Political Climate Articles

Valero campaigns against climate bill at the pump.
San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. is launching a campaign against proposals to lower carbon emissions by posting signs at its gasoline stations warning customers about the projected increase in fuel prices if the U.S. House-approved bill on carbon cap-and-trade becomes law.
The campaign begins today at all facilities owned by Valero, which has refineries and retail fuel outlets in 40 states.
The U.S. Department of Energy projects that gasoline prices could increase by 77 cents per gallon over the life of the climate-change bill if it is enacted.
The bill, sponsored by U.S. Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, was narrowly approved by the U.S. House on June 26.
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Stop Emitting Carbon Dioxide, Or Geoengineering Could Be Only Hope For Earth's Climate, Experts Warn
 ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2009) - The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geoengineering technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, the latest Royal Society report has found.
The report (published September 1, 2009 by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science) found that unless future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are much more successful than they have been so far, additional action in the form of geoengineering will be necessary if we are to cool the planet. Geoengineering technologies were found to be very likely to be technically possible and some were considered to be potentially useful to augment the continuing efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions. However, the report identified major uncertainties regarding their effectiveness, costs and environmental impacts.
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Duke Energy quits coal front group over climate bill
 The National Journal reports this morning:
UPDATE (Sept. 2, 9:44 a.m.): Duke Energy left the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy on Tuesday over differences with "influential member companies who will not support passing climate change legislation in 2009 or 2010," the company said.
The ACCCE is a coal industry front group that touts benefits of strong emissions regulations but that opposed the recent House energy and climate bill. ACCCE is the source of the funding for fraudster Bonner who put out those fake anti-Waxman-Markey letters. They have also hired top GOP voter-fraud company to run massive "grassroots" efforts to undermine climate and clean energy action. And, of course, an ACCCE flack said mountaintop removal solves ‘lack of flat space' in Appalachia.
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Workers Want Green Jobs, Not Astroturf
This week, the Made in America tour heads to Gary, Indiana, where workers will rally in support of green jobs and climate legislation. These men and women recognize that Gary's ailing steel plants can be revived by producing parts for wind turbines, hybrid car batteries, and other clean energy solutions.
This is why they are coming together to support the clean energy bill. And this is what real grassroots look like.
A new Washington Post poll shows that most Americans approve of the Obama administration's efforts to shift to clean energy. Likewise, August polling by Zogby International showed that seven in ten Americans support clean energy legislation and want to see it passed in the Senate.
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FoxNews: "Don't Exhale: EPA Expected to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Dangerous Pollutant.
Here's the opening: Don't exhale.
That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases dangerous pollutants, a move - expected in the next couple weeks - that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions.
But some skeptics say regulating carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, may be a difficult task, especially since people emit carbon dioxide with every breath.
And, no, sadly, this isn't intended to be humorous story. It's just run-of-the-mill disinformation disguised as a "straight news" story.
Interestingly - or perhaps I should say typically - FoxNews doesn't actually offer any "skeptics" who say regulating CO2 may be difficult because people exhale CO2. It was apparently just the reporter's own inane idea.
And speaking of inane, if you want to be simultaneously depressed and amused, read the comments on the article here. The first one starts:
Really? I didn't know that... What drivel. They talk to us like we are stupid.
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People won't change lifestyle for planet: straw poll
 LONDON (Reuters) - People want to save the planet but are unwilling to make radical lifestyle changes like giving up air travel or red meat to reduce the effects of climate change, a straw poll by Reuters showed.
As leaders gear up for another round of climate change talks later this month in New York, motivating people to change their lifestyles will be crucial in ensuring cuts in planet-warming greenhouse gases, experts say.
Over 40 percent of Britain's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the main greenhouse gas causing climate change, come from the energy we use at home and in traveling.
A straw poll of 15 British men and 15 British women between the ages of 25-75 in central London, showed all were willing to make small changes for the environment, such as recycling, but few would commit to more fundamental changes to behavior.
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A Bad Mix: Exposure May be "Safe" Only With One Chemical at a Time.
 Exposure to a mixture of environmental chemicals is far more harmful to male rats than exposure to the individual chemicals would predict, even when the level of each contaminant in the mixture causes no effect by itself. The results indicate that assessing the risk of chemicals one-compound-at-a-time will underestimate potential harm. People are exposed to hundreds of chemicals at a time, if not more. People could be affected by mixtures of chemicals that are currently considered "safe" based on their individual toxicities.
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Illinois adopts green building code for new homes
 Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed new legislation into law Friday creating statewide minimum energy efficiency standards for new homes.
The product of years of negotiations, House Bill 3987-the Energy Efficient Building Act-brings Illinois in line with the latest International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for new residential construction, updated automatically every three years. The Energy Efficient Building Act represented an agreement between environmental groups, architects, and Illinois homebuilders. "This bill will increase the energy efficiency standards for new and renovated homes, and ultimately reduce our carbon footprint," said Governor Quinn. "It is important here in Illinois that we make a commitment to thinking and acting green, and this important legislation will help us carry out that mission."
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Climate change: Enough science, now for the politics
 Science can prove global climate change is happening, but it won't tell us what to do about it, says professor of climate change, Mike Hulme.
Climate change raises many questions about development goals and practices. These can only be resolved through widespread social deliberation and hard political negotiation. Simply more or 'better' science won't be enough.
The idea that humans are changing the global climate system was first developed, elaborated and demonstrated by natural scientists. The scientific evidence backing this basic idea is now overwhelming, even if scientific predictions of future climate changes are still shrouded in uncertainty.
But although science is very good at revealing how things are, and suggesting what physical manifestations might follow a particular course of action, it has limited relevance and reach when deciding what should be done in the face of complex dilemmas - such as climate change.
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Bonner & Associates Coached Employees To Lie To Generate Letters to Congress
 An interesting and potentially explosive attachment was included with a letter sent to Congressional investigators by Steven R. Ross, an Akin Gump attorney working to defend his client Bonner & Associates, the D.C. public relations firm embroiled in an embarrassing scandal over forged letters sent from its offices to at least three Democratic lawmakers claiming to represent opposition to the Waxman-Markey climate and energy legislation from nine community groups.
Attached to Ross's letter, which was obtained by Talking Points Memo, is a set of "Talking points for ACCCE" distributed to the temp employees to guide their conversations with targeted groups whom they would be calling to drum up opposition to Waxman-Markey in key Congressional districts.
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Astroturf attack on democracy is intentional
 Adfero and Bonner's actions are planned and deliberate
You can't convict someone of a crime unless you can prove that the accused was acting with intent - that they did what they did on purpose. By that standard, Astroturfing specialists at the Washington, D.C., PR firms Adfero Group and Bonner & Associates have demonstrated that they are guilty, even if what they are doing is - at this point - not technically a crime.
It should be. Because the Astroturfers are subverting democracy. By their own description, the firms are holding the U.S. democratic system up for sale. They're using the old totalitarian tactic of gathering rent-a-crowds to push around politician. And, as Bonner boasts on its own website, they are doing it in a way that that gives them a specific advantage over lobbyists who, thanks to good legislation, would have to declare who was paying their bills.
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Governor Doyle pushes climate bill.
 Clean-energy policies, such as the federal energy and climate bill and a state climate bill, are needed to help open doors for entrepreneurs and prod other companies to invest in cleaner energy technologies, Gov. Jim Doyle said Wednesday.
Speaking at an energy forum in Saginaw, Mich., led by the Obama administration, Doyle referred to the biomass power plant announced Tuesday by We Energies as a project that wouldn't have happened without the state law that requires utilities to buy more green power.
"They're doing this because they've got a renewable power standard that they have to meet in a couple of years, and they are really trying to figure out how they are going to do it. So good public policy matters," Doyle said.
With bipartisan support, the state enacted a law several years ago requiring that 10% of the state's electricity come from renewable sources by 2015. Doyle is now pushing for the state to expand that requirement - to 25% of the state's energy supply by 2025 - as part of a global warming bill that his office and co-chairs of several legislative committees have been working on. The bill is based on the recommendations of the governor's global warming task force last year.
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Iraq's new war is a fight for water
 Dam projects by neighbouring states are drastically reducing the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates and helping to turn a once-fertile plain into desert. Phil Sands and Nizar Latif report as an environmental crisis deepens
As bombs continue to tear apart its towns and villages, Iraq is now in the grip of an environmental crisis that experts and officials warn may do what decades of war have not been able to – destroy the country. The new war on Iraq, says one member of the country's parliament, "is a war of water".
The Tigris and Euphrates, two of the world's great water courses, fed life to the historic lands of Mesopotamia, "the land between two rivers". The previously lush plains south of Baghdad are widely held to be the cradle of civilisation, the birthplace of some of humanity's greatest achievements and earliest empires.
Today, however, those same rivers are increasingly starved of water. The floodplains on either side of the Euphrates and Tigris, Iraq's old fertile agricultural heartlands, are parched. In northern Iraq, underground supplies of water have been so depleted they may never recover.
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