see any weakening of the authority they have today,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said last week. “It’s been a major tool for cleaning up our air.”

The environmental and public health community — including NAACP and Green For All, Public Citizen and the American Lung Association, the Environmental Defense Fund and Environment America, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists — are united in their opposition, saying that “delaying the cleanup of these plants threatens the health of millions of Americans.” “I’m sure people throw everything on the table,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski. “But we’ve made it damn clear … that there are no trade-offs of any regulation of any [conventional] pollutants.”

On June 26, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219-212 in favor of HR 2454, the Americ an Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). Only eight Republicans – we’ll call them the “Enlightened Eight” – voted “aye.” These Republicans were Mary Bono-Mack (CA-45), Mike Castle (DE-AL), John McHugh (NY-23), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Leonard Lance (NJ-7), Mark Kirk (IL-10), Dave Reichert (WA-8), and Christopher Smith (NJ-4).

Republicans voting for cap and trade in the year of the Tea Party? You’d think that they’d be dumped in the harbor by now. Instead, they’re all doing fine. In fact, to date, not a single one of these Republicans has been successfully primaried by tea partiers. Instead, we have two — Castle and Kirk — running for U.S. Senate, one — McHugh — who was appointed Secretary of the Army by President Obama, and five others — Bono-Mack, LoBiondo, Lance, Reichert, Smith — running for reelection.

Lance actually was challenged by not one, not two, but three tea party candidates. One of Lance’s opponents, David Larsen, even produced a nifty video, helpfully explaining that “Leonard Lance Loves Cap & Trade Taxes.” So, did this work? Did the Tea Partiers overthrow the tyrannical, crypto-liberal Lance? Uh, no. Instead, in the end, Lance received 56% of the vote, easily moving on to November.

Meanwhile, 100 miles or so south on the Jersey Turnpike, LoBiondo faced two tea party challengers – Donna Ward and Linda Biamonte — who also attacked on the cap-and-trade issue. According to Biamonte, cap and trade “is insidious and another tax policy… a funneling of money to Goldman Sachs and Al Gore through derivatives creating a carbon bubble like the housing bubble.” You’d think that Republican primary voters in the year of the Tea Party would agree with this line of attack. Yet LoBiondo won with 75% of the vote.

Last but not least in New Jersey, Christopher Smith easily turned back a tea party challenger — Alan Bateman — by a more than two-to-one margin. Bateman had argued that cap and trade is a internationalist plot:

Obama knows he can count on Smith to support the United Nations’ agenda to redistribute American wealth to foreign countries through international Cap & Trade agreements and other programs that threaten our sovereignty.

Apparently, Republican voters in NJ-4 didn’t buy that argument.

Across the country in California’s 45th District, Mary Bono-Mack won 71% of the vote over tea party candidate Clayton Thibodeau on June 8. This, despite Thibodeau attacking Bono-Mack as “the only Republican west of the Mississippi to vote for Cap and Trade.” Thibodeau also called cap and trade “frightening,” claiming that government could force you to renovate your home or meet requirements before you purchase a home. Thibodeau’s scare tactics on cap-and-trade didn’t play in CA-45.

Finally, in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert has drawn a Tea Party challenger named Ernest Huber, who writes that Reichert voted to “enslave” people in a “Soviet-style dictatorship“:

This is widely viewed as an attempt at Soviet-style dictatorship using the environmental scam of global warming/climate change. This bill was written by the communist Apollo Alliance, which was led by the communist Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs czar. It’s a nation-killer due to the multi-$trillion false tax bill it would impose on all of our activities, the massive destruction of jobs, and the loss of our freedoms to government employees who would regulate our every move through the EPA, Departments of Ecology, HUD, and Sustainable Communities. It passed the House 219-212. Bottom line: Reichert and seven other RINOs voted to enslave you and me.

We’ll see how this argument plays with voters in Washington’s 8th Congressional District, but something tells us it’s not going to go over any better than in the New Jersey or California primaries.

In sum, it’s quite possible for Republicans to vote for comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation and live (politically) to tell about it. The proof is in the primaries.

Traditionally, American environmentalism wins its biggest victories after some important piece of American environment is poisoned, exterminated or set on fire. An oil spill and a burning river in 1969 led to new anti-pollution laws in the 1970s. The Exxon Valdez disaster helped create an Earth Day revival in 1990 and sparked a landmark clean-air law. But this year, the worst oil spill in U.S. history — and, before that, the worst coal-mining disaster in 40 years — haven’t put the same kind of drive into the debate over climate change and fossil-fuel energy.

Political observers are confused why environmentalists and green economy advocates are struggling to build the case for sweeping action to end our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and protect us from their toxic pollution. As the Post reporters note, “53 percent of people said they were worried about climate change” in a mid-May poll by academic researchers, “only slightly different from January, and still down from 63 percent in 2008.” However, for the first time, the pollsters found a majority of the public said that “most of my friends are trying to act in ways that reduce global warming.”

To get from the BP disaster to comprehensive climate legislation requires not just an understanding of the catastrophic risks of fossil fuels, but also a belief in the need for a strong, decisive government that protects its citizens. Without public desire for government to regulate the failures of the free market, there can never be an effective campaign to move Congress to action. In April, on the eve of the oil disaster, tea-party anti-government ideology had reached a fever pitch, with nearly a third of the American public who believed that “government is a major threat to their personal freedoms and want federal power reined in.” Energy lobbyist Rich Gold, who is “trying to work out a compromise climate bill that is more amenable to the industry,” said the disillusionment in government that came from Bush’s failures is a major roadblock:

There’s a feeling: “The government really can’t control all this stuff. They can’t keep us safe.” After Katrina and 9/11, we’re in the post-”government can fix it all” world.

Obama needs to prove to the American public that government can work in times of crisis — starting with the BP disaster. The Gulf disaster is a fundamental threat to our national interests requiring a national response, a point made by the likes of Chris Matthews, Russell Honore, and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). Unfortunately, the Obama administration has not decisively taken over the spill response, as the Center for American Progress and many others have recommended (despite right-wing ravings that CAP has “more influence on spill policy than the president’s in-house advisers”).

Obama has decided to let BP manage a secretive network of private contractors, instead of asserting authority over the foreign oil giant. Although approval of Obama’s presidency has stabilized around 50 percent, public confidence in his ability to “make the right decisions for the country’s future” have declined to 43 percent in a new Washington Post/ABC poll. Meanwhile, public support for a government takeover of the spill response grew from 28 percent in May to 45 percent in June. A strong majority of the American public believes the administration should “pursue criminal charges against BP and other companies involved in the oil spil.”

President Obama can’t pass comprehensive green economy legislation on his own — the U.S. Senate must break from the shackles of industry inaction. However, he can restore confidence in the government of the United States by taking on the sins of toxic polluters, starting with BP and the Gulf Coast. If his administration can prove itself in this crisis, the American people will trust his leadership on the path to a cleaner future.