He answered his own question.

The better story was the testimony by John Doerr, who Fast Company called “by all accounts, the most influential venture capitalist of his generation.”

[JR: Yes. Good stuff. I've blogged on that endlessly. The GOP is pushing the tabloid stuff and it needs a response.]

Here on my blog is coverage of that, plus his talk at the National Governors’ Association last year, and at TED the year before. http://bit.ly/1oq3rS

By the way, you should find a way to make some overture to youth climate activists. Lots and lots of people are telling you that TBI and Energy Action are not joined at the hip. Sure they make some tactical errors, but what were you doing at 23? Without them, we wouldn’t have the President or the Congress we have debating climate.

[JR: I am. The blog ain't my whole life, even if it seems that way.]

Harry Alford – 202-466-6888

Oil money corrupts oilly.

First, I find it ridiculous that someone can claim to speak for an entire community of many millions of people nationwide that – amazingly! – are diverse in their beliefs, opinions, and experiences. It’s a ludicrous assertion that the CEO of one organization representing black businesspersons can accurately represent the entire black community. Senator Boxer was entirely justified in bringing up other national and regional organizations representing African Americans whose opinions are opposed to what Alford was saying – specifically, that the African American community will by and large benefit from strong federal climate action.

Alford made himself appear ridiculous at multiple points – citing a Charles River Associates paper (I’ve looked at them before, they are transparently ideological in their “studies”), claiming he doesn’t know what a green job is and hasn’t seen any evidence of them. This man made a laughing stock of himself, and Republicans looked ridiculous trying to appear like they care about minority and low-income communities.

That is what is significant, IMO.

One of the nastiest tricks of the network of conservative foundations such as the Scaife and Bradley foundations and also of ExxonMobil is the funding of a small stable of extremely conservative people of color, that they can trot out, as “secret weapons” in situations like this, I think.

Poor Barbara Boxer. Bless her heart. She’s doing it for her kids and grandkids, putting up with the Republican tactics like making long opening statements and then disappearing before the witnesses have a chance to counter their mostly deliberately falsified talking points.

These Senators on the Republican opposition are in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries, IMO. That seems the only reasonable explanation for their unreasonable opposition to the bill.

ExxonMobil wants to drill for the 90 billion barrels of oil under our current polar icecap. They are blind to the ice/albedo feedback, and contribution of methane from thawing permafrost leading to runaway global heating and a methane catastrophe.

From the oil industry dominated Council on Foreign Relations Scott Borgerson:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/ 63222/ scott-g-borgerson/ arctic-meltdown

Summary —

Thanks to global warming, the Arctic icecap is rapidly melting, opening up access to massive natural resources and creating shipping shortcuts that could save billions of dollars a year. But there are currently no clear rules governing this economically and strategically vital region. Unless Washington leads the way toward a multilateral diplomatic solution, the Arctic could descend into armed conflict.

It is no longer a matter of if, but when, the Arctic Ocean will open to regular marine transportation and exploration of its lucrative natural-resource deposits.

All of their rhetoric about how bad Waxman/Markey is is B.S.

They, and their Senate minions, want the Arctic to melt. They are willing to risk all of our lives, and the future of the biosphere itself, for oil and other Arctic “resources”.

We are already being subjected to a very risky deliberate geoengineering scheme of deliberately melting the Arctic due to business as usual by the energy companies, who seem to be blind to the possibility that they may be destroying the biosphere itself out of naked greed.

Unless there is some more sinister negative population growth or geopolitical gamesmanship going on here.

“We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? Not very long.”

–Michael Steele on 6 March 2009

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 03/ 20/ michael-steele-we-are-not-warming/