For those who care about the health and well-being of our children, the low-point of the Republican convention was surely this line by Romney — and the response it got from the audience:

President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans — [bites lip and pauses for audience laughter(!)] — and to heal the planet. MY promise is to help you and your family.

This is both a shameful and shameless attack. It’s shameful because global warming is the gravest preventable threat to our children’s health and well-being — and because Romney said it in Tampa, which is among the U.S. cities most threatened by global warming and sea level rise.

If the country fails to act quickly, South Florida alone will have to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” dealing with rising seas, according to the author of a recent study on the subject. Chris Hayes on MSNBC rightly said the audience laughter at the whole notion of fighting sea level rise will some day “be in documentaries as a moment of just ‘what-were-they-thinking’ madness.”

I suppose Romney believes that rising seas lifts all yachts.

The quip was shameless because just minutes earlier, Romney said “when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.” Setting aside this sweeping insult of all the great national leaders a President Romney would have to deal with, how precisely can he mock Obama for wanting to do really big stuff after he has just praised Americans for that very quality!

To its credit, team Obama — which has been treating climate change like the Voldemort of national issues (“The Threat-That-Must-Not-Be-Named”) – put out an email Saturday:

It is nothing short of terrifying to imagine a party that openly mocks climate change taking back the White House.

Those who were hoping that a President Romney might Etch-A-Sketch his way back to climate sanity should note that not only did Romney revel in this mockery on Thursday in Tampa —  he repeated the line on Saturday in Ohio (at 12:00 in this C-SPAN video)!

Yes, the man who might be the next president of the United States thinks mocking climate action is a winning slogan.

Again, one can certainly criticize Obama for not doing enough to keep this important promise, but not for making it in the first place.

Two more points. The latest Democratic national platform, being approved today in Charlotte, also calls Republicans out for their denial of this grave, grave threat:

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By Jessica Goad

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today released his energy plan with a speech in New Mexico.  One of the most controversial pieces of the plan would give states control over energy development on federal public lands, a policy that would likely allow energy companies more access to them, allow bypassing of federal public health and environmental safeguards, and decrease certainty for companies and the public.

It is an extreme proposal, especially from a candidate who admitted that he did not know the “purpose of” public lands.  But an analysis of Romney’s top energy advisers, donors, and the ideas of the American Legislative Exchange Council may shed some light on the origins of this proposal.

A number of advisers and donors close to Romney own oil and coal leases on public lands, showing their business interest in opening these places to development:

-  Romney’s top energy advisor is oil baron Harold Hamm, who made his $11 billion fortune developing shale oil in North Dakota.  His company, Continental Resources, has permits to drill for oil on public lands, some of which were approved as recently as this month in Montana and North Dakota.  Hamm also has given $1 million to Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super-PAC.

-  Another Romney energy advisor is ex-Senator Jim Talent (R-MO), a lobbyist who has Peabody Energy, one of the nation’s biggest coal producers, amongst his firm’s clients.  Peabody and its subsidiaries have coal leases on federal lands in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, and just yesterday paid only $0.25 per ton, or $750,000, for the rights to mine more than 3 million tons of publicly-owned coal.

-  Bill Koch, brother to Charles and David Koch, has given at least $2 million to Restore Our Future.  A subsidiary of Koch’s company, the Oxbow Corporation, owns and operates the Elk Creek coal mine on public lands in Colorado which is expanding its operations.

Romney’s plan to turn over decisions about energy development on federal lands to the states also recalls similar proposals promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate front group that designs pro-corporate legislation for state legislators and is funded by the likes of Exxon Mobil, Shell, and Koch Industries.

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