This campaign season, the airwaves will be filled with more hot air than ever before.

According to a recent New York Times story, political candidates and other organizations are expected to spend around $3 billion on television ads for the 2012 race. Already in the past six months, conservatives have spend $13 million on ads — with some of them, like a recent outright lie from the Romney campaign, getting “pants on fire” ratings from the fact-checking organization PolitiFact.

So it’s probably no surprise that Americans for Prosperity, backed by the Koch brothers, has already been spent millions of dollars on a Solyndra ad that PolitiFact labels “mostly false”:

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“We tracked the dollars spent, and RGGI generates greater economic growth in every one of the 10 states that participate in RGGI than would occur without a carbon price. The states’ auction of the CO2 allowances was important for generating those public benefits.” — Susan Tierney, managing principal at the Analysis Group

A new report finds that America’s first mandatory, market-based carbon cap and trade system added $1.6 billion in value to the economies of participating states, set the stage for $1.1 billion in ratepayer savings, and created 16,000 jobs in its first three years of implementation.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) — a modest 10-state cap and trade program designed to reduce carbon emissions in the utility sector 10% by 2018 — was implemented in the Northeastern U.S. in 2008. At that time, there was a strong consensus that policy action to address climate was needed, and the program was crafted with bi-partisan support.

However, as the faux climategate scandal unfolded and the plan for a national cap and trade program unraveled, some of the support for RGGI disintegrated. Driven by an aggressive multi-million dollar campaign from the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, some state legislatures considered pulling out of RGGI. Only New Jersey’s governor Chris Christie, who once strongly supported RGGI, actually acted to take his state out, claiming the program was a “gimmick.”

But this latest three-year analysis from the economic consultancy Analysis Group shows that the program has been anything but a gimmick — creating solid economic returns that outweigh the costs. According to the study, RGGI has created 16,000 jobs, helped states avoid $765 million in out-of-state energy imports, and created over $1 billion in net present value for ratepayers:

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ThinkProgress filed this report from the Defending The American Dream Summit in Washington DC

The Koch brothers and the foundation they fund, Americans for Prosperity, are among the biggest backers of the right’s anti-environment movement, pushing for the repeal of environmental laws and regulations on both the state and federal level. Those efforts continued at AFP’s annual Defending the American Dream Summit this weekend, as attacks on the EPA came from seemingly every prominent speaker and in multiple panels.

Former pizza magnate Herman Cain (R) drew some of his largest cheers when he declared that the EPA “needs an attitude adjustment,” while former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) decried the burden of federal regulations on job creation. But while Romney has insisted in the past that Republicans aren’t “anti-regulation” and other conservatives have insisted that the party doesn’t want to defund the EPA, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) — the Congressman from Koch — made it clear during an environmental panel that that was exactly his goal:

POMPEO: We’re trying. Indeed, I personally tried. … We’ve got a Senate that has a deeply different worldview, and there my bill sits. We won’t be able to slow down the growth of the EPA dramatically until we change the view of folks in Congress, and I speak mostly of the Senate here, and we get a new leader in the White House.

Watch it:

Pompeo is hardly the only Republican to state plainly that defunding the EPA is one of the GOP’s primary goals. In July, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) said the EPA “would be discontinued” if the GOP gained control of the Senate and the White House.

Pompeo, however, seems perplexed that President Obama and House and Senate Democrats aren’t willing to do the Kochs’ bidding by joining him in his anti-environmental campaign. Perhaps that’s because they have no desire to aid the efforts of what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) called the “most anti-environmental House of Representatives in American history.”

Charles and David Koch, the right-wing petrochemical billionaires who fuel the Tea Party, have set their sights on the clean energy economy. Even though Americans overwhelmingly support investment in solar and wind energy, the rise of renewables threatens the stranglehold the Kochs and other oil giants have over United States politics. A new ad from the Koch’s astroturf organization Americans for Prosperity claims the Obama administration’s investments in solar power, like the loan guarantee given to Solyndra, were just a corrupt plot by President Obama to support campaign donors:

In reality, Solyndra was supported by the Bush White House and received venture-capital funding from firms with ties to both Republicans and Democrats. The faux scandal fits the agenda of the Koch brothers — embarrass Obama and smear clean energy — but it isn’t based in reality.

Al Jazeera released a new mini-documentary yesterday on the Koch Brothers — the multi-billionare energy tycoons who have spent over $50 million on campaigns to tear down the science of climate change and clean energy policy.

The documentary features a lengthy interview with our colleague Lee Fang, an investigative reporter with Think Progress, who has played a major role in uncovering the strong “web of influence” of the Koch Brothers on state and federal politicians. The film touches on the Koch role in everything from health care to energy policy. It’s worth the watch. (Note: much of the energy and climate stuff is in the second half, after about 15 minutes.)

This is exactly why “the other 99%” of Americans are protesting in the streets.

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