If you want to help keep the Vote Vets ad on the air, click here.

And this is the new LCV ad to “stop Big Oil’s bid to kill clean energy legislation”:

If you want to help LCV put that ad on the air, click here.

How lame are the GOP’s delaying tactics on the climate bill? Even the Washington Post’s editors — no friend of climate action or clean energy — criticized them today in piece titled, “Unhelpful atmosphere,” pointing out that “GOP members want the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to perform a series of modeling runs that would be more extensive than those it has done on similar legislation” and “EPA Associate Administrator David McIntosh said Tuesday that the differences [between the House and Senate bill] wouldn’t even show up in the agency’s computer modeling, leaving little reason to conduct a completely new analysis before committee work commences.”  The editorial noted, “Draft texts of Kerry-Boxer have been publicly available since the end of September, and a more complete version has been out for more than a week. The GOP should be ready to offer amendments, particularly after Ms. Boxer extended the deadline for their submission to Tuesday evening….  Ms. Boxer brought Mr. McIntosh into the room Tuesday to answer just such questions. It would have been constructive if GOP committee members had been there to question him.”

Guest blogger Noreen Nielson, Director for Energy Communications at Progressive Media, shares some further insight on the GOP’s delaying tactics.

As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee began meeting for markup yesterday on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, only one Republican member, Sen. George Voinovich, bothered to show. The boycott, carried out by the six other minority members, suggests they are joining in lockstep with the rest of the Party of NO to block any reform that will help rebuild our economy – from clean energy to health care to financial reform.

During this morning’s meeting, Sen. Voinovich, speaking on behalf of the minority party, said they “sincerely” wanted to work with Democrats to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Act. Yet past statements indicate otherwise. (Note: All the below statements were made before the Senate bill was even introduced.)

• Sen. Inhofe’s prediction for the Senate bill following the passage of Waxman-Markey: “It’s dead in the water.’’ [June 30, 2009]

• Sen. David Vitter: “I’m predicting — at least as we speak now — that we can kill any major climate change legislation on the Senate floor…” [July 7, 2009]

• He continued: “I’m very hopeful we’ll be able to block any major climate change bill like that which came out of the House on the Senate floor.”

• Sen. Bond: “I think certain people pushing this bill see me as one of the biggest thorns in their sides. If they don’t now, they will.” [September 28, 2009]

• Sen. Barrasso [and Sen. Inhofe]: “[W]orking together to make sure the Senate doesn’t pass a bill that to me is going to cripple our economy and raise taxes on American families.” [July 15, 2009]

Voinovich then went on to discuss how the inadequate analysis of the Clean Energy Jobs Act was the reason for the blockade – providing nothing more than a straw man excuse. The EPA, the Obama administration and others have consistently said the updated EPA analysis provides an accurate portrait of the Senate bill’s projected impacts.

According to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s testimony before the Senate Environment Committee, the two bills were so similar that they will likely have the same impact on costs, energy use, and other variables.

“Earlier this year, EPA ran the major provisions of the House clean-energy legislation through several economic computer models. When it comes to the specifications that the models can detect, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act is very similar to the House legislation. Nevertheless, EPA has examined the ways in which the Senate bill is different and determined which of the conclusions reached about the House-passed bill can confidently be said to apply to the Senate bill as well.”

The House-passed bill mentioned above that can “confidently be applied to the Senate bill” received extensive evaluation and scrutiny from a number of government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Congressional Budget Office, and Energy Information Administration. And the Senate Committee held numerous comprehensive legislative hearings on the bill last week which included 54 expert witnesses in nine panels.

Moreover as the EPA’s David McIntosh stressed during today’s meeting, re-running the models every time a bill is amended or tweaked is costly and unnecessary. It costs taxpayers at least $135,000 every time the analysis models are re-run and the models are “not designed to detect fine-grain details,” meaning another analysis right now would result in “vanishingly small” differences from the currently available modeling.

Sen. Boxer said this morning that Sen. Reid has promised a full five week EPA analysis of the final merged bill before floor consideration.

So the question is: What is the real motivation behind the Republican members blocking clean energy reform? The costs of doing nothing to combat climate change greatly outweigh the costs of acting now. We’re spending $1 billion a day on foreign oil, money that could instead be invested here at home to help create 1.7 million new jobs, increase our security and lessen our pollution.

Perhaps it has something to do with the $3,507,321the seven minority members of the EPW Committee have received from Big Oil, along with millions more from utilities, mining and the national resource sector. This is in addition to the billions Big Oil has spent on lobbying, astroturfing and smear campaigns. Exxon Mobil alone spent $7.2 million on lobbying in the last quarter – more than the total of the entire alternative energy sector.

*All data accessed today from www.opensecrets.org

Well, Senator, not only does Glenn Beck say “I’m going to stick with the angry people,” Mike Pence, chair of House GOP Conference, sides with Beck (see here).

If you need it further proof that there’s a growing purity test for GOP nominees for national office, that the angry people are taking over the party, consider this bombshell from New York:

A moderate Republican whose candidacy for an upstate New York Congressional seat had set off a storm of national conservative opposition, abruptly withdrew on Saturday, emboldening the right at a time when the Republican Party is enmeshed in a debate over how to rebuild itself.

The candidate, Dede Scozzafava, said she was suspending her campaign in the face of collapsing support and evidence that she was heading for a loss in a three-way race on Tuesday involving Douglas L. Hoffman, running on the Conservative Party line, and Bill Owens, a Democrat.

As TP reports, “big tent” and “establishment” Republicans — such as Gingrich, the RNC, and the NRCC — backed Scozzafava whereas “purists” — such as Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, and Bill Kristol — backed Hoffman.

What test did Scozzafava fail:

Ms. Scozzafava had been under siege from conservative leaders because she supports gay rights and abortion rights and was considered too liberal on various fiscal issues.

Hoffman, on the other hand, is one angry guy, as this NY Post op-ed he wrote last week makes clear:

Taxes, the deficit, red tape and regulation are breaking the back of the nation, mortgaging the future of our children and grandchildren.

Americans have had enough and are vocalizing their anger in town hall meetings and on the streets of Washington. They are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore!

That’s why I am running. I am one of them!

Yes, he’s one of the angry few.

This is the political story of the week with huge implications for climate action and the entire progressive agenda.  In the very short term, it may make it difficult for some “moderate” Republicans to engage in a serious bipartisan effort to preserve a livable climate and end our dependence on oil (see “Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 3: RNC Chair Steele withdraws support for Rep. Kirk over his vote on climate and clean energy bill“).

The pressure on Lindsey Graham will no doubt continue to be enormous, though at least in his case he’s not up for reelection until 2014.  Fortunately the few remaining moderate environmental voices in the Republican Party are speaking out for him (see here).  If you want to thank Lindsey Graham for reaching across the aisle to address the climate problem (click here).

In the medium term, however, the GOP’s internecine warfare is almost certainly a good thing for progressives, as even Newt Gingrich understands:

Yet other prominent Republicans expressed concern that Ms. Scozzafava’s decision seemed likely to unsettle the party going into next year’s midterm elections, raising the prospect of more primaries against Republican candidates that they deem too moderate. Party leaders — including Mr. Steele and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker — had argued that local parties should be permitted to pick candidates that most closely mirror the sentiments of the district, even if those candidates vary from Republican orthodoxy on some issues.

“This makes life more complicated from the standpoint of this: If we get into a cycle where every time one side loses, they run a third-party candidate, we’ll make Pelosi speaker for life and guarantee Obama’s re-election,” said Mr. Gingrich, who had endorsed Ms. Scozzafava.

“I felt very deeply that when you have all 11 county chairman voting for someone, that it wasn’t appropriate for me to come in and render my judgment,” he said. “I think we are going to get into a very difficult environment around the country if suddenly conservative leaders decide they are going to anoint people without regard to local primaries and local choices.”

Ms. Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman and former small-town mayor, was nominated this summer by Republican county leaders who quickly found their choice second-guessed by the party’s conservative wing. Many officials in the district, a vast expanse from the Vermont border through the Adirondacks to Lake Ontario, were deeply resentful of the outside involvement.

“They’re trying to bang 435 elections across the United States into the same mold,” said James Ellis, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. “It’s a detriment to democracy.”

Yes, it’s true, that the effort by Rahm Emanuel and other Democratic leaders to build up a working majority by reaching out to moderate candidates means that progressives don’t always get precisely the legislation they’d write by themselves.  But the point is, without a working majority, you don’t get to write legislation at all, and you’d certainly never end up with the biggest increase in clean energy funding in U.S. history — bigger than all of the previous increases combined.

If Obama is a two-term president and we can maintain working majorities throughout both terms — then we have a serious chance of making the transition to a clean energy economy and averting catastrophic global warming.  Thanks to the angry conservatives, that outcome just became a bit more likely.

The US manufacturing sector has lost over 5.1 million jobs in the last 10 years. Output and investment per GDP has fallen consistently and imports have risen sharply. (See charts below) This is not the time to implement risky unproven climate policy. The US economy cannot afford to lose any more jobs or shutdown facilities. Approximately 40,000 manufacturing plants have closed during the seven years ending in 2008. We have lost eleven industries that we were once dominant since the late 1990s. By late 2008, the US trade deficit with China alone was running at close to $1 billion per day, amounting to more than $90 per month or more than $1100 per year for every American.

That’s from one of the strangest pieces of testimony you’re ever going to see — by Paul Cicio, Executive Director, Industrial Energy Consumers of America.

Cicio was the GOP witness at the landmark hearings for the Senate climate and clean energy jobs bill  today.  He seemed to think that a strong argument against the clean energy bill was that the U.S. manufacturing sector has been devastated by eight years of conservative rule.  I have argued many times that conservative do-nothing energy and economic policies led to sharp increases in energy costs (see “Senate GOP propose 25% ‘Do-Nothing’ energy tax on Americans“) and sharp decreases in US competitiveness (see “Invented here, sold there”).

But Cicio has the most (unintentionally) damning set of slides I’ve ever seen, a few of which I’m going to reproduce here since I’m sure progressives will want to use them in explaining why we must never go back to the Bush-Cheney policies.  The figure above shows how conservative policies have killed manufacturing jobs.   And lest you think that it is purely a coincidence that the manufacturing sector has been slammed by Bush-Cheney, Cicio provides this jaw-dropping figure which goes back another decade:

Invesment in industrial equipment recovered under the Clinton administration and stayed high for most of it, but simply collapsed under the Bush-Cheney administration and stayed low.  Looks like those tax cuts for the rich didn’t do very much other than enrich the rich.  The data in green is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but that amusing “trend line” is apparently from the Industrial Energy Consumers of America.

Here’s one more figure:

Yes, imports of manufactured goods soared, especially after 2003.  Again, thank you Bush-Cheney and a conservative Congress.

Sen. Boxer herself turned Cicio’s argument on its head and said that she agreed completely with his historical analysis, but disagreed completely with his conclusion.  The answer was not to continue these devastating do-nothing conservative policies, but to pass the clean energy jobs bill.

When we last left Sen. Graham (R-SC), far-right-wingers were, as predicted, going after him for his breakthrough partnership with John Kerry (D-MA).   Teabaggers were trying to “flush” Graham out of the GOP, calling him “traitor” and “RINO” and “wussypants, girly-man, half-a-sissy.”  Graham responded, “We’re not going to be the party of angry white guys.”  Now Beck has responded to Graham, as Think Progress explains:

Graham has previously dismissed Beck as an entertainer who is “aligned with cynicism.” “Only in America can you make that much money crying,” Graham said of Beck. When Beck responded by saying Graham’s criticism was the “highest honor” he’s ever received, Graham reiterated his view that Beck “doesn’t represent the Republican Party.”

Thursday, Beck opened his show with a diatribe against Graham.

Castigating the South Carolina Republican for saying that “we’re not going to be a party of angry white guys,” Beck retorted, “You gotta ask yourself, is the problem the angry white guys or is it the Obama-lite guys?” “Lindsey Graham, come on man, come on seriously, that’s it?” Beck continued. “Obama-lite! … It’s corrupt politicians that have been there too long telling us these things.”

As is his routine, Beck employed some bizarre props and metaphors to highlight his point.   He likened Lindsey Graham to a Diet Coke version of the real Coke and a non-alcoholic version of beer. “I’m drinking alcohol for the buzz,” Beck said, explaining that most consumers want the “real thing” and not a fake substitute. After meandering through his comedy performance, Beck concluded that he doesn’t want to be associated with a Republican Party if it includes Graham:

So thanks for the invite Lindsey, I appreciate it. Thanks for the gumball Mickey. And thanks for the hope and change, Barack. But I think I’m going to stick with the angry people over there. Because they’re only angry about you.

Then, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), the chairman of the House Republican Conference, defended Glenn Beck’s influence over the Republican Party. It’s “hogwash” to say Beck and Rush Limbaugh are only speaking for a small number of Americans, Pence said. He added, “So to my friends in the so-called ‘mainstream media’ I say, ‘conservative talk show hosts may not speak for everybody but they speak for more Americans than you do.’”

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If there is any doubt that Washington D.C. is where hyperbole, distortions and silly arguments come home to roost, that doubt disappears as we listen to congressional debate on climate and energy policy. Even some of the statements coming from the Obama team lately inspire a loud “Huh?”

Jon Stewart would win a Nobel Prize for Truth, if one were awarded for diligence in revealing how some members of Congress, not to mention the conservative chattering classes, regularly insult the American people’s intelligence. Unfortunately, he’s only on the air 30 minutes each day.

Also unfortunately – and here’s an inconvenient truth — not all of the American people are informed enough about climate change to know their intelligence has been insulted.  It’s a complicated topic made even more complicated by bogus arguments [and by a status quo media more focused on celebrity funerals and celebrity comments (e.g. Sarah Palin) -- JR].

So, in the spirit of improving the quality of the debate  and with unapologetic imitation of another political satirist on night-time TV, here are today’s Top 10 Bogus Statements (B.S.) in the climate debate, each followed by a reality check.

No. 10 BS: The United States can’t make a firm commitment to reduce greenhouse gases until China and India do.

Reality check: With this statement, international climate negotiations assume the stature of an Alphonse and Gaston routine. The modern version – “I’m not going to do the right thing until you do the right thing” – would be comical if it weren’t so childish and potentially tragic.

Why shouldn’t the United States make a hard commitment to cut carbon before China, India and other developing nations do? We’re responsible for most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today. We have been emitting them with abandon for generations.

On the other hand, many developing nations such as China and India are attempting to pull millions of their people from poverty.  I don’t believe they deny their obligation to help solve the climate problem. In fact, many of China’s clean energy goals are more aggressive than ours. But they want the leeway to help their people approach the standard of living we enjoy in the U.S.

What the hell: Let’s be big about this and agree to go first. If we’re worried about a trade disadvantage with countries that don’t have carbon regulation, then let’s institute a “border adjustment” – the price those countries should pay for not agreeing to hard targets.

No. 9 BS: Coal will be with us for a long time to come. In a recent interview with Grist, the chief White House environmental advisor, Nancy Sutley of the Council on Environmental Quality, said: “[C]learly coal is a part of our energy mix now and it’s likely to be so in the future… [E]ven if we were to stop using coal tomorrow, it’s used around the world and we have to deal with its environmental impacts.”

Reality check: Of course we must deal with coal’s environmental problems, but the best way to do that is to stop using it. Accepting that coal is part of our future is not the policy that motivates us to find substitutes. And whether we can deal with its environmental impacts is open to question. We don’t yet have and may never find a cost-effective and safe way to permanently sequester huge amounts of carbon dioxide from coal.  If the technology ever is perfected, it will significantly increase the price of electric power from coal, while the price of power from renewable resources is coming down.

Then there’s mountain top removal and all the other environmental damages and carbon emissions associated with extraction and production (See No. 7 below). Let’s shoot for an international climate agreement that sets specific near-term targets for phasing out coal power, along with an aggressive program to replace it worldwide first with natural gas, then with renewable low-carbon fuels.

No. 8 BS: The answer to energy security is to produce more oil, coal and gas here at home. We have ample supplies. The “drill baby drill” policy was a prominent plank at the Republican National Convention and it’s still being used, most recently by Wyoming Republican John Barrasso in a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Reality check: The real question today isn’t how much carbon we have left in the ground; it’s how much we can put into the sky.  The answer is: No more. As the former Arab oil minister said, “The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.” It ended because we found a better way to do things. There is no mandate that we must extract all the fossil fuels we find and burn all the fossil fuels we can extract. However, there is definitely a limit on how much we can burn – and we have reached it.

No. 7 BS: We are powerless to stop mountain top removal. This was EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s comment in an interview with Grist. Asked about the environmental terrorism being inflicted on the people of Appalachia as coal companies blow up mountains, Jackson responded: “[T]he current state of the law and regs (regulations) doesn’t allow us to just change the law and the regs to say that this process will no longer be allowable. There’s no way to do that under current law.”

Reality check: As those who have been in government know, there’s more than one way to save a mountain. A creative administration can always find a way to lead when it wants to.

Consider the two Roosevelts. According to an analysis of executive authority commissioned by the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), President Teddy Roosevelt believed that “as a steward of the people he had the power to do whatever was necessary to promote the public interest so long as it had not been forbidden by the Constitution or Congress.”  In other words, when it came to doing the right thing, he was willing to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

President Franklin Roosevelt had an even more expansive philosophy of executive authority when the public interest was at stake: “In the event that Congress should fail to act, and act adequately, I shall accept the responsibility, and I will act.” In other words, if there is a leadership void he was willing to fill it.

As of a year ago, there were 96 statutory provisions in the U.S. Code that explicitly address climate change, global warming or greenhouse gases. They spanned 11 titles of the U.S. Code including agriculture, commerce, labor, public health, conservation and transportation. In addition, executive authority to protect the environment can be found in wide range of legislation, including the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

With all of those laws in place, surely the Administration can find a way to ban mountain top removal. If it can’t, it should ask Congress for explicit authority.  If the Administration is reluctant to anger the coal industry while trying to get a climate bill through Congress, then some harder bargaining is in order. The federal government already gives huge handouts to the coal industry, including large public subsidies to develop carbon capture and sequestration technology. That assistance should come at a price: an immediate ban on mountaintop removal.

No. 6 BS: Putting a price on carbon is a “national energy tax.” Conservatives make this argument ad nauseam.

Reality check: As much as some conservatives enjoy applying the t-word to every idea they don’t like, carbon pricing is not a tax. It is a policy that brings the price of fossil fuels closer to their true costs to society. That’s called “correcting market signals”. It makes energy markets work better. It puts the magic back into the “magic of the marketplace”. When was it that conservatives became enemies of an efficient market?

If fiscal conservatives would like to make the marketplace even more efficient, they should repeal all subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy (subsidizing mature industries is corporate welfare) and give the money back to consumers to help them adjust to carbon pricing.

No. 5 BS:  By increasing energy prices, cap and trade will hurt consumers in the depths of a recession.

Reality check: The cap-and-trade regime in Waxman-Markey would not take effect until 2012. If we are still in the depths of a recession three years from now, our problems are much bigger than a few-cent increase in the cost of oil and coal. Besides, the bill contains ample protection for consumers, including those least able to afford higher energy prices.

No. 4 BS: Consumers will pay thousands of dollars more for energy every year. This reprises an argument that worked beautifully for the oil industry a few years ago in California, where it used the false threat of higher gasoline prices to turn public opinion against a proposed surcharge on oil companies (the referendum specifically prohibited oil companies from passing the surcharge on to consumers).

Reality check: The Environmental Protection Agency and the Congressional Budget Office have concluded that the average increase in energy prices would be no more than 48 cents a day per household.

Even that estimate probably is too high.  With or without carbon pricing, the real cost of fossil fuels will increase in the years ahead as easy supplies disappear, global competition increases, health problems increase and environmental regulations are properly enforced.

A good climate bill will help consumers avoid these costs by shifting to greater energy efficiency and clean energy technologies. We haven’t yet begun to tap the potential of energy efficiency in our homes, factories, vehicles and power systems. We haven’t begun to take advantage of the renewable energy technologies and designs that already are cost-effective, ranging from ground-source heat pumps to passive solar buildings. And the more we develop and use solar power, wind power and other emerging renewable energy technologies around the world, the cheaper they will become.

No. 3 BS: All of this spending on a “new energy economy” is placing a terrible debt on our children.

Reality check: The far more serious burden we leaving to our children is carbon debt. We can repay public debt, particularly if we have a national economy that isn’t made bankrupt by natural disasters, drought, disease and the other predicted consequences of climate change.  We cannot repay the carbon debt. The negative impact of carbon debt goes far beyond money, to the core of our security and quality of life. Our children will suffer from its burdens for hundreds, even thousands, of years.

No 2 BS:  Climate action is a “growth-killing millstone.” A Republican used this phrase  in the House debate over Waxman-Markey.

Reality check: Let’s take a close look at what’s really killing growth. Consider General Motors. It refused to plan for the future. It sought short-term profits by pushing inefficient vehicles that contribute to air pollution, climate change, oil addiction and, ultimately, higher oil prices.

There is a lesson here. The real “growth-killing millstone” is greed and short-sightedness. Our economy faces the same fate as GM if we don’t respond to the new realities of the new century.

The modern engine of business and jobs is a green engine. Clean energy technologies will soon offer the largest market the world has ever seen. The longer we deny that reality, the more we will fall behind in the international competition for industries and jobs.

And the No. 1 bogus statement in the climate debate today: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a choice between “liberty or tyranny.” This came from another House Republican during floor debate.

Reality check: The Constitution of the United States does not guarantee freedom to pollute or to endanger public health and safety or to threatened humankind with greater disease, disaster and dislocation due to global warming. The Declaration of Independence does not tell us that our unalienable rights include life, liberty and the pursuit of Hummers. Clean energy is no more a threat to our freedom than clean air or clean water.

If we want to end tyranny, then let’s liberate ourselves from extortion by oil producing nations, the prospect of losing our children in more resource wars, and the fate that awaits us if we continue sacrificing our security and long-term well-being to prolong an obsolete carbon economy. The tyranny that threatens our freedom is the effort by Big Oil and King Coal , and all those who carry water for them, or delay our inevitable transition to a clean energy economy.

President Obama showed empathy in a recent New York Times interview for those Democrats in the House who voted against Waxman-Markey to protect their reelection prospects. But in the same interview, he also said:

If you want to avoid potential political liabilities then you just do nothing around here in Washington. That seems to be the working theory. That’s what’s happened over the last several decades when it comes to energy. And my approach has been to say that rather than stand pat with a status quo that we know isn’t working, that we need to reach out and shape our future.

Reality check: Right on, Mr. President. Now you’re onto it. As David Hawkins said at the conclusion of his Senate testimony on Waxman-Markey:

There is a story about the advice a Chinese gardener gave to his employer. When the landowner asked, “what is the best time to plant an oak tree,” the gardener replied, “100 years ago but the second best time is today.” For climate protection perhaps the best time to enact a comprehensive program to fight global warming was thirty years ago but the second best time is this year.

– Bill Becker

Oil companies, electric utilities and the coal industry have poured more than $250,000 this year into the coffers of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House fundraising arm that has played a lead role in attacking Democrats who supported climate legislation.

All told, political action committees for various fossil fuel industries have given at least $280,000 to NRCC through the end of June, according to quarterly finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission….

In the 2008 campaign cycle, the oil and gas industry and utilities combined to contribute more than $1.6 million to NRCC, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

So reports Greenwire (subs. req’d) today.  See also “Follow the money: Global warming polluters pay to undermine Waxman-Markey clean energy bill.”

And don’t get me started how stupid the natural gas industry is for using their money to stop a climate bill that will be a boon to their industry (see Game changer 4: Tim Wirth delivers must-read “extreme words” to natural gas execs: “You don’t have the right to sit back and do nothing” about climate change. “We are in very deep trouble, the edge of catastrophe, and you can help”).  I’ll blog on that shortly.

Here are more details on this dirty money, and how the GOP is spending it:

Last month alone — the same month that the House voted on a comprehensive energy bill — the industry contributed more than $54,000 to the NRCC war chest, mainly through a handful of large contributions from high-profile energy interests. Among them: $15,000 from Oklahoma-based Devon Energy Corp., $15,000 from Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc. and another $15,000 from Atlanta-based Southern Co.

Those sums reflect only donations given directly from the industry or its advocacy groups and do not include donations from industry officials.

Campaign finance records show that in June, NRCC received a handful of large contributions from individuals linked to the energy industry, including $15,000 from the chairman emeritus and director of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and $5,000 from the senior vice president of government relations at Peabody Energy Corp.

The energy industry traditionally has been a major contributor to the Republican Party, particularly to NRCC. But the recent contributions come as Congress debates climate and energy legislation that will have major ramifications for all corners of the energy sector….

Meanwhile, NRCC this cycle has launched a series of attacks focused on moderate Democrats’ votes on energy legislation.

Just days after the House narrowly approved the Waxman-Markey climate bill, NRCC launched a series of radio ads, robo-calls and a television spot criticizing moderate Democrats for voting in favor of the legislation. House Republican leaders have also said that they view the energy vote as particularly damaging to the Democratic majority and anticipate that it will help them win back a number of seats in 2010.

Money can’t buy you love.  But I guess it can buy you hate — see House GOP pledge to fight all action on climate. “Why do conservatives hate your children?”

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) plans to unveil a major global warming bill immediately after Congress returns from the August recess, she said today….

Boxer predicted she would have at least one Republican co-sponsor on her bill, though she would not name names.

So E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reported last night.  I see this delay as a sign that she is serious about trying to craft a bill that can garner 60 votes, which will not be easy (see “Epic Battle 3“).  I don’t think the Republican cosponsor will be someone from the committee.  Maybe it will be one of the two Maine senators.

How will all the different pieces by different committees be reconciled?

Six different Senate committees are writing pieces of the climate and energy bill, ultimately leaving it to Democratic leadership to resolve differences, Boxer said, noting that she expects panels to overlap in certain areas. “I think all the committees will put in their opinion on the areas where they think they have some jurisdiction, and then Senator [Harry] Reid will take what he feels are the best parts of the bill,” she said.

Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) today acknowledged plans for a markup on his pieces of the climate bill. “It is getting in shape,” Rockefeller said. “But as everything with the climate bill, we’re way — we’re still forming, talking, discussing, options are open. Nothing is final. At all.”

Other committees with a stake in the climate bill are Agriculture, Energy and Natural Resources, Finance, and Foreign Relations. The Agriculture and Foreign Relations panels have yet to signal for sure whether they will offer language through a formal markup. Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has already passed legislation that includes a nationwide renewable electricity standard and a raft of other energy incentives, including a provision that could bring oil and gas rigs closer to Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said last week that he plans to mark up sections of the bill dealing with emission allowances and international trade.

Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate’s majority leader, has set a Sept. 28 deadline for the committees to complete any legislation.

One last note to E&E News:

Also today, one of President Obama’s top legislative aides, Jay Heimbach, briefed about a dozen Senate Democrats on the White House’s strategy for handling the climate issue.

Outreach to Senate moderates will be critical if Reid and the Obama administration can pull off a victory on the climate bill, for which winning 60 votes requires compromises across regional and party lines.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), one of the fence sitters on the global warming bill, said he has been hearing from Senate advocates during floor votes, the beginning of what he expects will be a larger lobbying campaign as the debate ripens. “They’re talking about the right thing when they recognize that anything that increases utility rates has to be looked at to see if there’s a way to avoid that result,” Nelson said. “I think that’s the right subject. I don’t know if they can accomplish their objective.”

Nelson is about as much of a fence sitter as Boxer is.  Nate Silver gives him a “probability of yes vote” near 10%.  Heck, even E&E’s own ranking system lists him as “probably no” — not in the fence sitter category.

So I really don’t think quotes from him are terribly indicative of anything.

You don’t like clean energy.  You don’t mind publishing unfact-checked articles again and again.  And if somebody wants to publish an op-ed attacking climate legislation focused exclusively on the cost of action while never actually discussing climate change or the cost of inaction, hey, why not?  It’s not like there’s a major study by a leading journalist criticizing the entire media for such biased coverage (see “The press misrepresented the economic debate over cap and trade….  The press allowed opponents of climate action to replicate the false debate over climate science in the realm of climate economics.  The press … sometimes assumed that doing nothing about climate change carried no cost“).

But running a piece by Sarah Palin, “The ‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End” that is devoid of original arguments and simply repeats tired myths is a new low.  As Art Brodsky writes in HuffingtonPost,

Is there any sane person left over in the Post management?

Palin is devoid of knowledge on climate (see “McCain VP Palin is a global-warming-denying, Pat Buchanan acolyte” and Palin on CBS: “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.”).  As for energy, simply being a (quitting) governor of an energy state doesn’t make her an expert any more than being able to see Russia from a tall building in Alaska makes her a foreign-policy expert.  Indeed, Palin does not even know basics of Alaska energy.

In fact, Palin is so ignorant of energy, so practiced at repeating falsehoods, that in September, during the campaign, the Washington Post itself gave her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of “Four Pinocchios” for continuing to “to peddle bogus [energy] statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.”

Amazingly, the Post has published an op-ed on climate change legislation by the governor of the state that is currently the most battered by climate change, without any discussion of climate change or its impacts on that state.  Heck even Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski pointed out in a May 2006 speech on climate change that the tremendous recent warming had opened the door to the “voracious spruce bark beetle,” which devastated over three million acres in Alaska, “providing dry fuel for outbreaks of enormous wild fires.”

In one of the most unintentionally humorous pieces of crap the Post has ever subjected on the public, Palin states:

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

Seriously.

[Silver lining note:  In a perverse way, perhaps we should be grateful to the Post.  Probably the best thing that could happen to climate legislation is if Palin becomes the lead spokesperson attacking it.]

Let’s set aside the rather obvious fact that the bill that doesn’t even start imposing a cap until 2012, so it’s absurd to assert it will “undermine our recovery over the short term.”  The reverse case is, in fact, stronger — see Nobelist Krugman attacks “junk economics”: Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities.”

Moreover, even in 2012, the total value of the allowances will be under $50 billion (in a $15 trillion economy) and all that money is going to be returned to the economy, so again, like all economic models show, the bill will have no significant negative impact.

No, what’s so laughable about this piece is that Palin wouldn’t even be considered by the Post as a suitable candidate for an op-ed on the climate bill if it weren’t for the national media’s focus on personality-driven politics.  As Art Brodsky writes in HuffingtonPost:

With all the talk about how newspapers are dying, can we add one more reason to the list of horribles — suicide. The “salon” scandal still hasn’t died down, not after the paper’s ombudsman published his scathing critique calling the intimate dinners at publisher Katharine Weymouth’s house an “ethical lapse of monumental proportions.” The damage to the credibility of the paper can’t be measure. How often does a publisher print a mea culpa as Weymouth did?

How does the Post regain its equilibrium? How does it recover not only from this disaster but also from the dismissal of popular blogger Dan Froomkin, whose sacking led to great protests from the readers the Post execs didn’t think existed?

Why, by putting the soon-to-be ex-gov on the op-ed page, one of the prime places of real estate left in the newspaper world? Not to put too fine a point on it — is there any sane person left over in the Post management?

The op-ed page, despite what conservatives say, is seen by progressives as a neo-con haven, sheltering talents like Jim Hoagland and conservatives like Kathleen Parker. But Palin is another case entirely. It’s not simply that no one who saw her last two press conferences about her quitting Alaska for the bright lights of the Lower 48 believes she actually wrote the piece. Ghost-writing is a fine established art. Few politicians do their own writing.

It’s quite another to believe that she actually knows or cares sufficiently about cap-and-trade and environmental legislation to care enough to write about it for a major newspaper. And even if she does, what possible justification on Earth is there for the Post publishing her?

The only one I can think of is to “get people talking” about the Post page. To create “buzz.” Well, there’s good “buzz” and bad “buzz.” This is definitely the latter. It’s not only that Palin has no constituency to speak of. It’s not even that she has been trashed by the right, in addition to criticism by the left. She has no authority to write an article like this and the Post has no business running one.

At the least, and it’s a far stretch, a global-warming denier like Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) represents a constituency — the oil industry and the people of his state. Palin has just abandoned whatever electoral constituency she had, and now the Post is helping to establish herself in this brave new world of hers with conservative celebritydom and punditocracy.

The Lerner family, the owners of the Nationals, finally let their manager go after one too many embarrassments. It’s time for the owners of the Post to wake up and to realize that having a joke of an op-ed page is no joke.

That’s what I’ve been saying — trade Fred Hiatt (see “Memo to Washington Post: Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt just recycled a right-wing WSJ op-ed. If you won’t fire him, could you move him over to obits where he can’t hurt anyone?“).

Related Posts:

• The Washington Post launches a paranoid (and naïve) attack on the House clean energy and climate bill for promoting efficient new buildings
• George Will and WattsUpWithThat embrace a proud former shill for a man convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges
• The Washington Post op-ed page remains the home of un-fact-checked disinformation about clean energy and global warming
• Washington Post reporters take unprecedented step of contradicting columnist George Will in a news article
• The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages