Appearing on General Electric’s conservative-skewing business network, CBNC, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) argued that carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, is not a “real pollutant.” In an interview with right-wing economist Larry Kudlow on Thursday, Inhofe repeated lies about the cost of climate legislation. Kudlow, praising Inhofe for telling Americans about this “very scary story,” attacked the prospect of global warming regulation as a “backdoor energy tax” that “can drive stocks into the ground.” Inhofe claimed that President Obama wants to “intimidate Congress” into passing “$300 to $400 billion a year” in taxes, so that the American people will blame Congress instead of him:

The reason why I don’t think they’ll try to do that through regulation is because certainly this president, President Obama knows that once the American people find out that they’re going to pay about $2,000 a year in taxes for something that doesn’t do anything, there’s going to be an outrage. And they want to be able to say, “Oh, no, that was Congress that did it.” My feeling is they’re using this for intimidation purposes and they’re going to try to intimidate Congress to do this.

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CNBC’s promotion of right-wing fantasies originating from polluter-funded think tanks and conservative bloggers is nothing new. Energy and media multinational General Electric is often portrayed as a climate-friendly corporation which influences American politics to the left, primarily because of the presence of Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC’s afternoon programming. On Fox News, Glenn Beck rants that GE is going to get “all kinds of contracts from the government on green energy” because it is “in bed with Obama.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Steve Milloy claims the new Kerry-Boxer clean-energy jobs act is larded with “payoffs to GE.” Bill O’Reilly claims GE “is also pushing for the proposed cap-and-trade program” and “using its power and the airwaves to influence politics” so that it can “reap billions of dollars if the Feds OK the carbon deal.”

Not only does GE attack climate action through its CNBC network, it also supports several national lobbying campaigns against clean-energy legislation, through its membership in the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (GE Energy), the American Petroleum Institute (GE Oil & Gas), and the National Association of Manufacturers (GE Enterprise Solutions). Unlike GE, companies such as Duke Energy have abandoned NAM and ACCCE for their retrograde position on climate change.

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On Fox & Friends Thursday morning, hate-radio and right-wing television personality Bill O’Reilly argued that clean energy legislation is a “cap and con” on behalf of “fat cat corporations.” He singled out General Electric — parent of MSNBC — and Goldman Sachs for his outrage against the carbon cap-and-trade market that is part of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act. O’Reilly continued to question the science of climate change, claiming only “the deity” knows why the planet is getting hotter:

Nobody knows why the earth is warming except the deity, so I’ll leave it to him or her, okay? But once you get into a system whereby the American worker is going to get hurt and the fat cat corporations are going to make money, and it’s not going to make much of a difference to the earth’s atmosphere, then you have to say, “This is not good!”

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In reality, the effect of burning billions of tons of fossil fuels on our atmosphere is unequivocal, and only rapid and concerted action by the United States will prevent planetwide catastrophe. The United States is both the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the only major nation not to have ratified the Kyoto Protocol. And as the European Union has proven, a carbon cap-and-trade system is an effective means for ensuring real reductions in greenhouse gases while securing the economy.

O’Reilly, who makes $10 million a year from the multinational News Corporation conglomerate, is probably not the most reliable advocate for the “little guy.” Organizations and activists not beholden to ExxonMobil or the corporate right, however, from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities to the NAACP, from the AFL-CIO to the League of Women Voters, support strong climate action. Our pollution-based economy hurts the “little guy” to the benefit of “fat cat corporations,” and clean energy reform is a critical step to redressing that injustice. And as venture capitalist John Doerr testified yesterday, only by joining the rest of the world with a plan to tackle this threat will U.S. workers have a shot in the 21st century economy.

O’Reilly concluded that he would be “stunned” if the bill “gets through the Senate,” because “you’re going to be able to, in the next election, hold these people accountable.” If the American public believes his lies, then he may be right.

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GM cleanup of the Bedford Superfund site.

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws. On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“:

Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create.

This February, General Electric lost an eight-year battle to “prove that parts of the Superfund law are unconstitutional.” One of the 600-person DOJ environmental division’s “primary responsibilities is to enforce federal civil and criminal environmental laws such as” the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund.

Before General Electric, Moreno worked as a corporate attorney at Spriggs and Hollingsworth. Moreno’s name is found in the Westlaw database as an attorney defending General Motors in another Superfund case, the GM Powertrain facility in Bedford, Indiana:

Historical uses and management of PCB containing hydraulic oils and PCB impacted materials has contaminated on-site areas as well as the sediment and floodplain soil within Bailey’s Branch and the Pleasant Run Creek watershed.

Although General Motors entered into an agreement in 2001 with the EPA to clean up the site, a number of local residents whose land has been contaminated by polychorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have sued for damages in Allgood v. GM (now Barlow v. GM), in a contentious and caustic dispute over cleanup, monitoring, and lost property values.

During the Clinton administration, Moreno was involved in another controversial case, unsuccessfully defending the Secretary of Commerce’s decision to weaken the dolphin-safe tuna standard. In Brower v. Daley, Earth Island Institute, The Humane Society of the United States, and other individuals and organizations brought suit against the United States government for actions that were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law,” winning their case in 2000.