Post Summary:

Presidential contender John McCain delivered a major speech today outlining his climate change policy from Portland, Oregon.  Stumping from Stumptown, Senator McCain detailed his plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

McCain deserves credit for some "straight talk" on climate change, but words only go so far and his inadequate plan still dooms the planet (and all of us who live here) to the fire, flood and famine kind of consequences on the Biblically bad end of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's predictions.  And all this coming from a guy who won't even stand up to be counted on critical clean energy votes with a big fat 0% LCV voting score... well it doesn't exactly inspire confidence that John McCain would be the president who truly rose to the climate challenge.

Read on for the full post...

As the ad campaigns intensified before tonight's primaries, Hillary Clinton made the seriously Energy Dumb decision to promote a gas tax holiday as a way of demonstrating her supposed affinity for "the hard working American middle class."  Too bad the gas tax holiday won't help anybody's pocketbook but the oil companies. I guess Mrs. Clinton missed the memo from every single energy and economic policy expert out there! (Seriously, every one of them!)

While his opponent pandered for votes with empty promises of $30.00 in cash, Barack Obama, to his very strong credit, took the Energy Smart position and called the gas tax holiday proposal what it is: "a pander," a cheap trick to buy your vote.

Read on to watch Obama's clear, honest, Energy Smart response on the gas tax holiday (speaking on Meet the Press earlier this week)...

Hillary Clinton and John McCain support seriously Energy Dumb gas tax holiday

There's Energy Smart, like Mark Udall and this slate of Energy Smart US Congressional candidates.

Then there's seriously Energy Dumb, like touting a temporary gas tax holiday as an appropriate response to high gas and oil prices.  

Hillary Clinton solidly aligned herself last week with the Energy Dumb camp, vociferously supporting a gas tax holiday first proposed by Energy Dumber John McCain that amounts to blatant pandering for votes.  

The Ohio state Senate unanimously passed legislation setting strong new renewable energy and energy efficiency standards last week, sending the bill on to Governor Ted Strickland for signature.  Sub. Senate Bill 221 establishes a 12.5% by 2025 renewable energy standard (RES), making the Buckeye State the 26th state in the nation to adopt a renewable energy requirement for electric utilities (see this previous post on numbers 24 and 25).  The legislation also includes a strong energy efficiency standard that is expected to result in a 22% cumulative reduction in energy usage by 2025.

Econ 101 taught us increased supply = lower prices. That's the main argument for new liquefied natural gas import terminals. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal warns things are a bit more complicated than that and we shouldn't bet on LNG to reduce North American natural gas prices. This is Econ 202 stuff at least...

On Earth Day, we celebrate our unique blue planet and look for ways to advance a sustainable future.  So this Earth Day, let's Act Blue and do something that can have a lasting and significant impact: support Energy Smart and Earth Friendly candidates for Congress!

One of the highlights of the 2006 elections was the defeat of former Congressman Richard Pombo (CA-11), a man who seemed to make it his singular mission in Congress to rape and pillage the environment, including leading the charge on repeated attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act and open up ANWR for oil drilling.

Cross posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

In an interview on West Virginia Public Radio this morning, Hillary Clinton revealed some pretty profound ignorance about the true costs of coal and especially about the destruction mountain top coal mining is wrecking on both communities and ecosystems in Appalachia.  Give it a listen below the fold...

Cross posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary...

By Morgan Goodwin, Jesse Jenkins and Juliana Williams

Two recent studies "suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide... The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further."

We in the climate movement should take note of these headlines.  Apparently based on a cautious interpretation of the climate science, we've been calling for relatively incremental goals like 2% reductions in emissions per year, targeting 80% reductions by 2050 - one of the "mantras" of our movement since Step it Up.  We've been busy (successfully) making that 80x50 goal politically feasible.

Now the mainstream media is telling us - climate activists who are supposed to be pushing the cutting edge - that our goals aren't good enough.

Ed Markey and Henry Waxman are no Fossil Fools!  The two Chairmen and Congressional Climate Champs released a new bill yesterday calling for a moratorium on any new coal plants that do not capture and sequester their greenhouse gas emissions.  

The ban would stay in place until Congress adopts and implements comprehensive global warming regulation and is designed to addresses the largest new source of global warming pollution — new coal-fired power plants that are being built without any controls on their global warming emissions.

Cross-posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary...

Al Gore, the erstwhile trumpeter of inconvenient truths and dire warnings of climate catastrophe has fallen under attack by the climate deniers and flat earth-ers of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

CEI is taking Gore, perhaps the most visible figurehead of the climate movement, to task for living in "a posh Nashville mansion" that allegedly uses 20 times the energy of a normal American home while making money as he calls for action to halt the climate crisis.

Adhering to the age old maxim, "If you can't kill the message, kill the messenger," they cry "Hypocrite!" trying to besmirch Al Gore's cause as they besmirch his reputation.

Some of my friends and fellow bloggers have been bustling to rise to Al Gore's defense.  I on the other hand, have not.

Both Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton have solid energy plans that, if implemented, would take America into a cleaner energy future.  

As David Roberts of Grist says, "Both would substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions and boost clean energy; both pitch sustainability as an issue of shared sacrifice and economic opportunity; both have an impressive grasp of the policy details."

In fact, when it comes to the two candidates' energy and climate plans, there's about as much distance between them as their current neck-and-neck delegate counts.

Obama and Clinton have something else in common we should all be taking note of: they've both been talking up so-called "clean" coal on the campaign trail, especially in coal-friendly primary states like Ohio and Wyoming.

In another big victory in the fight against the coal rush, the feds apparently suspended a major loan program that provided rural electric cooperatives with subsidized loans to construct new coal-fired power plants.  

An official with the US Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which manages the loan program, cited the uncertainties of climate change and rising construction costs as the reasons for the programs suspension.

Cross-posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

Happy Friday!  Oil hit record-prices today: $103.05 per barrel.  Bully for us...That tops the inflation adjusted high of $102.53 set in 1980.

This news comes as analysts predict $4.00 per gallon gasoline when refiners switch over to reformulated blends in Spring.

Of course, you and I already know that.  We see it every time we drive past a gas station, or god forbid, actually pull in to fill up our tanks!  

You'd assume President Bush would be clearly aware of the state of gas prices as well, given how much they impact average Americans every day. Well, you might assume that about another president anyway... I wasn't too shocked to learn that President Bush is actually completely clueless that gas prices are soaring towards $4.00!

Cross-posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

The coal industry, running scared from the increasingly powerful No Coal movement, is fighting back by trying to buy the 2008 elections.  

According to AP, the coal industry is spending tens of millions of dollars on advertising and fake "grassroots" front groups to make sure that whoever wins in November, coal's future is secure.  But the youth climate movement isn't going to let them get away with it!

Crossposted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

Midwest oil refineries are gobbling up more and more crude oil from Canadian tar sands and are set to belch out up to 40 percent more greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade.  

According to the Chicago Tribune, oil refineries across the Midwest are set to expand and are planning on processing heavy crude oil from Canadian tar sands, part of an industry-wide trend to buy more Canadian crude.  

Canada has huge reserves of tar-soaked clay and sand known as "tar sands" lying under the swampy forests of northern Alberta. At today's higher oil prices, these tar sands are seen as a profitable and reliable source of oil but they require environmentally devastating mining processes and vast amounts of energy to extract.  The resulting heavy crude oil requires also more energy to process at refineries.

[Cross-posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary]

[Guest post by Billy Parish]

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis 40 years ago, where he was assassinated, to help support the long struggle of the city's sanitation workers for decent jobs and dignity. He was also speaking out against the Vietnam War, organizing a Poor People's March on Washington, and crafting an Economic Bill of Rights, calling for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, the last book he released before he was killed, he wrote:

There is a need for a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society ... Our economy must become more person-centered than property-and profit-centered. ... Let us, therefore, not think of our movement as one that seeks to integrate the Negro into all the existing values of American society. Let us be those creative dissenters who call our beloved nation to a higher destiny.

Cross-posted from Grist...

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated forty years ago in Memphis, he was calling for a campaign that would unite the poor and working classes of all races behind a shared economic future. Today, with ever increasing income gaps, rising oil prices, rapid climate change, expanding outsourcing, and economic instability, Dr. King's dream is as necessary as ever. As we honor King's life and vision tomorrow, it's time for his dream to be reborn, not only to meet the still-lingering challenges from his time but also the unique challenges of ours.

Today, as Congress prepares a giant Economic Stimulus Package, there is no better way to honor Dr. King’s memory and continue his struggle than to demand that Congress go green and go equal in the stimulus.

The economic stimulus package could simply go towards short-term consumer spending that may temporarily prop up our economy, or it could help lay the foundation of prolonged economic prosperity.   We could invest in new iPhones or in a sustainable, just, and prosperous energy future.  It's up to Congress now to decide which.

[This is a guest post by fellow WattHead blogger, Alisha Fowler:]

The polar bear was once the world’s most formidable predator. It now lies on the brink of extinction due to global warming and habitat loss. The bear and its habitat stand to gain some protections under the Endangered Species Act this year, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was due to make a decision about its "threatened" status by this Wednesday. The Service has, however, delayed the listing for up to one month!

This leaves the bear and its habitat unprotected. Coincidentally, one of the largest oil and gas lease sales is set to occur on February 6, in the Chukchi Sea off of the northwest coast of Alaska – a region we will pay more and more attention to as our world warms and the sea opens up for potential large-scale exploration, I mean preservation...

Cross-posted from WattHead - Energy News and Commentary...