Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

As I write this, the Democratic National Convention is getting underway in Denver. It will be an intense week of speeches, workshops and symposia about the issues facing American today, among them our energy and climate security.

While climate change is arguably the most complex problem the community of nations has faced, it isn’t the first time an American president has grappled with issues of global and moral consequence. John Kennedy led at a time the world seemed only a few minutes away from nuclear annihilation, and when Russia threatened to dominate space. Bobby Kennedy opposed the Vietnam War and confronted the issue of civil rights around the world.

What might they say if they were addressing the Democratic National Convention today? The following is compiled from their speeches decades ago. (All are from JFK except where designated):

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In his first TV ad, conservative billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens said “This Is One Emergency We Can’t Drill Our Way Out Of.” Although Pickens clearly still believes that, I’m sure he got beat up by his conservative Big Oil friends about how progressives were repeating “over and over again” to argue, correctly, as to how pointless offshore drilling is.

So in his new ad, here, Pickens says, “drill, drill, drill” even though it won’t solve the problem. Sad.

I interviewed Pickens for Salon and will be doing a big article on him later this week. The bottom line is that because he remains an uber-conservative at heart — he was a big funder of the Swift Boat ads — he simply cannot bring himself to support politically those who believe in his renewable energy vision.

Related Posts:

• Memo to T. Boone Pickens: Your energy plan is half-brilliant, half-dumb
• Five reasons Pickens is now as tiresome as Madonna and Britney
• A bone to pick with T. Boone Pickens

Grist has a nice post here.

Greenwire (subs. req’d) has also published a detailed list of who is advising McCain on energy and environment policies, which I am reprinting below the fold.

By contrast, McCain’s campaign relies on a small group of longtime friends and advisers. Campaign staff would not comment on why their advisory team isn’t as large as Obama’s, but sources say the staff’s size reflects how frequently the Arizona senator departs from the Republican Party line on environment and energy issues.

I know Woolsey, and he is certainly very solid on energy security issues. But he is the exception. Doug Holtz-Eakin is much more typical of the conservatives McCain is likely to find available to fill his administration. Like his boss, he doesn’t believe in clean technologies and he doesn’t believe in government efforts to promote them (see Campaign stunner: McCain “might take [new CAFE standards] off the books”).

“I’m not sure a McCain EPA would look any different than an Obama EPA,” quipped Brian Kennedy, a former House Republican leadership aide. “He might even bring Carol Browner back.”

That last quote would be laughable if it weren’t part of a targeted campaign of disinformation. Conservatives — including McCain himself — want the media and independents to believe McCain is liberal on the environment (see “Why McCain hates renewables but pretends he loves them” and “Memo to media: McCain doubletalks to woo conservatives and independents at the same time“). But his voting record makes clear he is a hard-core conservative, who happens to believe that global warming is almost as serious as scientists.

The GOP bench is exceedingly thin on genuine green Republicans — and none of them are conservatives. Anyway, here is his team: (more…)

Greenwire (subs. req’d) has published a detailed list of who is advising Obama on energy and environment policies, which I am reprinting below the fold.

Obama, an Illinois Democrat, has a notably deep bench of experts to help him answer key questions on energy prices, oil drilling and global warming

I know most of them well, and they are A-listers with deep experience in and out of government. During the Clinton administration, I had the pleasure to work with both Elgie Holstein and David Sandalow. If they are indicative of the kind of people Obama would appoint, then his administration would get off to a running start.

I would also point out that they left out Obama’s national cochair and energy surrogate, my former boss at the Department of Energy, Federico Pena, who is one of the finest public servants I know.

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I’d estimate it’s about 150 tons of carbon dioxide, some 10 times that of the average American. But someone should ask Senator McCain. After all, he says he wants to require all Americans to cut greenhouse gas emissions 60% to 70% by 2050.

As probably the whole country knows by now, John McCain does not know how many homes he owns. But the number seems to be between 7 and 12, depending on whether you count his Sedona ranch as one house or six.

Given how conservatives beat up Vice President Gore for the supposed energy excesses of his one Nashville home, I can’t wait until they start running TV ads attacking McCain’s climate hypocrisy. [Note to self: Don't hold your breath.] After all, McCain fashions himself as a leader on global warming, just like Gore, but his combined homes have a considerably larger square footage than Gore’s — and thus presumably a much larger energy use. That said, the energy use of McCain’s homes is infinitely less relevant than their greenhouse gas emissions (see “GOP Attack on Gore Makes No Sense At All“).

So what is the carbon footprint of McCain’s countless homes? Here is a rough estimate. (more…)

Late last year, after his campaign tanked, no one was paying much attention to McCain. As a result, some of the amazing things that he believes didn’t get a lot of attention, such as this Cheney-esque stunner:

JOHN MCCAIN: “When you say wind solar and tide, most every expert that I know says that, if you maximize that in every possible way, the contribution that that would make given the present state of technology is very small, is very small. It’s not a large contribution. It’s wonderful, it’s great to have it, I encourage it everywhere. I hope everyone will, for Christmas, buy their family a solar panel. But, that would be exciting. But they, but, I’d be glad to send you the figures that there’s the amount of–even if we gave it the absolute maximum, uh, wind, solar and tide, uh, etc. The clean tech – the truly clean technologies don’t work.”
(Town Hall Meeting; Portsmouth, NH 12/04/07)

Yes, John McCain is the candidate from the 19th century. He has a Luddite mentality that not even the Bush energy Department believes (see “Wind Power — A core climate solution“).

This quote reveals what a narrow circle of experts McCain relies on. Just what we need, a President in a bubble. And one that he is completely unable to hear the truth, even when it is presented to him by a hard core conservative, like T. Boone Pickens, as we learned from these amazing remarks last month:

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Part 2 began an analysis of the bipartisan compromise proposed by the Gang-of-10 Senators, suggesting that deal isn’t so bad. The other evidence the deal isn’t so bad is that the House GOP is threatening to refuse to vote for it (see “Part 2.5“).

The good of the 5-year extension of the renewable tax credits certainly beats the “bad” of doubly de minimis drilling. But what about the rest of the deal?

MORE GOOD

Offsets
The $84 billion in investments in conservation and efficiency in the New Era bill will be fully offset with loophole closers and other revenues. Approximately $30 billion will come from new revenues from the oil and gas industry through such measures as modifying the Section 199 manufacturing deduction for oil and natural gas production and other appropriate measures to ensure that the federal government receives its fair share of revenue from Gulf of Mexico leases. Remaining offsets will be finalized in consultation with the Finance Committee after accounting for interaction effects with other pending legislation.

Pretty amazing, really. This bill is going to be paid for in part by “Repealing a tax break for oil companies that Democrats have long called for,” as CNN put it. This is probably a deal killer for those taking millions of dollars in contributions from Big Oil, like McCain.

And there is even more pretty good stuff, depending on exactly how the final bill is written:

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