Believe it or not, Congress does have a few bills out there that are protections of women’s health, instead of attacks on it. So here are the top three bills in Congress aimed at protecting women’s health:

– The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act aims to protect pregnant workers from discrimination in the workplace by ensuring that their employers cannot deny them necessities to their prenatal health. Mothers-to-be sometimes need a water bottle or a stool to sit on, particularly as they near their delivery date or if they have any complications with their pregnancy. Yet women have been fired to trying to access these necessities on the job. The bill, introduced by Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Susan Davis (D-CA) and George Miller (D-CA), requires employers to meet these needs.

– The Violence Against Women Act has been hotly debated in both the House and Senate, but at its core, it is a bill meant to safeguard women’s health. Unfortunately, rape and assault are a part of the health care that many women receive in their lives — roughly one in six women is sexually assaulted, and one in four experience domestic violence. VAWA protects victims of domestic violence so that incidents occur less frequently, but it also sets up rapid response for when those incidents do occur.

– The Protecting Women’s Access to Health Care Act is a Republican response to all of the attacks on Planned Parenthood. Introduced by Rep. Robert Dold (R-IL), the bill seeks to ensure that Planned Parenthood can not be denied funding under Title X, Congress’s family planning funding. Dold said, “We should not discriminate against hospitals and organizations that provide access to basic, preventative, and in some cases life-saving services.”

Aside from these legislative efforts, President Obama’s contraceptive mandate requires that employers provide contraception to their employees — an important step for improving women’s health and access to health care. So there is some good news for women’s health, with Democrats and some Republicans supporting legislation in favor of women’s interests. Now the nation will have to wait and see if Congress agrees to pass these measures.

“Fewer than 20 percent of the seats in Congress are occupied by women. Is it possible that Congress would get more done if there were more women in congress?” he asked. “I think it’s fair to say: That is almost guaranteed.” Watch it:

President Obama’s suggestion isn’t new, but it is valid. Women account for only a small fraction — about 15 percent — of Congress, though they make up more than half of the population.

In a response to the speech, Jess McIntosh, a spokesperson for the Democratic advocacy group EMILY’s List, told ThinkProgress that the group agrees with the President on the necessity of more women legislators. “Democratic women are known for getting things done,” McIntosh said. “They’re effective legislators who focus on the things that matter, work well with others, and put women and families first. This GOP-led Congress seems hell-bent on rolling back the clock and restricting our freedoms. It’s pretty clear that if we replace some of these guys with Democratic women, we’ll make more progress.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), left, was featured in Paul Ryan's budget video, but voted against the plan last night

Last night, Huelskamp had a chance to vote on Ryan’s proposal as a member of the House Budget Committee. Apparently, the Kansas Republican did not like what he saw. The Tea Partier broke ranks with all but one other Republican on the committee and voted against Ryan’s budget. Democrats were unanimous in their opposition.

Huelskamp explained his opposition to the budget during a panel on Tuesday. “It’s not good enough,” the Tea Party freshman said. “Its just another promise that I’m afraid will be broken.”

Though just a few days old, cracks are already emerging in the Republican dam. Despite a 22-16 advantage on the Budget Committee, the bill eked out of the Budget Committee by just a single vote (19-18) after Huelskamp and fellow freshman Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) voted with the Democrats. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) missed the vote. Another freshman, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), backed the budget last night and ensured it would not die in committee, but told The Hill that he may vote against it once it comes to the floor.

It’s plain to see why Ryan’s plan would be a disaster for the country. The budget is a reverse-Robin Hood plan that takes from the poor in order to give $3 trillion to corporations and the rich. It purports to reduce the debt while actually increasing it. It ends Medicare as we know it, takes away health coverage for 30 million Americans, and forces seniors to pay even more for their health care. Though Huelskamp, Amash, and Mulvaney may have their own objections to the Ryan budget, there are certainly plenty to go around.

In the last few weeks, ThinkProgress has been documenting studies by political science professors Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal that show Republicans are both beholden to the 1 percent and responsible for the hyper-polarization of Congress. A new study by Poole has found that Republicans have moved so far to the right that the House is now the most conservative it has even been in the last 133 years.

Note on the graph: The closer to 1.0, the more conservative the party’s votes were that year. The black line in the middle represents the median location of the overall chamber.

Poole’s graph shows that when the Republican Party gained a majority in 2010, they brought the median of the House into a realm of ideological extremism not seen before. For comparison, when the Democratic Party held a majority from 2006 to 2010, the House median made a small move to the left (-0.2) — equal to the level of a moderate Democrat. But when the Republican Party took over in 2010, the House median more than tripled (.43) along the ideological scale.

Considering approval ratings for Congress are hovering around 11% — lower ratings than the IRS, lawyers, and even Nixon during Watergate — a recent poll shows that Americans still disapprove of congressional Republicans more than Democrats. In fact, under Democratic majorities the House median hasn’t passed the level equal to a moderate Democrat (-0.2) in the last 100 years. Meanwhile, just in the last 20 years alone, the House median under Republican control has been above that moderate level on the conservative side (0.2) for approximately 10 years.

Lee Rogers, Democratic congressional candidate

Rogers won the auction – benefiting the College of the Canyons Foundation – with a $300 bid, the only bid made.

McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services committee, is well known for his extreme opposition to allowing gay and lesbian Americans to serve openly in the military. Last year, he threated to threaten to hold up an entire defense authorization bill unless it contained provisions restricting military chaplains from officiating at same-sex unions.

He has also made headlines of late for his questionable ethics. He used his campaign account to funnel more than $260,0000 in payments to his wife for her work on his behalf, making her his highest paid staffer. And congressional investigators have reportedly alleged he got a cut-rate home loan from Countrywide.

Perhaps Rogers might ask McKeon about these ethical issues over their lunch.

Image: League of Conservation Voters

The most serious threat to U.S. national security and economic health today is not not al Qaeda or a nuclear Iran or the price of gasoline.

No, at the moment the gravest threat is our own inability to take action on fundamental threats, like global warming. The jeopardy we are in is doubled by a Congress that is either incapable of or unwilling to act.

Congress’s failures are acts of commission as well as omission. A significant number of Senators and House members are trying to get rid of policies and tools that past Congresses put in place to protect us. Some of the Republican candidates for president are complicit.

Consider what Congress is doing, or not doing, about oil prices, economic stability, climate change, and our military effectiveness.

It has been clear for a generation that America’s dependence on oil jeopardizes our economy. At the moment, we are supporting economic sanctions against Iran to discourage it from building nuclear weapons, and Iran is retaliating with its own economic sanction, threatening to block the shipping route for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. Our sanctions are defensible; continuing to rely on the resource that allows Iran to extort us is not. And under the threat of being pushed back into a crippling recession, we are in danger of another Middle East oil war.

It’s a case of sustained recklessness that the world has allowed a single shipping passage to be so important to the global economy all these years. A combination of geography and global energy use gives Iran this power. It sits on the border of the Persian Gulf, including a narrow shipping passage called the Strait of Hormuz.  Oil shipments through the Strait were jeopardized in 1980 by the Iran-Iraq war. Iran threatened to stop shipping in the Strait in 1984 and again in 1997.

Iran doesn’t have to carry out its threat to send shocks through the world oil market. The mere possibility that it might try to mine the Strait or begin inspecting tankers in its territorial waters is helping push gasoline prices toward $5 this year. Bloomberg reports that if Iran carried out its threat, oil could reach $150 a barrel.

What influence do oil prices have on the economy?  Ten of the 11 economic recessions in the United States since World War II have been preceded by oil price shocks, as have all our recessions since the U.S. became a net oil importer in the 1970s.

Today, it wouldn’t take much to push the fragile U.S. economy back into crisis, a catastrophic development for American families trying to hang on to their jobs, houses and retirement savings.

In light of this clear and present danger, Congress should be rushing to approve a new national transportation program that helps us transition away from oil. Federal funding currently favors local highway construction over mass transit and other alternatives that would reduce oil consumption. Congress has failed for years to approve a long-term transportation policy, let alone one that promotes energy security, and it appears poised to fail again. At the moment, the House is considering proposals to spend all gas tax revenues on highways and none on mass transit, and to increase domestic oil production.

Climate change is another example of Congress’s willful failure to protect the American people, present and future. Since so many advocates of sane climate policy have given up on the current Congress, I might be accused of beating a dead horse on this issue, if the horse were dead. But it’s alive and kicking. The unprecedented extreme weather disasters we see here and around the world are consistent with the predictions of climate scientists and samples of worse to come.

Meantime, Congress and the presidential candidates remain deaf to warnings by past and present military experts that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that jeopardizes our national security.

Congress has not only failed to approve a coherent national program to reduce the risks of climate change; the House voted earlier this year to eliminate virtually all federal authority and funding for climate change research, mitigation and adaptation.

Now the House is playing politics with the lives of American soldiers. Republican opposition reportedly is rising to the Pentagon’s plan to use more renewable energy, a switch it says will help make our troops safer and more effective and our military installations more secure.

Department of Defense data show that between 2003 and 2007, 3,000 U.S. soldiers and civilians – one out of eight casualties in Iraq — died protecting fuel convoys in that war alone.  Reducing the number of convoys by using renewable resources should appeal to defense hawks. Deficit hawks, too. The military spent $15 billion on fuel in 2010. Soldiers on active duty consume an average of 3,555 gallons of fuel each year, compared to 945 gallons for the average civilian. Military leaders report that by the time petroleum fuels reach the most forward areas in Afghanistan, they cost around $300 per gallon.

Nevertheless, Republicans dragged Navy Secretary Ray Mabus before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this month to remind him that he’s not the Secretary of Energy and to suggest that the Pentagon’s commitment to renewable energy is a plot by the Obama Administration to carry out his “radical environmental policies,” in the words of Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum.

It’s more likely that President Obama’s principal objective is a stronger defense and fewer casualties among men and women in uniform. But the President’s motives are immaterial. Our soldiers continue dying today to support an oil-dependent military. That’s not an issue to be trivialized and politicized with another ridiculous conspiracy theory about the President.

It would be reassuring to hear this year’s presidential candidates promise to put a stop to this idiocy, but some of them are part of the problem. Santorum is getting applause from the Right by claiming that Obama’s energy policies are the result of strange theology – meaning, apparently, that anyone who doesn’t worship at the alter of Big Oil is a heretic.

Newt Gingrich’s claim that “the high price of gasoline is a direct result of Obama” is an outrageous example of playing politics with a fragile economy. Gingrich is counting on the fact that most voters don’t understand what makes oil markets tick. He knows the world oil market largely determines the price we pay for gasoline, no president controls that market, and a new pipeline and more domestic drilling would have little impact on oil prices or our energy security.

Given Congress’s intransigence, we are left to hope that voters are not as stupid as Gingrich thinks – that they’ll end the careers of politicians who because of cowardice, or the power of special interests, or their willingness to be team players rather than patriots, are jeopardizing the economy and the security of the United States.

Bill Becker is a Senior Associate with Third Generation Environmentalism.

Via Andrew Sullivan

If you believe every woman deserves access to affordable birth control, make sure Congress hears from you. 

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), top of the Koch Caucus with $27,000 in Koch contributions.

In a previous post, ThinkProgress Green reviewed the five Koch senators and their massive haul of campaign contributions from the Koch empire. Below is a compilation of the 40 members of the Congressional Koch Caucus, in addition to their contributions received from Koch Industries, according to data compiled from OpenSecrets.org.

Fourteen members of the Koch Caucus are members of the Tea Party caucus. The average contribution to the Koch Caucus was $9,869.

by Bill McKibben, reposted from Tom Dispatch

My resolution for 2012 is to be naïve — dangerously naïve.

I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think, as I do, that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet. Try as hard as you can, you’re never going to be as cynical as the corporations and the harem of politicians they pay for.  It’s like trying to outchant a Buddhist monastery.

Here’s my case in point, one of a thousand stories people working for social change could tell: All last fall, most of the environmental movement, including 350.org, the group I helped found, waged a fight against the planned Keystone XL pipeline that would bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Canada through the U.S. to the Gulf Coast. We waged our struggle against building it out in the open, presenting scientific argument, holding demonstrations, and attending hearings.  We sent 1,253 people to jail in the largest civil disobedience action in a generation.  Meanwhile, more than half a million Americans offered public comments against the pipeline, the most on any energy project in the nation’s history.

And what do you know? We won a small victory in November, when President Obama agreed that, before he could give the project a thumbs-up or -down, it needed another year of careful review.  (The previous version of that review, as overseen by the State Department, had been little short of a crony capitalist farce.)  Given that James Hansen, the government’s premier climate scientist, had said that tapping Canada’s tar sands for that pipeline would, in the end, essentially mean “game over for the climate,” that seemed an eminently reasonable course to follow, even if it was also eminently political.

A few weeks later, however, Congress decided it wanted to take up the question. In the process, the issue went from out in the open to behind closed doors in money-filled rooms.  Within days, and after only a couple of hours of hearings that barely mentioned the key scientific questions or the dangers involved, the House of Representatives voted 234-194 to force a quicker review of the pipeline.  Later, the House attached its demand to the must-pass payroll tax cut.

That was an obvious pre-election year attempt to put the president on the spot. Environmentalists are at least hopeful that the White House will now reject the permit.  After all, its communications director said that the rider, by hurrying the decision, “virtually guarantees that the pipeline will not be approved.”

As important as the vote total in the House, however, was another number: within minutes of the vote, Oil Change International had calculated that the 234 Congressional representatives who voted aye had received $42 million in campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry; the 193 nays, $8 million.

Buying Congress

I know that cynics — call them realists, if you prefer — will be completely unsurprised by that. Which is precisely the problem.

We’ve reached the point where we’re unfazed by things that should shake us to the core. So, just for a moment, be naïve and consider what really happened in that vote: the people’s representatives who happen to have taken the bulk of the money from those energy companies promptly voted on behalf of their interests.

They weren’t weighing science or the national interest; they weren’t balancing present benefits against future costs.  Instead of doing the work of legislators, that is, they were acting like employees. Forget the idea that they’re public servants; the truth is that, in every way that matters, they work for Exxon and its kin. They should, by rights, wear logos on their lapels like NASCAR drivers.

If you find this too harsh, think about how obligated you feel when someone gives you something. Did you get a Christmas present last month from someone you hadn’t remembered to buy one for? Are you going to send them an extra-special one next year?

And that’s for a pair of socks. Speaker of the House John Boehner, who insisted that the Keystone approval decision be speeded up, has gotten $1,111,080 from the fossil-fuel industry during his tenure. His Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell, who shepherded the bill through his chamber, has raked in $1,277,208 in the course of his tenure in Washington.

If someone had helped your career to the tune of a million dollars, wouldn’t you feel in their debt? I would. I get somewhat less than that from my employer, Middlebury College, and yet I bleed Panther blue.  Don’t ask me to compare my school with, say, Dartmouth unless you want a biased answer, because that’s what you’ll get.  Which is fine — I am an employee.

But you’d be a fool to let me referee the homecoming football game. In fact, in any other walk of life we wouldn’t think twice before concluding that paying off the referees is wrong. If the Patriots make the Super Bowl, everyone in America would be outraged to see owner Robert Kraft trot out to midfield before the game and hand a $1,000 bill to each of the linesmen and field judges.

If he did it secretly, the newspaper reporter who uncovered the scandal would win a Pulitzer. But a political reporter who bothered to point out Boehner’s and McConnell’s payoffs would be upbraided by her editor for simpleminded journalism.  That’s how the game is played and we’ve all bought into it, even if only to sputter in hopeless outrage.

Far from showing any shame, the big players boast about it: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, front outfit for a consortium of corporations, has bragged on its website about outspending everyone in Washington, which is easy to do when Chevron, Goldman Sachs, and News Corp are writing you seven-figure checks. This really matters.  The Chamber of Commerce spent more money on the 2010 elections than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined, and 94% of those dollars went to climate-change deniers.  That helps explain why the House voted last year to say that global warming isn’t real.

It also explains why “our” representatives vote, year in and year out, for billions of dollars worth of subsidies for fossil-fuel companies. If there was ever an industry that didn’t need subsidies, it would be this one: they make more money each year than any enterprise in the history of money. Not only that, but we’ve known how to burn coal for 300 years and oil for 200.

Those subsidies are simply payoffs. Companies give small gifts to legislators, and in return get large ones back, and we’re the ones who are actually paying.

Whose Money?  Whose Washington?

I don’t want to be hopelessly naïve. I want to be hopefully naïve. It would be relatively easy to change this: you could provide public financing for campaigns instead of letting corporations pay. It’s the equivalent of having the National Football League hire referees instead of asking the teams to provide them.

Public financing of campaigns would cost a little money, but endlessly less than paying for the presents these guys give their masters. And it would let you watch what was happening in Washington without feeling as disgusted.  Even legislators, once they got the hang of it, might enjoy neither raising money nor having to pretend it doesn’t affect them.

To make this happen, however, we may have to change the Constitution, as we’ve done 27 times before. This time, we’d need to specify that corporations aren’t people, that money isn’t speech, and that it doesn’t abridge the First Amendment to tell people they can’t spend whatever they want getting elected. Winning a change like that would require hard political organizing, since big banks and big oil companies and big drug-makers will surely rally to protect their privilege.

Still, there’s a chance.  The Occupy movement opened the door to this sort of change by reminding us all that the system is rigged, that its outcomes are unfair, that there’s reason to think people from across the political spectrum are tired of what we’ve got, and that getting angry and acting on that anger in the political arena is what being a citizen is all about.

It’s fertile ground for action.  After all, Congress’s approval rating is now at 9%, which is another way of saying that everyone who’s not a lobbyist hates them and what they’re doing. The big boys are, of course, counting on us simmering down; they’re counting on us being cynical, on figuring there’s no hope or benefit in fighting city hall. But if we’re naïve enough to demand a country more like the one we were promised in high school civics class, then we have a shot.

A good time to take an initial stand comes later this month, when rallies outside every federal courthouse will mark the second anniversary of the Citizens United decision. That’s the one where the Supreme Court ruled that corporations had the right to spend whatever they wanted on campaigns.

To me, that decision was, in essence, corporate America saying, “We’re not going to bother pretending any more. This country belongs to us.”

We need to say, loud and clear: “Sorry. Time to give it back.”

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, founder of the global climate campaign 350.org, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.  This piece was originally published at Tom Dispatch.

by Miles Grant, cross-posted from the National Wildlife Federation

How bad was 2011 for America’s wildlife, air, water, land and public health? After taking 191 anti-conservation votes, even the House of Representatives’ own members called it ”the most anti-environment House in the history of Congress.”

That’s not to say the last year hasn’t been without progress in Washington. The Environmental Protection Agency set long-overdue limits on mercury pollution that will prevent 11,000 premature deaths a year. The EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks that will cut our oil addiction by billions of barrels. And the EPA is ready to establish landmark global warming pollution limits on power plants.

But those actions represent the Obama administration implementing past acts of Congress, often in the face of opposition from one or both parties in the current Congress. Inside the Capitol, many members of Congress spent 2011 attacking wildlife, trying to roll back public health protections, and doing the bidding of its Big Oil donors.

10. The Dirty Water Act

Yes, 2011 will be remembered as the year Congress decided America’s water was just too darn clean, attacking the Clean Water Act and investment in clean water programs. The Dirty Water Act passed the House and now Senators Dean Heller (R-NV) and John Barasso (R-WY) have been working to sneak it through the Senate by trying to attach it as a political rider to must-pass budget legislation. Get Smart: Tell Congress to protect river otters’ streams from pollution.

9. Banning Imaginary Regulations

The Environmental Protection Agency has no plans to regulate farm dust, but that didn’t stop a bipartisan majority in the House from passing the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act. “Since I am sure that many little girls all over America care about this deeply, can you commit to me that EPA will never try to regulate fairy dust?” Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) jokingly asked EPA assistant administrator Gina McCarthy. The Senate has no plans to take up the bill and President Obama has promised to veto it. Get Smart: Learn what pollutants are real threats to America’s wildlife and public health.

8. Lunch Special: Meat Loaf with Styrene Oligomers

When she served as House Speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) led an effort to green the Capitol that cut energy use 23%, water use 32% and used some of the savings to convert Congressional cafeterias to composting.  But when Republicans took charge of the House in 2011, they eliminated the composting program, diverted cafeteria waste back to a landfill, and brought back petroleum-based Styrofoam that can leech toxic styrene oligomers into the food it holds, increasing thyroid hormone levels. Get Smart: Use your own reusable container.

7. Politics Superseding Wildlife Biology

Just two of many examples: The U.S. Forest Service had closed much of Idaho’s Payette National Forest to domestic sheep grazing where conflicts with bighorns exist, hoping to protect bighorns from disease, but the budget bill that cleared Congress in December included a political rider reversing that decision. And the House GOP budget (H.R. 1) included language aimed at blocking implementation of two biological opinions intended to ensure the recovery of threatened and endangered salmon, steelhead, green sturgeon, and other species in the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem. Get Smart: Support wildlife protections through NWF’s Choose Your Cause.

6. Targeting Smokey Bear

Who could want to kill Smokey Bear? Answer: Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), who included the U.S. Forest Service’s conservation education program in its list of possible targets for the House GOP’s YouCut voting. Voters spared Smokey, but the incident spoke volumes about how little this Congress valued investments in conservation education. Get Smart: Take Smokey’s pledge to be smart whenever you go outdoors.

5. Gulf Coast: Still Not Made Whole

We’re just a few months from the 2nd anniversary of start of the Gulf oil disaster, yet Congress still has not acted on legislation to make sure BP’s fines and penalties are reinvested in Mississippi River Delta restoration. Get Smart: Ask your members of Congress to support the RESTORE Act.

4. War on Next-Generation Light Bulbs

Just a few years ago, President George W. Bush signed bipartisan legislation to encourage energy-efficient light bulbs. Industry gets certainty, consumers save money, America cuts its carbon footprint: Everybody wins! But extremists attacked the standards and when they couldn’t win votes, they snuck the Dim Bulb Act into must-pass budget legislation. “Big companies like General Electric, Philips and Osram Sylvania spent big bucks preparing for the standards, and the industry is fuming over the GOP bid to undercut them,” reported Politico. Everybody loses! Get Smart: Check out NWF’s Cool It! tips for greening your home, office and garden.

3. Push Pipeline First, Ask Safety Questions Later

Facing concerns from conservationists concerned about protecting critical wildlife habitat, landowners concerned about getting their land seized, and public health advocates worried about water supplies, the Obama administration delayed a decision on the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from the Canadian border to Texas. But before a revised route could even be drawn up, Big Oil’s Congressional allies tacked a political rider onto the payroll tax cut extension moving through Congress right now that would force a decision on the pipeline within 60 days. Get Smart: Ask our elected officials to keep dirty oil out of whooping crane habitat.

2. Protecting Tax Giveaways for Big Oil

Big Oil has already banked a staggering $101 billion in profits in 2011,  and as NWF detailed in Conservation Works, Congress can save more than $100 billion by closing tax loopholes for special interests like the oil and gas industries. But time after time, purported Congressional concern about the deficit came in a distant second to catering to Big Oil donors and lobbyists. Get Smart: Stand up for new vehicle fuel efficiency standards to reduce America’s dependence on dirty oil.

1. Fiddling While Our Climate Burns

Our world has now seen 321 consecutive months with a global temperature above the 20^th century average, meaning we haven’t seen a below-average temperature month since before The Goonies came out in 1985. Extreme weather records fell, with NOAA reporting 12 disasters of at least $1 billion in damage here in the U.S. Through November, 2011 has been the 11th-hottest year on record. If the pace keeps up, it will mean each of the last 11 years (2001–2011) will have been one of the 12 hottest on record. The Arctic continues to warm, melting sea ice and pushing several polar bear populations to the brink.

How has Congress reacted? Sen. John Barasso introduced legislation to not only prohibit the EPA from regulating carbon pollution, but ban the federal government even from observing what is happening with our climate. The House GOP’s H.R. 1 tried to cut programs to invest in clean energy innovation and to help people and wildlife adapt to our warming climate. Get Smart: Tell your members of Congress you support limits on carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act.

Do you have any dishonorable mentions to add to the list? Leave your comments below.

With your help, the National Wildlife Federation worked to keep many of these dumb ideas from becoming law. But with the same Congress returning in 2012, you can bet we’ll see even more attacks on our wildlife, air, land, water and public health in the year ahead.

Miles Grant is the online communications manager for the National Wildlife Fund. This piece was originally published at the NWF website.

Republicans launched an unprecedented frontal assault against environmental protections and regulations this year, prompting Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) to call his chamber “the most anti-environment House in history.” Here are the 10 most powerful and outspoken opponents of clean air, clean water, conservation and climate action.

That’s the Los Angeles Times editorial board opening its “Year in Review: Congress’ 10 biggest enemies of the Earth,” what they call “Observations and provocations from The Times’ Opinion staff.”

Here are the opponents 10 to 8:

10. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Thought to be the biggest lifetime recipient of oil-industry contributions in the Senate, Cornyn has rewarded Exxon-Mobil’s largesse by supporting the industry’s position on pretty much every energy or environmental issue that has ever appeared before him. That’s why he, like everyone on this list, has a “0″ on the League of Conservation Voters’ scorecard for pro-environment votes.

9. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska. A tireless advocate for opening Alaska’s pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, Young was involved in one of the more entertaining name-calling spats in Congress this year when he got into a tiff over the refuge with author and professor Doug Brinkley. You can be the judge of who won by watching the video replay.

8. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista [CA]. There may have been a time when the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lived up to its name, investigating and bringing to light incidents of government waste, fraud and abuse. But I can’t remember back that far. In recent decades it has served as a tool for the majority party in the House to bash and embarrass the presidential administration, at least during times such as now when the House isn’t controlled by the president’s party. Issa, the committee’s current chairman, has turned such political gamesmanship into an art form, and has been particularly keen to attack environmental regulators and policymakers. In so doing he has turned up precious little waste or fraud, but provided plenty of political theater for those who want to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency or end subsidies for clean energy.

Here are the worst 7:

7. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio. Latta has the distinction of sponsoring the most far-reaching and destructive amendment to the most egregious anti-environment bill passed by the House this year. The TRAIN Act, approved by the House in September but not expected to get through the Senate, is a breathtaking (literally) gift to polluters that creates a committee to study the costs but ignore the benefits of environmental regulation, while also blocking EPA efforts to crack down on deadly emissions from power plants. Latta’s contribution is an amendment that undermines a cornerstone of the Clean Air Act, requiring the EPA to take industry costs into account when setting health-based standards. This would allow corporate polluters to overrule scientists and strikes at the heart of the polluter-pays principle that has guided environmental policy for 40 years.

6. Rep. Edward Whitfield, R-Ky. Another architect of the TRAIN wreck, Whitfield offered an amendment that would block the EPA from regulating mercury and other toxics from power plants, and from coming up with a rule on smog and soot that crosses state lines. Together, these two regulations would save an estimated 51,000 lives per year. But what are a few thousand lives when utility profits are at stake?

5. Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla. One of the most outspoken climate-change deniers in the Senate (he’s renowned for calling global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”), Inhofe is also one of the most influential Republicans in the country when it comes to environmental policy. As ranking member of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, he uses his position to push for expanded oil drilling and reduce environmental regulation. Inhofe sometimes even finds himself to the right of the polluter-packed U.S. Chamber of Commerce; this summer he placed a hold on President Obama’s nominee John Bryson as Commerce secretary, even though Bryson had the blessing of the Chamber, because Inhofe felt Bryson was too pro-environment.

4. Rep. Michael Simpson, R-Idaho. Simpson has stepped to the front lines of his party’s war on Mother Nature by adding dozens of anti-environment riders to must-pass budget legislation. Among other things, Simpson aims to let mountaintop coal-mining operations continue to pollute streams, prevent the EPA from regulating coal-ash disposal, and exempt pesticide sprayers from complying with the Clean Water Act.

3. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. The enforcer of Republican Party discipline, Senate Minority Leader McConnell is among the key architects of his party’s stance on environmental issues. In 2009, when Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was among the few Republicans willing to discuss a bipartisan climate bill with Democrats, it was McConnell who reportedly convinced him to back away. This spring he led a failed effort to block the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and overrule its finding that climate change threatens public health — tantamount to a statement that politicians know more about the dangers of climate change than scientists.

2. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va. The House Majority Leader released a memo in late August listing the top 10 “job-destroying regulations” his party would battle in the remainder of the congressional session. Seven were environmental rules opposed by the fossil fuel industry, including restrictions on emissions from industrial boilers and cement plants, and proposed rulemaking on smog, farm soot and greenhouse gases. None of these rules really threaten jobs, but failing to approve them would certainly threaten lives.

1. Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Upton is the gatekeeper for many of the disastrous anti-environment bills that have been approved or proposed in the House this year. Ironically, he was once known among his state’s conservatives as “Red Fred” because of a somewhat pro-environment voting record, but a recent electoral challenge from his right changed all that. Because of his powerful position and newfound disdain for green regulation, he represents one of the biggest threats to planet Earth on planet Earth.

Groups frame climate as a moral cause

Op-Ed: Arguments to abandon Kyoto Protocol untenable

As negotiators are gathering in Durban, South Africa, to push for new progress on global efforts to deal with climate change, divergent views emerge over the fate of Kyoto Protocol.

As the cornerstone of the climate regime, Kyoto Protocol sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to cut their emissions to an average of 5 percent against 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period.

As the first commitment period is to expire in 2012, some signatory countries have not only backed down from their previous emissions cuts commitment, but refused to renew their pledges beyond 2012.

They argue that Kyoto Protocol, an agreement adopted more than a decade ago, is a thing of the past and could no longer reflect a changing reality.

Thus a global deal, which moves beyond the distinction between rich and poor countries and commits all the major emitters to binding emissions targets, is needed, they said.

Their arguments are untenable and far-fetched. For a start, developed countries are responsible for most of the greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere in its long and historical process of industrialization.

Op-Ed: Climate change and the Kiribati syndrome

This week in Durban, South Africa, 194 nations are meeting to discuss global warming. The whole effort is in disarray: The Bush administration withdrew American support in 2001, in a decision that is still having disastrous consequences; China, considered a developing country, isn’t bound by Kyoto targets for reducing carbon emissions. With the world’s two biggest economies out of the discussion, Durban is crowded with little island nations and other poor, vulnerable countries that have resorted to forming a 132-nation bloc – call them the pesky unknowns – to protest the continuing environmental damage.

Another obstacle to progress is the very term “global warming,’’ which sounds like one big group hug — far too benign to generate the political momentum needed to promote renewable energy, slow deforestation, and embrace energy efficiency. Dry scientific discussions — about, say, how many more gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions the climate can tolerate — aren’t creating a compelling narrative, either. Environmentalists should focus on repackaging the problem in a way that prods people into action. We need a new name: the Kiribati syndrome.

2012 GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who has previously said that insider trading laws should “absolutely” apply to information lawmakers receive in private briefings, predicted last night during an event in South Carolina that lawmakers will eventually have to place their investments in a blind trust during their terms in office:

What we will migrate to, my prediction is, that members of Congress, on winning office will have to end up putting their money in blind trusts, managed by other people with no communication, because it is so clear that they have so much power that there’s no way to build trust in an environment where they can make money out of what they’re doing. And I think that’ll be the culmination of this whole series of things, is it will create a new pattern that says if you go into Congress and you have any significant amount of resources they go into a blind trust and are managed for you by somebody who does not talk to you, doesn’t have any insider knowledge about what’s going on in Congress. It’s unfortunate, but I think that’s going to become, something like that will be almost inevitable.

Watch it:

On this particular issue, Gingrich is doing a good job seizing the populist position. However, he has made clear that he doesn’t have much more than contempt for the wider concerns of the population when it comes to fairness in financial markets. Just yesterday, he called on President Obama to “repudiate the concept of the 99 and the 1,” a direct shot at the Occupy Wall Street movement’s call for an economy that works for everybody.

I’m not sure how many open letters I’ve read over the years from businesses and state-level political leaders urging Congress to extend short-term tax credits to renewables. It’s a lot. And it’s kind of sad that I’m still reading them.

The latest letter, written by a bi-partisan coalition of governors who support wind energy, lament the negative impact that a looming expiration of the production tax credit is having on businesses throughout the country:

Wind-related manufacturing is beginning to slow in our states because the credit has not yet been extended. If Congress pursues a last minute approach to the extension, the anticipated interruption of the credit’s benefits will result in a significant loss of high-paying jobs in a growing sector of the economy.

The leading wind project developers and manufacturers are slowing their plans for 2013 and beyond due to the current uncertainty. Some developers have no projects scheduled for 2013, and are beginning to lay off employees. The ripple effect of this slow down means reduced orders for turbines and decreased business for the hundreds of manufacturers who have entered the wind industry in our states. If the tax credit is allowed to expire at the end of 2012, there will be negative impacts on the high-tech manufacturing jobs that the industry has brought to or created in our states.

To put it more bluntly: Congress is hurting businesses.

Meanwhile, members of Congress and presidential candidates continue to make outright false claims that environmental regulations are “job killers.” In reality, the inability of Congress to craft consistent tax policy for wind and other renewables is actually killing jobs.

This, quite frankly, is scandalous. But it’s the way things have been for so long, the industry just expects that every couple of years, they’ll go back to Congress and beg for an extension of tax credits.

How many times do lawmakers need to hear that consistency in clean energy tax policy stimulates private-sector investment, creates jobs, and helps bring new revenue to landowners and local communities? And why do we have permanently embedded tax incentives for oil companies, while clean energy companies fight for 1-2 year extensions?

It’s no wonder the approval rating of Congress is at 9 percent — making it less popular than President Nixon during Watergate, as HuffPost points out. The original chart is from Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who introduced it on the Senate floor in this must-see video:

As Roll Call points out today, the estimated median net worth for a member of Congress in 2010 was $513,000 (this is strictly an estimate as assets are reported in ranges). Meanwhile, the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s David Rosnick points out that the net worth of the median household in the United States that same year was closer to $100,000:

For Congress, the median net worth in 2010 was about $513,000. For regular households, the Federal Reserve Board pegged that number at about $120,000 in 2008, and that number this year is probably around $100,000, [said economist David Rosnick]. While it is hard to make an exact comparison between Congress and the rest of the nation, what is clear is lawmakers “are all a lot richer than anything you would call a typical American,” Rosnick said.

The Center for Responsive Politics looked at the average wealth of members of Congress in between 2004 and 2009 (relying on estimates derived from ranges). In 2009, the average net worth of a senator $13.4 million. On the House side, it was $4.9 million:

Meanwhile, the average wealth of an American household is around a half a million dollars (dragged upwards from the median by high-wealth families). This isn’t to say that just because members of Congress tend to be much wealthier than most Americans that they necessarily will not legislate on behalf of the 99 Percent. But it is important to note that the wealth gap between Americans and their federal legislators is as wide as it is, even in a democratic system that is supposed to represent all Americans, not just the most wealthy.

“We need people in Congress who have the right priorities. Who don’t let Wall Street destroy Main Street,” said Franke Wilmer, who is running for an at-large seat in Montana, as the candidates gathered to enter the capitol. “Workers didn’t fire themselves and senior citizens didn’t cause this recession.” When the seven candidates got to Boehner’s office, Brittany Brammell, Boehner’s press secretary, did not allow them in but did promise to take the petitions. She did not tell them when Boehner would take up the jobs bill. Watch it:

“We’ve come to the conclusion that this really means, ‘Welcome, one percent, please come in,’” remarked House candidate Markos Liias of a welcome sign outside Boehner’s door. “Speaker Boehner and the Republicans in Congress ignore the 99 percent at their peril.”