Clean Energy

 Cross-posted from The Huffington Post

The Weekly Standard ran a cover story this week called, "In Denial: The Meltdown of the Climate Campaign." Despite the cute play on words about who is denying what, the article got it all wrong. Climate change legislation is not dead--not as long as publications like this keep putting it on its cover.

As one experienced senator recently told an NRDC trustee: "I have never seen an important piece of legislation get passed that wasn't declared dead several times before."

The League of Conservation Voters named Roy Blunt to their "Dirty Dozen" list and launched BigOilBlunt.com today to call attention to his "abysmal" lifetime LCV environmental score.  From the website: 

How did Big Oil Blunt earn this dubious distinction?

• By voting against 35,000 clean energy jobs for Missouri… three times (twice in committee and once the House floor).
• By taking more than $1 million in campaign cash from Big Oil and energy special interests.
• By voting to maintain tax breaks and subsidies for polluting corporations while Missourians paid record prices at the pump.

Mike Carey, president of the American Council for Affordable and Reliable Energy, was on KMOX's Hancock & Kelleyshow last week to talk about new billboards his organization is financing in the St. Louis area.  The American Council for Affordable and Reliable Energy is a Washington, D.C.-based group financed by coal companies created to protect companies' ability to pollute at their current unsustainable levels.

In the interview, Carey was unable to provide the name of a single funder or supporter unconnected to the coal industry, and struggled to explain why his organization was not running similar ads in any other areas of the country. And just in case you thought the ads weren't political in nature, Carey admitted on air that his organization has only tried to purchase ads in one other Congressional district in the country: Arkansas's Second.  But when Democratic Congressman Vic Snyder announced that his retirement in January, Carey and ACARE lost interest.

Carey was last seen in St. Louis at the November 2009 "Tea Party" as a keynote speaker, along with the recently-arrested James O’Keefe.  The St. Louis Tea Party wrote at the time that Carey created his organization last year "when he saw that misinformation and lies were beginning to shape the political landscape on coal and global warming." Before serving as president of the ACARE, Carey was president of the Ohio Coal Association.

 I grew up in the rural parts of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, two relatively conservative areas. Most of my friends and family are tried-and-true Republicans so it was assumed that I would follow suit. When I started working for a Democratic Congressman in college, one very prominent male figure in my family explained the oddity with a shrug (channeling Churchill) saying "If you are a Republican when you are in college, you have no heart. But if you are a Democrat when you are older, you have no mind."

 This is a critical week in our nation’s fight to pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation, and Missourians must demand swift and bold action from our elected representatives.

Last summer, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which was admirable for its establishment of an economy-wide cap on carbon dioxide emissions and provisions for job creation across the manufacturing, transportation, research and development, and weatherization sectors. 

Two weeks ago, BP America, Caterpillar Inc. and ConocoPhillips decided not to renew their membership in the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), an alliance of major businesses and environmental groups calling for federal regulation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, there have been some wild assertions about the health of the movement for clean energy in America. A lot of people are looking at this like tea leaves, and trying to figure out what it means, so here's my reading.

Businesses in America are realizing that a clean energy economy is no longer a dream or a goal - it is a requirement. Businesses have a choice between obstinately clinging to the fossil economy (already dead) or reading the writing on the wall and getting behind the clean energy movement. Thousands of businesses and organizations across the country get it:

 Last week, two conservative Republican Senators, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and John Barrasso of Wyoming, called for an independent probe of the IPCC -- the international scientific body that summarizes the latest climate science -- and asked the Senate to halt all climate action until that happens.

The Pew Project on National Security, Energy and Climate released a great video yesterday with military perspectives on clean energy, climate change and national security. 

Via Show Me Progress, the Alliance for Climate Protection and the Climate Protection Action Fund have a cool new ad campaign featuring video messages submitted by Missourians calling for meaningful clean energy and green jobs legislation.   Here's one of several ads:

So, he needs money to stop himself? Here is an email I got from his campaign:

VoteVets.org is launching a new ad campaign targeting Roy Blunt's opposition to clean energy and jobs legislation that would reduce American dependence on foreign oil.  The ads will be running St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbia and Springfield, a spokesman tells the Post-Dispatch.

As we all drink our morning coffee and digest what this latest change-up means for the Senate, let me be the first to say - I continue to be hopeful that the Senate will take action on climate change.

The signs of momentum for a clean energy and climate bill outweigh any signs that come from the Massachusetts special election.

Take, for example, that this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reiterated that he wants to pass the bill this spring, and that the bill has the tri-partisan support of Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman.

In a little more than 6 weeks, 1221 businesses have called for strong action on climate viaAmerican Businesses for Clean Energy.

Roy Blunt in today's News-Leader:

Before addressing the attacks on me that were obviously designed to help the liberal candidate in the U.S. Senate race, permit me to make a general point about the economic and energy policies of the one-party Congress directed by Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

If the League of Conservation Voters' "Stain" ad is "obviously designed to help" Robin Carnahan's Senate campaign, then Roy Blunt's response mail piece was "obviously designed" to help him in the U.S. Senate race. 

Obviously.

Jim Lee, who first wrote about Roy Blunt's controversial taxpayer-financed mail piece last week on his BusPlunge blog, follows up today in the News-Leader's 'Roses & Thorns' section:

A THORN: To Roy Blunt for abusing his congressional franking privileges by sending a public document labeled official business that was "prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense" to selected constituents. It was nothing more than a thinly disguised piece of campaign literature. You seemed pretty defensive in the piece, congressman, did it hit a little too close to home?