In association with the State of the Union address, the White House released “A Blueprint for An America Built to Last.” Within it, “A Blueprint to Make the Most of America’s Energy Resources,” from which we learn that “nuclear power, efficient natural gas, and clean coal” are “renewable energy” sources:

The President called on Congress to build on our success in positioning America to be the world’s leading manufacturer in high-tech batteries and reiterated his call for action on clean energy tax credits and a national goal of moving toward clean sources of electricity by setting a standard for utility companies, so that by 2035, 80% of the nation’s electricity will come from clean sources, including renewable energy sources like wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, nuclear power, efficient natural gas, and clean coal.

This is, almost certainly an issue of poor writing. It could have read “nuclear power, efficient natural gas, clean coal, and renewable energy sources like wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower.” That rewrite, however, would have put renewables at the back of the line and hurt the President among those strongly supportive of greater investment in renewable energy deployment and research — that is to say, the majority of Americans. Yet, in last year’s State of the Union address the President said that “clean energy jobs” meant nuclear power, offshore oil and gas drilling, and “clean coal.”

All the uranium on planet Earth was formed 6.6 billion years ago and is not “renewable.” Now, if we wish to speak in terms of tens of millions of years, one could argue that coal, natural gas, and oil are renewable. Today’s biomass will, over that sort of geologic time, create (renew, one might say) new fossil fuel supplies. However, in any rational discussion, these are not “renewable” fuels within any context of human civilization.

This section, however, has far more serious problems — most importantly, the President’s whole-sale throwing in the hat with the “natural gas is good for the environment and economy” propaganda that is a Potemkin village when it comes to addressing the nation’s real challenges.

YOUNG: If you ever want want to see an exercise in futility … That side has already made up its mind and this side has already made up its mind. I call it garbage, Dr. Rice, it comes from the mouth –

BRINKLEY: It’s Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university –

YOUNG: Well, okay, I can call you anything I want if you sit in that chair. You just be quiet! You be quiet!

Watch it:

After Young’s irate outburst, Committee chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) castigated Dr. Brinkley for interrupting the Alaska congressman and disrupting the “comity” of the hearing.

“The Arctic plain is really nothing,” Young continued, calling Dr. Brinkley “elitist.” “You can go on all the pontifigurds you want . . . I’m really pissed.”

“Some people love money more than their homeland or where they live,” Dr. Brinkley said later, rebuking Young for his hatred of the undrilled Alaskan wilderness.

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Today, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals will debate a proposal to jump start oil shale production, which could be one of the dirtiest forms of energy in existence if it were to become viable. Subcommittee Chairman Doug Lamborn’s (R-CO) bill would codify midnight regulations on oil shale that the Bush administration passed just as it was leaving office in early 2009.

You’re not alone if you haven’t heard of oil shale, which should not be confused with the viable energy producer “shale oil.” In order to develop the oil shale, a type of rock, power plants must be built to heat the rock up to nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and produce crude oil that still needs to be refined. This takes a large amount of energy and money, as well as 3-5 barrels of water per barrel of oil produced, a dangerous issue in the parched West.

Politicians and oil companies have extolled the virtue of this “new” form of energy since the early 1900s, yet not a single barrel of oil from oil shale has been commercially sold. That does not stop today’s politicians and oil CEOs from using the same language as their decades old predecessors. In a field hearing this summer, the Checks and Balances Project developed a bingo card with old-timey oil shale phrases — all of which but one were used. You can follow along today to see if the same arguments are used yet again (click on the card for a larger version).

Oil companies and proponents of oil shale claim it can “solve our energy crisis,” and Lamborn recently claimed that it is “one of America’s greatest natural resources.” Yet, despite decades of experimentation and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, oil shale has never been produced commercially in the United States. Even the director of the Center for Oil Shale Technology and Research admitted that:

All of the major companies are doing oil shale because they think it’s an interesting and high-potential area, but they’re not in a hurry to make it productive…

Oil companies already have research and development leases on public lands, but they now seeking even more public lands on which to experiment. Lamborn’s bill continues to reward dirty fossil fuel companies for chasing what some have called “the petroleum equivalent of fool’s gold.” Throughout his career, Lamborn has received $126,962 from the oil and gas industry.

On Wednesday, House Natural Resource Committee Republicans held their 20th oversight hearing on how to drill more. In addition to oil shale, todays legislative hearing will feature bills to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to mandate offshore oil and gas lease sales.

Tomorrow, less than a week after issuing the most recent five-year leasing plan for offshore oil and gas development, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is slated to testify in front of the House Natural Resources Committee on “The Future of U.S. Oil and Natural Gas Development on Federal Lands and Waters.” As part of the committee’s 19 previous hearings, members of the committee have accused the Obama administration and the Secretary of “dramatically declined permitting,” imposing “constant obstacles,” and putting “the brakes on” American energy development.

As described in more detail below, we are drilling more in this country than we have since 1987. So why are we sitting through a 20th hearing on oil and gas drilling when the committee has only held four on wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower combined? Follow the money. We have compiled a chart of the members of the Natural Resources Committee who can count the oil and gas industry among the top five contributors to their election campaigns over the course of their careers.

Using data from opensecrets.org, ThinkProgress has also determined that Republicans on the committee have already taken in $485,506 for next year’s election, compared with Democrats who have received at most $79,000 in donations. So, the party holding a majority of seats in the House — and therefore in charge of setting the hearing schedules—has taken six times as many campaign contributions from Big Oil in 2012 cycle compared to the minority.

Although the committee’s leadership have tried to make the case that the Obama administration is standing in the way of oil and gas development on federal lands and waters, the facts show that we are drilling for oil and gas more than anywhere else in the world. Here are some important pieces of information to keep in mind for tomorrow’s hearing:

- The Wall Street Journal reported in late August that U.S. oil drilling is “up nearly 60% in the past year and the highest total since at least 1987, when oil services company Baker Hughes Inc. began keeping track.”
- A June 2011 report by Headwaters Economics found that U.S. onshore drilling activity was at 91 percent of the 20-year high.
- There is more drilling in the U.S. than the rest of the world combined. As of today, there are 2,016 drill rigs operating in the U.S. and 1,697 rigs operating in the rest of the world, according to industry statistics.
– In 2010, total U.S. oil production (onshore and offshore) was the highest it has been since 2003.
- In 2010, the BLM processed 5,000 drilling permit applications; in 2011, that number is projected to be 7,200.
- Shallow water permits have averaged more than seven per month since fall 2010, about equal to 2009.
- Earlier this year, the administration announced a massive sale of offshore leases in the Gulf of Mexico
- Despite serious misgivings from the public, conservationists, and the Coast Guard, the administration approved initial permits for Royal Dutch Shell to commence exploratory drilling in the Arctic.

Meanwhile, the Big Five oil companies have posted $101 billion dollars in profits so far this year, which does not necessarily mean they will spend that money to put people back to work. From 2005-2010, BP, Shell, Exxon/Mobil, and Chevron combined to make more than half a trillion dollars in profits, and they reduced their U.S. workforce by over 11,000 jobs. In 2010 alone, while oil drilling increased nearly 60 percent, and they pocketed $73 billion, they handed pink slips to 4,400 Americans.

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) placed blame for sagging education funding on a peculiar source: insufficient oil and gas drilling.

Bishop, who serves as chairman of the House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, told the Western Republican Leadership Conference this month that disparities among Western states’ education funding could be placed squarely at the feet of regulations preventing unrestrained drilling and mining. “You want to fund education and help our kids?” Bishop asked the Republican audience. “You have to do the resources.”

BISHOP: Everything in red are the states that have the hardest time funding their education systems. The states that have the slowest growth, and it’s almost a 2-to-1 growth. The states in yellow increase their funding by education by 92 percent, the rest of them by 56 percent. [...] The fact that our land is not in our control means we don’t get property tax for it, we don’t have the development of it which produces income tax or severance tax. [...] Let me show you the difference between Wyoming and Montana. The blue is what Wyoming was able to pay their teachers in every one of those classes, the red is what Montana did. I promise you the difference between what Wyoming and Montana is Wyoming has resources and they actively develop them. You want to fund education and help our kids? You have to do the resources.

Watch it:

Bishop’s concern for education funding is somewhat spurious, considering his record of consistently voting against education funding during his five terms in the House. Just last fall, in fact, Bishop voted against a $26 billion state aid bill designed to prevent thousands of teachers from being laid off.

As such, many might view the Utah Republican’s supposed concern for education funding as little more than a stalking horse to open up more western lands and public parks to drilling. Indeed, at the same conference, Bishop told the audience about his belief that federal control of public lands is unconstitutional. He also told ThinkProgress afterward of his desire to mine an area around the Grand Canyon the size of the state of New Jersey.

Drilling is not the answer for education funding woes. Prioritizing education is.

Here are the top 10 giveaways to Big Oil in Perry’s plan:

1. End all efforts at federal regulation of fracking by Big Oil. “Hydraulic fracturing has proven to be extremely safe forhuman health and the environment, and is successfully regulated at the state level.”

2. End all regulation of Big Oil’s CO2 emissions. “Greenhouse gases are naturally occurring gases and carbon dioxide (CO2) (the focus of environmental activists) is exhaled by animals, required tosupport plant life, and represents lessthan 0.1% of the world’s atmosphere. … Repeal EPA’s authority over green-house gases (GHG), and eliminate allcurrent and planned EPA programs torestrict carbon dioxide emissions (in-cluding taxes or cap and tradeschemes).”

3. Allow Big Oil to drill on sensitive lands owned by taxpayers. “We also strongly recommend opening other federal lands with known resources for development, particularly in Alaska, the Atlantic OCS, and our western states. Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) Coastal Plain (1002) alone contains as much as 12 billion barrels of oil and 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.”

4. End federal efforts to require development of renewable energy, which competes with Big Oil. “We oppose the adoption of national Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), and believe each state should continue to be able to determine how to best regulate electric generation and distribution.”

5. Cripple the EPA by slashing budget by 60%. “We believe we must dramatically reduce the size, budget, and influence of EPA. Instead of empowering a centralized organization of bureaucrats, we should return more regulatory power to state governments. … Our reconstructed,limited EPA would be dramatically re-duced in size and influence, returning more power of regulation and up to 60%of the current federal budget to state governments.”

6. Establishing a moratorium on all new regulations on Big Oil. “During the reconstruction of the EPA, we must institute a moratorium onnew regulation, to establish a predictable business environment and encourage energy development.”

7. Eliminate tax incentives for renewable energy and create additional subsidies for Big Oil. “American taxpayers should not be forced [to]… shoulder the cost of funding billions of dollars in subsidies and loan guarantees for inefficient and uncompetitive green energy programs.”

8. Kneecap groups for filing suit over environmental violations by Big Oil. “Under our current system, federal law gives radical anti-growth activists powerful tools to delay productive economic development. This makes the energy industry uniquely vulnerable to endless litigation delay. Activist groups frequently file suits over ‘Environmental Impact Statements.’”

9. Fast-tracking drilling permits for Big Oil in the Gulf Coast. “The first step towards energy security and job growth is returning immediately to 2007 levels of permitting in the Gulf of Mexico, responsibly making more of the Gulf available for energy production.”

10. Immediate approval of the top item on Big Oil’s wish-list, the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Perry estimates that all this will create over 1 million new jobs. Not surprisingly, this number comes directly from Big Oil’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, and has been thoroughly debunked.

You can read more analysis of Perry’s plan by Dan Weiss HERE.

And you can read the full Perry plan HERE.

Last week, Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking for a formal investigation into the corporate profits and public financial gain from oil, gas, and hardrock mineral extraction (gold, silver, copper, and others) on public lands. The members requested this investigation due to their suspicions that taxpayers are not reaping proper benefits from extractive activities on public lands. As Grijalva said at a press conference last week:

We also feel that there is a taxpayer responsibility that we have as elected officials. Especially in these fiscal times where we are talking so much about fiscal policy, taxpayers, and revenue for government, etc., that we are getting a fair return on our public lands. That there is indeed a net benefit and a cost benefit for the American taxpayer.

From the information that we get, we hope that this debate continues forward. We’ve asked GAO to give us a financial perspective—how much has the taxpayer lost, how much is this land really worth, and what should be the parameters in the future in order to collect a fair return for the American taxpayer.

Watch it:

The request to GAO is simple. The lawmakers asked GAO analysts to study two questions in particular:

- What was the amount of minerals extracted from federal land and the Outer Continental Shelf and what was the estimated dollar value of these minerals?
- How much did the federal government collect for these minerals, including royalties, rents, and bonuses, and how was this amount determined?

Hardrock mining companies are protected from paying any royalties to the federal government and taxpayers under the 1872 Mining Law, which was enacted during the years of manifest destiny to encourage mineral prospecting in the West.

This 139-year-old law is still in place, and one study estimates that taxpayers will lose $160 million every year without reforms to it. This is of particular importance because many foreign companies are mining uranium, gold, and copper, and, as one advocate put it, “are taking advantage of that loophole and literally taking the United States citizens’ minerals for free.”

Additionally, oil and gas companies have also historically paid less than what the public lands that they drill are worth. A 2007 GAO report found that one offshore drilling royalty relief bill passed in 1995 will “likely cost the government billions, but the final costs have yet to be determined.”

The “objective analysis of the business of mining and mineral leasing on federal lands,” as Udall put it, is anticipated to be completed next summer.

At yesterday’s House Natural Resources Committee hearing on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reality was nowhere to be found except for reality TV star “Big Daddy” from the hit show Ice Road Truckers who was called as a Republican witness. That didn’t stop Republicans from questioning the validity of data other than that from the oil industry that they had in front of them. Here’s the full exchange:

John Fleming (R-LA): This was paid for by you say the evil oil money…what was your point in saying it was paid for by the oil industry? I’m looking around here on the dais and I can’t find any of your data. Where is your data, sir?

Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters: It’s at the Department of Labor, the EIA [Energy Information Administration], the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey], it’s all from government studies.

Fleming: I don’t see it here.

Other House Republicans, led by Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK), regurgitated the same talking points used 10, 20, and 30 years ago to push for drilling in our nation’s last great wilderness place.

Take this quote from a 1995 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The refuge, with its large herds of calving caribou and a range of other natural riches, is a particular target of Republican legislators hoping to tap it for $1.4 billion in deficit-reducing oil-lease revenues.

A review of the facts is necessary when debating drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

- Based on a recent study commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, House Republicans claim that drilling in the Arctic Refuge would raise $150-$300 billion in revenues for federal coffers. In fact, any estimates of revenue generated from drilling in the Arctic Refuge are wildly speculative and hugely inflated because no one really knows how much oil is out there.
- With 10 years between leasing and actual production, the money wouldn’t start flowing in time to do anything about our current problems.
- The Alaska Statehood Act mandates that Alaskans get 90 percent of all revenues from drilling in the Arctic Refuge (the oil industry study based its numbers on a 50/50 federal/state split) so those wild revenue estimates continue to shrink. Factor in inflated tax rates, underestimated production costs, unrealistic oil prices, lease prices that are 25 times the current North Slope average and more – and those numbers become inconsequential, in terms of the $1.5 trillion we’re trying to shave from the national debt.
- That oil industry study also claims that Arctic Refuge drilling would create 60,000 jobs in Alaska alone. Yet 16,468 jobs are currently attributed to the oil industry throughout the state of Alaska, and already 95 percent of Alaska’s North Slope is open to drilling. The numbers don’t add up.
- The oil industry’s job growth projection is equally rosy outside the state of Alaska – an increase of 55,000 to 130,000 jobs from Arctic Refuge drilling by 2030. Yet the top five largest oil companies have cut their work force by 11,200 workers in the past five years – despite the fact that domestic oil production is at its highest level in the past seven years and those five companies are making record profits.

With no significant job or revenue growth, what does Arctic Refuge drilling do for America? It destroys a place that millions of us have fought to protect for the past 50 years while filling the pockets of those fantastically wealthy oil companies. Luckily, there is an alternative. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Ed Markey (D-MA) called for cutting the $43 billion in taxpayer handouts to oil companies over the next 10 years, ending royalty-free drilling on public lands offshore in the Gulf of Mexico for another $9.5 billion over the next 10 years, and repealing the royalty giveaway to Gulf states for another $1.9 billion. As he said:

All told, over the next 10 years these Democratic ideas would reduce our deficit 20 times as much as opening up the Arctic Refuge to drilling. To put it in perspective, if these Democratic ideas were the height of the Empire State Building, the Republican plan to drill in the Refuge would occupy only the first five floors.

Another day, another bogus House GOP hearing on how “excessive” regulation of the energy industry is killing jobs and hurting consumers. Today’s is in Grand Junction, Colorado, and features the chairman of the House Small Business Committee’s subcommittee on agriculture, energy and trade, Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO). Among other subjects Tipton is scheduled to look into are the perils of government regulation of hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells and how the Department of Interior energy permitting process is working.

But if Tipton was really concerned about his Colorado constituents and their relation to the energy industry, he’d be holding a hearing based on a new investigative report by the non-profit journalism organization ProPublica, called “Science Lags as Health Problems Emerge Near Gas Fields.” For three years, ProPublica has been conducting extensive reporting on the U.S. natural gas boom and the widely used practice of hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

The latest report focuses on widespread health problems reported by people living in communities that have been home to extensive natural gas exploration and production activities and how neither the federal government nor the states have done any serious investigations of the health impacts of drilling.

As the report concludes:

Hydraulic fracturing, along with other processes used to drill wells, generates emissions and millions of gallons of hazardous waste that are dumped into open-air pits. The pits have been shown to leak into groundwater and also give off chemical emissions as the fluids evaporate. Residents’ most common complaints are respiratory infections, headaches, neurological impairment, nausea and skin rashes. More rarely, they have reported more serious effects, from miscarriages and tumors to benzene poisoning and cancer.

ProPublica examined government environmental reports and private lawsuits and interviewed scores of residents, physicians and toxicologists in four states—Colorado, Texas, Wyoming and Pennsylvania—that are drilling hot spots. Our review showed that cases …go back a decade in parts of Colorado and Wyoming, where drilling has taken place for years. They are just beginning to emerge in Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale drilling boom began in earnest in 2008.

Among the cases looked into by ProPublica was that of Susan Wallace-Babb, whose ranch in western Colorado was close to a natural gas well and storage tanks holding liquid hydrocarbons. Fumes made her sick, according to Wallace-Babb, including rashes and lesions, and she eventually started wearing a respirator and swim goggles when she went outside her house to attend to her farm animals.

In another case, investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency found benzene and other hydrocarbons in domestic water wells in Pavillion, Wyoming as well as “an unusual chemical variant of a compound used in hydraulic fracturing.” A health survey conducted by an environmental group found that “94 percent of respondents complained of health issues they thought were new or connected to the drilling, and 81 percent reported respiratory troubles.” As ProPublica reported:

“In some communities it has been a disaster,” said Christopher Portier, director of the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the National Center for Environmental Health. “We do not have enough information on hand to be able to draw good solid conclusions about whether this is a public health risk as a whole.“

To the short list – death and taxes – of things that are certain, add a third: House Republicans whining a duet with the oil and gas industry about complying with the nation’s bedrock environmental laws.

The latest example came today during a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee to examine the arcane subject of allowing the energy industry to employ so-called “categorical exclusions” to dodge thorough environmental reviews of drilling projects on federal lands. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) pushed back on the oil and gas industry claims:

The BP oil spill disaster proved that allowing companies to take shortcuts is a bad idea. It’s unfortunate that some continue to attempt an end-run around the law and protections for Colorado’s water, air, and public lands. We need reasonable, common-sense solutions that allow for balanced energy development, and I commend Sec. Ken Salazar for his diligent work to ensure responsible energy policy in the West.

The authority for drilling projects to bypass environmental assessments and more rigorous environmental impact statements under the National Environmental Policy Act was pushed by the administration of George W. Bush and endorsed by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As with most things involving energy development on public lands, Bush’s Interior Department proceeded to go hog wild.

A 2009 investigation of how the authority was (mis)used by the Government Accountability Office found widespread abuses and illegalities in the way the authority was applied. Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, which oversees mineral development on federal lands, gave the industry exclusions in 28 percent of drilling permit applications from fiscal 2006 to 2008, the GAO found. And it did so in ways that were frequently “out of compliance with both the law and BLM’s guidance,” the report said.

Following up on that damning report, the Obama administration’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put a halt to the reckless fast-tracking in 2010 by issuing new guidance to the BLM that limited the use of the broad exemptions. Last month, on procedural grounds, a federal judge in Wyoming ruled that Salazar’s guidelines were illegally implemented. At today’s hearing, BLM’s deputy director Mike Poole announced that the agency would conduct a new rulemaking to comply with the judge’s decision.

But for the “drill, baby, drill” crowd, that’s not good enough. They want the Bush-era party to resume.

The liberal use of categorical exclusions, said energy and mineral resources subcommittee chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO), “are an essential part of streamlining an overly burdensome and bureaucratic process.”

Somehow Lamborn and his allies never got around to mentioning that even with those burdens in place, onshore oil and gas drilling is near a 20-year high, total U.S. crude oil production is the highest it has been since 2003, and the industry is sitting on thousands of unused drilling permits and leases covering nearly 30 million acres that have yet to be developed.

The House Natural Resources Committee began its fall agenda today with a hearing on creating jobs through developing offshore and renewable energy resources. The Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Vice President for Energy Policy Kate Gordon was on hand to argue that green jobs are a bright spot in the economy, but warned that this success will not last if we do not create a market within the U.S. for clean energy:

In conclusion, the U.S., frankly, risks squabbling while Rome burns on this issue. The future of energy and the economy lies in cleaner energy solutions. We must embrace that future now or we will risk become the world’s great importers of technology and innovation rather than its leaders. Thank you.

Watch it:

Meanwhile, Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) spent his opening statement describing 10 policies that the President should focus on during his speech on jobs this evening. Seven of the ten policies that Rep. Hastings detailed heavily promote fossil fuels, such as drilling more in the Gulf of Mexico, opening up sensitive places in Alaska to drilling, and developing oil shale resources. (The other three policies that Hastings included on his list relate to renewable energy, but as ThinkProgress previously noted, the solutions that the Republican members put forth on this issue could pose “unintended consequences” to the industry).

House Republicans continue to promote the mature and highly profitable fossil fuels industry by accusing the Obama Administration of hindering oil and gas development. A report released yesterday by Wood Mackenzie and paid for by the American Petroleum Institute found that opening up more areas to drilling and getting rid of “regulatory burdens” will create 1.4 million jobs by 2030. The Wood Mackenzie witness at today’s hearing expanded on this point by describing how the “current path of policies which slow down the issuance of leases and drilling permits.”

But as Stephen Lacey at ClimateProgress pointed out yesterday, the oil and gas drilling in the U.S. is actively and steadily increasing under this Administration. Headwaters Economics found that U.S. onshore drilling activity was at 91 percent of the 20-year high. And, the U.S. is currently drilling more than anywhere else in the world: today, according to industry research firm Baker Hughes, there are 1,968 oil and gas drill rigs operating in the U.S. and 1,700 rigs operating in the rest of the world combined.

As Gordon said during today’s hearing, this committee’s continued focus on opening up areas to more drilling takes attention away from the real issue at hand—how to maintain our country’s role as a world leader in the clean energy economy. As she discussed in her testimony, clean energy manufacturing jobs are “critical to our long-term competitiveness, because our global leadership depends in part on whether we still make things in America.” But making things in America in part means creating demand here at home, and we are falling behind on this by failing to enact policies that create certainty for renewable energy businesses.

She expanded on this thought by comparing the U.S. clean energy market to those of China and Europe, asking:

All this points to one key question: Do we really want to be in the business of inventing the green technologies of the future, only to end up buying those technologies back from countries that have successfully commercialized, manufactured, and exported those technologies—and come up with successive waves of innovation that they can then also sell back to the United States? Do we want to be the world’s great clean technology consumer, while the rest of the world prospers? Is this the way to strengthen the American economy?

In order to combat this possibility, Gordon suggested that Republicans, who currently set the agenda for the House, focus on policies that ensure consistent demand and financing, such as Clean Energy Standard, extending the Production and Investment Tax Credits, extending the Section 1603 Treasury Grant Progress, establishing a green bank, cash grant program providing grants in lieu of tax credits for renewable energy generation, and supporting more consistent interagency cooperation for onshore and offshore renewable energy development. Additionally, Gordon noted that the Republican budgets, which tremendously slash clean-tech and energy investments, show how “some of America’s political leaders seem intent on crippling us before we have even fully entered the global green jobs race.”

Ever resilient against the onslaught of facts, Bachmann doubled down on her call to drill the Everglades yesterday, stating “Let’s access this wonderful treasure trove of energy that God has given us in this country.” And for those inconvenient truthers who point out there’s no actual evidence of oil under the Everglades, Bachmann told Tampa Bay’s 10News that they’re nothing more than “radical environmentalists“:

Tuesday, a CBS reporter in Miami confronted Bachmann about her call for drilling, asking, “Why would you invade that natural resource with gas and oil drilling?” Bachmann responded, “Let’s access this wonderful treasure trove of energy that God has given us in this country. Let’s access it responsibly.”

Is there even any oil beneath the Everglades? 10News sat down with USF Geologist Dr. Albert Hine, and he told us, “There is no known evidence that there is a significant hydrocarbon deposit beneath the Everglades.”[...]

Bachmann hasn’t been deterred by any naysayers, telling 10News, “The radical environmentalists put up one road block after another to prevent accessing American energy. We also have oil in the Eastern Gulf region.”

Watch it:

The list of nay-saying “radical environmentalists” include: fellow presidential contender Mitt Romney, President George W. Bush, and his brother former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) — not to mention most Floridians. Indeed, fellow Tea Party leader Rep. Allen West (R-FL) promised yesterday to “straighten her out” against targeting “an incredible ecosystem.” Given Bacmann’s renewed obstinence, it’s a promise he’ll most likely fail to deliver on.

“The figure reflects a huge surge in U.S. oil drilling, up nearly 60% in the past year and the highest total since at least 1987, when oil services company  Baker Hughes Inc. began keeping track,” notes the WSJ.

Poor Barack Obama, he opens up the country to a drilling spree — and naturally progressives are pissed because, well, we care about things like clean air, clean water, and a livable climate.

But conservatives are strangely ungrateful, too!  They blame Obama’s supposed anti-drilling policies.  So Mitt Romney said earlier this year, “People are hurting, gasoline’s expensive and the policies of this administration that have focused solely on green technologies are not keeping the cost of gasoline down.”

Darn you Barack Obama for only quadrupling the number of oil drilling rigs in the US!

The fact is oil prices soared despite both record drilling and the highest domestic oil production levels in almost a decade.  It should be obvious that yet more drilling can’t have any significant impact on oil prices — particularly since the U.S. Energy Information Administration has been making that precise point for years now (see EIA: Full offshore drilling will not lower gasoline prices at all in 2020 and only 3 cents in 2030!).

Here is an update from a chart we did earlier this year of U.S. oil production using EIA data, including the first 6 months of this year:

The only thing that can protect Americans from the inevitably increasing oil shocks of Peak Oil is an aggressive strategy to reduce the country’s oil consumption and intensity (oil/GDP), including a steady increase the fuel efficiency of our vehicles — policies that conservatives have fought for decades, but that Obama has made a reality.

Where is the drilling?  The WSJ reports:

The drilling boom is being driven by a variety of factors. New technologies have allowed companies to tap vast new oil reserves in places like North Dakota, Texas and, most recently, Ohio. High oil prices are making once-unprofitable fields more tempting….

All that drilling is helping to boost U.S. oil production. The U.S. pumped 3.9 million barrels a day from onshore fields in March, up 5.9% from a year earlier and the most in nearly a decade.

And yet gasoline prices remains stuck at much higher levels than a year ago.  Where is the love from the oil companies?

The EIA’s 2009 report, “Impact of Limitations on Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Federal Outer Continental Shelf” analyzed the difference between full offshore drilling (Reference Case) and restriction to offshore drilling (OCS limited case).  In 2020, there is no impact on gasoline prices (right hand column).  In 2030, US gasoline prices would be three cents a gallon lower.  Woohoo!

I have previously written about the trivial impact of opening the OCS further to drilling.  The oil companies already have access to some 30 billion barrels of offshore oil they have only begun to develop (see “The cruel offshore-drilling hoax“).

If you are concerned about the impact of high oil prices from Middle East instability, the only viable long-term strategy is one aimed at ending our addiction to this climate-destroying fossil fuel.  Even the once staid and conservative International Energy Agency understands that (see World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”).  Obama has, thankfully, started to take aggressive action in this area, raising new car fuel efficiency standard to 35.5 mpg by 2016 — and then 54.5 mpg by 2025 — the biggest steps the U.S. government has ever proposed to cut oil use.

Related Post:

• Bachmann Says She Can Get Gas Prices Below $2 a Gallon. Is She Planning Another Deep Recession?

But we now have more clarity on the Bachmann plan: Drill for oil in the Everglades.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Bachmann said she would be willing to drill for oil in the Everglades, a 4,000 square mile series of sensitive wetlands off the coast of Florida that acts as a major watershed for the state.

“The United States needs to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy and more dependent on American resourcefulness. Whether that is in the Everglades or whether that is in the Eastern Gulf region or whether that is in North Dakota, we need to go where the energy is.”

She also conceded in the interview that “if we can’t responsibly access energy in the Everglades, then we shouldn’t do it.”

Bachmann has been critical of the Obama Administration for supposedly limiting oil and gas production. But the Wall Street Journal reported today that production is up 60% from last year. The U.S. oil industry is doing more drilling than it has since 1987.

According to a 2009 report from the Energy Information Administration, the most aggressive offshore drilling scenario in the U.S. would lower gas prices by three cents by 2030. But that apparently wouldn’t stop Bachmann from opening up the most sensitive environmental regions in the U.S. to drilling — threatening massive ecosystems and watersheds to attain a hollow campaign promise to lower gas prices below $2 a gallon.

So under a Bachmann Administration, would the Florida Everglades look like this?

JR: Of course, if we keep burning fossil fuels at the rate Bachmann wants, the Everglades will be underwater, so then wells there will just be more offshore drilling.

Santorum: "Nothing lives" in "dead flat," "frozen" Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

You’re worried about people being uninsured, why don’t you some drilling in Alaska, and make sure they’ve got jobs? You’re worried about the uninsured? I’ll get you insurance. You produce more oil, we’d have a stronger economy, a lot more people would be insured. I would expect that there are some here who say that we can’t do that because of the caribou. But don’t come and talk to me, well, let’s be cutting the uninsured. You cannot have it both ways. You have to look at what’s rational and reasonable. The president is an ideologue!

Watch it:

Despite the oft-repeated conservative myth, the Arctic refuge “provides habitat to a diverse array of wildlife including millions of migratory birds, caribou, three species of bears (polar, grizzly and black bears), wolves, Dall sheep, muskoxen, arctic and red foxes, wolverines, plus many more.” Drilling the refuge would do nothing for oil prices, do little for the economy outside of oil companies, destroy one of the last uniquely pristine places on this planet, and hasten the catastrophic collapse of our climate system.

Santorum’s fixation with caribou resembles the recent Tea Party fear that Obama is giving manatees dominion over man.

Transcript:

Q: Is there anything off limits? ANWR?

SANTORUM: No, why? Look, we can drill — Come to Pennsylvania. We are drilling oil and gas wells all over the place in people’s backyards. And aside from the fact particularly with the hydrofracking, you’ve got a couple of weeks where there is an intense amount of activity where you frack the stone to release the gas, the rest of the time you have a pump in the ground. And that’s it! It’s not — People live with this and have lived with this for years and years. It’s not a dangerous activity. This not an inherently dangerous activity.

And ANWR. Have any of you been to ANWR, seen pictures of ANWR? People say that Iowa is flat. Iowa’s the Rocky Mountains compared to ANWR. It’s just dead flat. It’s a tundra. It’s frozen ten months out of the year. Nothing lives there. We are drilling oil and gas wells in people’s backyards in Pennsylvania, you know, around children. And that’s okay, but we can’t drill where there is a caribou walking by every other year? It makes no sense at all!

You have a president who’s got — we’ve got an energy crisis and he’s saying a caribou walks by there now and then and you can’t do something that’s good for our country and our economy? That’s region ideology. I don’t know. I just don’t understand how people at this paper or any paper can say that this is a rational policy, that we can sacrifice the economy of this country –

You’re worried about people being uninsured, why don’t you some drilling in Alaska, and make sure they’ve got jobs? You’re worried about the uninsured? I’ll get you insurance. You produce more oil, we’d have a stronger economy, a lot more people would be insured. I would expect that there are some here who say that we can’t do that because of the caribou. But don’t come and talk to me, well, let’s be cutting the uninsured. You cannot have it both ways. You have to look at what’s rational and reasonable. The president is an ideologue! He’s an ideologue who’s driven by a belief that we need to have less. And we need to be, you know — government needs to be rationing these resources.

Almost from the moment Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) and his Grand Oil Party colleagues took over the leadership of the House Natural Resources Committee they have been trying to spread the lie that Obama administration energy development policies have crippled domestic oil and gas production, raised gasoline prices, and cost jobs.

Not only is the industry sitting on oil and gas leases on public lands totaling more than 30 million acres without developing them, but the evidence is clear that it is market forces that largely determine the pace of drilling.

A new study by Headwaters Economics buttresses this point. The Bozeman, Montana-based independent research group reports that oil and gas drilling levels in the U.S. have now rebounded strongly from the recession, reaching almost a 20-year high. Based on numbers from Baker Hughes, the oil and gas industry standard for counting drill rigs, study author Julia Haggerty said that oil and gas drilling has surged during the Obama administration:

Oil and natural gas drilling activity has made a strong recovery since reaching a recession-induced low in late 2008. Market prices and advancements in drilling technology account for most of the increases in drilling activity. . . . When it comes to land-based oil and gas drilling in the United States, there is little evidence that state and federal regulations are hampering industry’s ability to respond to market signals.

As the charts prepared by Headwaters Economics for ThinkProgress below show, when the price of oil and natural gas rise, do does drilling activity, and it has little to do with policy:

The Republican drumbeat attacking the government for spiking oil prices is a deliberate attempt at misdirection. Despite overwhelming evidence from both federal commodities regulators and the industry itself, the Grand Oil Party won’t admit that speculation is a big factor in the recent runup in gasoline prices. After all, how could “market forces” be to blame for American pain at the pump?

NEWT GINGRICH: The Congress this year, this week, ought to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill, they ought to repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley bill.

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): What we need to do is pass the mother of all repeal bills…and I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be called the job-killing organization of America.

RICK SANTORUM: This president has put a stop sign against oil drilling, against any kind of exploration offshore or in Alaska and that is depressing. We need to drill.

GINGRICH: And one of the things Congress should do immediately is defund the National Labor Relations Board.

HERMAN CAIN: If the federal government continues to do the kind of things that this administration is trying to do through the backdoor, through the National Labor Relations Board, that’s killing our free-market system.

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Despite a financial crisis caused in large part by deregulation, climate change wreaking havoc on the country, and plummeting unionization coupled with plummeting incomes, the GOP still seems to believe that the government has no role in setting rules of the road or enforcing any sort of standard to guard against corporate greed or environmental devastation. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) even seemed to imply that the government should privatize disaster relief, responding to a question about FEMA by saying, “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

But not every statement uttered by the candidates was anti-regulation. Cain replied to a question about whether the government has a role in food safety by saying, “The federal government should be doing food safety, yes.”