By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper (D) is appearing in new paid radio ads airing across the state for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, an industry lobby and trade group which has a history of fighting health and safety standards for fossil fuels.  In the ad the governor states:

Hi, this is Governor John Hickenlooper.  In 2008, Colorado passed tough oil and gas rules.  Since then we have not had one instance of groundwater contamination associated with drilling and hydraulic fracturing. And we plan to keep it that way.  That’s why Colorado recently passed the toughest—and fairest—hydraulic fracturing disclosure rule in the nation.  In Colorado, we’ve proven that industry and the conservation community can come together to solve problems.  We can create jobs, promote energy security, and protect our environment. [Brought to you by the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.]

Listen:

As Zaid Jilani of the Republic Report, United Republic’s new blog dedicated to exposing how money pollutes democracy, observes, “the spot is particularly remarkable because it is almost unheard of for a sitting governor to appear in a radio commercial sponsored by a certain industry.”

Hickenlooper’s background and track record may indicate why he has failed this test of good government.   Before founding Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver, Hickenlooper was a petroleum geologist.  He took $73,666 from oil and gas interests in his 2010 election, and as Salon points out, appointed an industry campaign donor to an important regulatory position.

The governor’s smiling photo also appears on two print ads, which are greenwashed with statements like “because the environment matters.”  In response to criticism for the radio ads, Colorado Oil and Gas Association president Tisha Schuller said:

We stand by the ads, and we call them public service announcements.

However, in a strikingly public rebuke, 13 environmental groups are pushing back on the implication that drilling and hydraulic fracturing are safe and that there has been no damage from them in Colorado.  In a letter sent to Hickenlooper earlier this week, Colorado conservation groups discussed their “surprise” and “disappointment” and have asked the governor and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association to pull the ads off the air:

The ad…creates a misleading picture about the overall safety of oil and gas development…That assertion misleads the public by ignoring the high incidence of groundwater contamination from spills and releases of toxic chemicals at or near drilling sites. Since 2008, numerous instances of groundwater contamination have resulted from releases of chemicals such as petroleum liquids and produced water used and generated during drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), elected in 2010 in one of the states most affected by climate change, now questions whether it is even happening. Hickenlooper told a Denver audience that he wouldn’t say “the sky is falling and that climate change is happening,” the Pueblo Chieftain reports:

I’m not going to go out and say the sky is falling and that climate change is happening, but I’m very concerned about the risk of climate change. That many smart people are that worried, that I’d be a fool not to be concerned.”

A former geologist, Hickenlooper had expressed skepticism of the overwhelming scientific consensus about global warming at a speech before mining executives during the 2010 campaign. “I don’t think that the scientific community has decided with certainty that climate change is as catastrophic as so many people think,” he said.

That year, approximately 100,000 spruce trees a day were killed by a spruce beetle infestation spurred by warming temperatures in Colorado.

Also in 2010, ThinkProgress Green interviewed some of Colorado’s many climate scientists to respond to global warming conspiracy theorist Ken Buck, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. “There is no controversy about the role human actions have made to alter the climate system through the emissions of greenhouse gases over the past 150 years,” Dennis Ojima, chair of Colorado State’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and a senior scholar with the Heinz Center said.

“It’s very likely it’s disruptive to anything we’re doing and take for granted at the moment,” Caspar M. Ammann, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research cautioned.

In 2009, Hickenlooper wasn’t as scornful of the scientific threat of carbon pollution from fossil fuels, instead calling it “one of the greatest challenges of our time.” Writing in the forward for “How the West Was Warmed,” Hickenlooper said that “the Rocky Mountain region is a showcase for both the most immediate and most dramatic impacts of global warming, from the mountain pine beetle epidemic to shrinking glaciers.”

(HT Colorado Independent)

By Tom Kenworthy, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Colorado Republicans are going to need a bigger wave if they ever hope to wash away progressive gains and an entrenched commitment to clean energy in the Rocky Mountain state.

Victories by Democrats Michael Bennet in the U.S. Senate contest and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper in the governor’s race didn’t just buck the national GOP trend. They sent a strong signal to progressive candidates everywhere that support for the new energy economy and fighting global warming pollution are winning issues.

Though Democrats lost two House seats held by Rep. Betsy Markey and Rep. John Salazar, and narrowly lost control of the legislature’s lower house, by winning the top two statewide offices and keeping control of the state senate they demonstrated a resilience unusual in a dominant Republican year.

Bennet, appointed in 2009 to fill the Senate seat of Ken Salazar when he became Secretary of Interior, narrowly defeated Tea Party and Sarah Palin anointee Ken Buck, fighting off a huge tide of outside spending by successfully painting county prosecutor Ken Buck as far outside the Colorado mainstream.

A key moment came in late October when Buck appeared alongside the Senate’s climate change denier-in-chief, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and endorsed the Oklahoman’s view that global warming is a “hoax“:

Sen. Inhofe was the first person to stand up and say this global warming is the greatest hoax that has been perpetrated. The evidence just keeps supporting his view, and more and more people’s view, of what’s going on.

In a state that has become a national leader in supporting clean energy as an economic and environmental imperative — the legislature this year upped Colorado’s renewable energy standard to 30 percent by 2020 and voted to convert 900 megawatts of dirty coal-fired electric capacity to cleaner fuels – that kind of anti-science rhetoric doesn’t wash. And Bennet pounced, with his spokesman calling Buck’s “extreme stance” a “threat to Colorado’s economy” and national security.

Bennet profited by a superior get out the vote effort on election day and other Buck missteps and extreme positions — he compared homosexuality to alcoholism and held firm to outlandish views on reproductive rights. But Buck’s support for dirty energy and hostility to clean energy finance incentives, on top of a threat to slash funding for the federal Department of Energy, played a significant role.

Bennet, said Environment Colorado program director Pam Kiely, “defied national trends thanks in part to his support of creating clean energy jobs and protecting the environment…He championed a key issue for Colorado voters, building the new energy economy.”

Hickenlooper, a strong supporter of Denver’s climate action plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by ten percent by 2012, defeated reactionaries Tom Tancredo and Dan Maes. Hickenlooper will continue the progress on clean energy made by Gov. Bill Ritter, predicted Pete Maysmith, executive director of Colorado Conservation Voters:

Having a “green” chief executive in the governor’s seat for at least another four years means Colorado has the opportunity to continue to be a national leader in the new energy economy.

Further down the Colorado ballot, a narrow victory by one of the legislature’s biggest supporters of clean energy kept the state Senate in Democratic hands. State Sen. Gail Schwartz was a strong advocate for raising the state’s renewable energy standard and retiring dirty coal plants, and she prevailed even though her district went Republican in the race lost by John Salazar.

Schwartz and other clean energy candidates, both state and federal, benefited from what Maysmith described as a “massive” effort by Colorado Conservation Voters, the national League of Conservation Voters, and Environment Colorado. Those groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and knocked on tens of thousands of doors, an effort that replicated – on a smaller scale – the successful effort in California to defeat Prop. 23 that would have suspended the state’s greenhouse gas limits law.