(Updated 9/15/2010)

In a recent issue of the New Yorker staff writer Jane Meyer leads us all on a guided tour of the machinery, machinations and massive expenditures that the billionaire Koch brothers have poured into organizations like the Orwellian named “Americans for Prosperity” that, among other things, are dedicated to stopping progress in the war to protect our climate.

Not satisfied with having played a role in derailing (hopefully temporarily) sensible energy and climate policy in Washington DC these guardians of fossil fuel industry profits are seeking to halt good efforts in the states.  While their efforts in California have been the most noticed they are also busy laying astroturf in places like New Jersey where a “campaign” to roll back the mild, moderate and successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative has been launched out of the corporate checkbooks supporting “Americans for Prosperity.”

This effort in New Jersey angrily rails that there is no clear line on electricity bills to show the price that consumers are paying for RGGI – ignoring the reality that there is not a bit of evidence that such a cost can be identified by anyone.  Indeed, the RGGI program is so mild and moderate that, as was anticipated when the program was created, the impact on consumers is so small that it is in fact invisible.   The fact that the New Jersey “anti cap and trade” website fails to actually describe a price impact for RGGI before ranting about the need to disclose such a cost is a clear signal that we are dealing with folks who are not playing straight.

And to add yet another bizarre twist to the tale, the Albany Times-Union reports that the company owned by the same Koch brothers who founded and have funded the organization protesting RGGI has been participating in the RGGI auction, presumably for profit and not just fun.

While David and Charles Koch, as detailed in the New Yorker article,  have focused their spending on nurturing “Americans for Prosperity” and similar national efforts their brother William Koch has been focused on local denial – heavily funding lobbying against the Cape Wind project which he apparently feels would damage the view from his vacation home.  But the Koch agendas are now converging as “Americans for Prosperity” levels a volley at an effort by the governor of New Jersey, a Republican who is generally regarded as conservative, for using RGGI funds to support offshore wind farm development.   Perhaps this is a result of the reconciliation between these brothers now that they have settled their infamous feud.

Ultimately, though this is about people who have made a lot of money from the current system of generating energy from fossil fuels fighting the future.  Not only are they tossing all of us, including their own families, under the bus of a dangerously changing climate but they are fighting against efforts like wind farms that generate stability in energy prices (something their fossil products simply can’t deliver) and programs like energy efficiency investments that generate real jobs and prosperity.  For example, the operator of the efficiency programs in New York State estimates, in their annual plan, that the programs funded by RGGI in that one state will create:

• Customer energy bill savings of more than $445 million
• 1.7 million barrel reduction in oil imports
• Creation or retention of approximately 1,400 jobs
• Greenhouse gas emissions reductions up to 2.0 million tons; equal to removing approximately16,500 cars from the road

Saving people money on energy bills and creating jobs – what a nightmare !!!

Today, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided to uphold the comprehensive permit for Cape Wind’s transmission lines issued by the state’s Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB)–a welcome and much-anticipated milestone for the nation’s first major offshore wind energy project. CLF has been actively involved in moving the ball forward on Cape Wind throughout its nine-year review and permitting process, and we’re thrilled that Cape Wind will finally have an opportunity to to move forward and provide Massachusetts with clean, renewable power.

Here’s what CLF Staff Attorney Shanna Cleveland had to say on the subject:

“The Court thoroughly reviewed the extensive record in this case and correctly concluded that the state siting board rigorously scrutinized the project and fulfilled its obligation to safeguard the public trust. Cape Wind will provide electricity without producing any harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and its clean energy benefits are expected to significantly outweigh its impacts. The Court’s affirmation of Cape Wind’s comprehensive state permit is a significant step on the path toward a clean energy future for New England and the nation.”

Check out clf.org for the full press statement>>

The ace web/online/blog/communications folks at CLF have installed the WordPress plug-in version of Online Leaf on this blog so if you are reading it and don’t do anything for a minute your screen will go black, reducing the electricity consumption of your computer.

Not a big deal but an important reminder of all the many little , medium, large and very large things we will need to do to fight global warming – and how the things we can do to aid that cause can also save us a bit of money at the same time.

Earlier today in Rhode Island, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved the Deepwater Wind/National Grid Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for the construction of an eight-turbine wind farm in Block Island Sound, denying CLF’s Motion to Dismiss.

Here’s what CLF’s Rhode Island Advocacy Center Director Tricia Jedele had to say about the decision:

Today’s ruling was inevitable, a result dictated by the legislature in a law defined so narrowly that it could have only one outcome. Unchallenged, this law and the accompanying PUC decision set precedent that will only undermine the efforts to build a future for renewable energy in Rhode Island. The failure to allow the PUC any discretion in its decision-making is the very basis of CLF’s Separation of Powers argument, which we are likely to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Deepwater Wind project in Block Island Sound first met with problems in April 2010 when its Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with National Grid was rejected by the PUC on the grounds that it was not commercially reasonable. Rather than appeal the decision, Deepwater, with the support of the Governor and the legislature, sought to do an end run around the review process and rewrite the rules to produce a different outcome the second time around. CLF, a longtime champion of renewable energy done right, was one of the first to challenge the moves as unlawful, unfair and a terrible precedent. CLF contended that the amended law was designed to favor one project and one developer, creating an unlevel playing field that would make it impossible for developers to compete successfully for future projects.

“Renewable energy is too important to this state to do it in a way that could threaten its chances for success,” Jedele said at the time.

In July, in advance of a second review of the PPA required under the amended law, CLF filed a Motion to Dismiss, arguing that the PUC should not review the amended Power Purchase Agreement because the law violates the Constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, and the provision which requires that “all laws be made for the good of the whole.” CLF also argued that even if the PUC were to proceed, it could not review the PPA because the doctrine of res judicata bars litigation of a claim that has already been litigated between the same parties.

Recent industry legal action to prevent the regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is an eye-opener suggesting a slash and burn strategy that threatens to undo years of successful regulation of air pollution under the Clean Air Act.  Various industry trade groups including the American Chemistry Council, National Association of Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute are waging a full scale war to prevent regulation of GHG emissions and recently initiated a coordinated, broad and covert legal attack (with no press or public outreach) on EPA’s permitting authority.

On July 6, the coalition of industry groups filed 12 similar legal petitions challenging not only EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs, but also the fundamental underpinnings of EPA’s 30 year old permitting program for large emitting facilities.  These appeals present a clear and unequivocal message to EPA and the public: try to impose reductions in GHG emissions and we will attack the core of the greenhouse gas regulations adopted in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in MA v. EPA and EPA’s ability to regulate large emitters through its preconstruction (PSD) permitting program in the first instance.   With a key message like that—tone deaf to public awareness and concern about climate change—no wonder the industry trade group petitioners did not seek publicity.

Recent statements from Senator Murkowski suggest that she and her allied colleagues have been briefed and support this strategy.  According to Politico.com,

Key coal-state Democrats and nearly all Republicans are also unified in their bid to slow down the EPA via legislation – and they’re determined to force a series of votes on the issue before the next big suite of rules start kicking in next January.

“You attack it at all fronts,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a leading advocate for stopping the EPA, told POLITICO. “You go the judicial route. You go the legislative route. I think this is important to make sure we are looking at all avenues.”

CLF is intervening (co-represented by attorneys from the Clean Air Task Force) along with other environmental groups in these recent challenges as well as several prior challenges to EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs. The vehemence of these positions, and the obvious coordination among a broad cross section of industries to prevent regulation of GHGs, unfortunately suggest that US policy on climate change will not be advanced through bottom up, traditional legislative initiatives in Congress.

As Bill McKibben asserted in Tomdispatch.com,

If we’re going to get any of this done, we’re going to need a movement, the one thing we haven’t had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we’d get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we’ll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

The time has come to knock the halo off of the heads of the obstacles to progress and quality of life.  While the old way of making power, combusting decomposed carbon–based life forms (i.e., fossil fuels) contributed to prosperity and improvement to quality of life through 20^th century industrialization; we are facing a much different earth and atmosphere.  Unchecked burning of fossil fuels and emissions of GHGs are detracting from our quality of life and will continue to do so for decades after they are emitted.   The coal-fired power plant near you is not your friend; its day to day activities are undercutting your health, environment, economy and well-being for no good reason except for its tenacity in resisting beneficial change.

Using the authority given it by Congress in the Clean Air Act, and affirmed by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Massachusetts v. EPA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving to address the threat to the public health and environment from the greenhouse gases damaging our climate. But, as David Jenkins of Republicans for Environmental Protection describes on the Frum Forum website that effort is under attack by an effort led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).

The full piece is well worth reading but the punchline is of special interests to New Englanders who are represented by Senators Scott Brown (R-MA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) or Judd Gregg (R-NH) who voted for Sen. Murkowski’s Dirty Air Act/Big Oil Bailout/EPA rollback the first time it got to the Senate floor:

Murkowski’s framing insinuates that her resolution is paving the way for Congress to take action . . . Unfortunately, that is not what is going on here . . . Murkowski has not been pushing at all for legislation to price carbon, and efforts by sponsors of such legislation to gain her support have been unsuccessful.

Instead she is putting all of her energy and passion into preempting EPA. “You attack it at all fronts,” Murkowski recently told Politico. “You go the judicial route. You go the legislative route.”

. . .

It is time for any member of Congress who still supports Senator Murkowski’s endeavor—or similar efforts—to drop all pretenses and tell the voters why they support the unfettered polluting of our life-sustaining atmosphere.

If you are qualified to be, and are interested in being, the Executive Director of an organization that brings together renewable energy developers, equipment manufacturers and environmental groups then apply.  Go for it.

If you were listening to Maine Public Radio yesterday (whether because you are on vacation or because you live there) you might have caught this piece about plans to develop a sub-sea cable from Maine to Boston.

Bottom line: In order to meet the climate and energy goals that science and sound policy dictate we will need to build thousands of megawatts of clean renewable generation (as well as becoming much more efficient and many other key steps) and the infrastructure to support it.  And a sub-sea cable could be part of that solution, if it is done right.

On June 29, 2010 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a series of petitions for reconsideration of the “Endangerment Finding”, the official determination that emissions of carbon dioxide and other types of global warming pollution are causing harm to the public health, the environment and the climate.

That EPA website provides good links to the very best science like the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , the U.S. National Academy of Sciences , and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

And the science is telling us not just that humanity is causing a future change in our climate – but also that the change is already in progress – that the damage is already clear and before us.

As one news article put it:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s just-released 2009 State of the Climate report bears few surprises for those who follow climate science–the past decade was the warmest on record, and the Earth has slowly been heating up for the past 50 years.

The difference between this and every other climate report, however, is that NOAA gathered research from 300 scientists in 48 countries to produce a compelling document that covers every aspect of our planet’s climate. The report is, according to NOAA, the first to bring together “multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean.”

The facts are just lying there in front of us.  June 2010 was the hottest June on record and the April-June and January June periods this year was the hottest such periods on record.

But what really matters is not what happens in any given month or any specific six month period.  It is all about the long term trends – kind of like this.

And while near term impacts, like more frequent heat waves, are visible just over the horizon and possibly unavoidable due to the damage we have already done to our climate.  But the real damage if we don’t take action like capping our greenhouse gas emissions and changing how we generated and use energy will be far more extreme.

Amazingly, the science showing that we now appear to be on a trajectory to make half the Earth uninhabitable by 2300 has received very little attention in the press.   Really, that is what respectable scientists are saying in the most rigorous of forums with peer review and everything.  Go ahead, look at it, I will wait here.   And bear in mind that this is not a conversation about the distant Year 2300 – it is about the painful journey into that future as we damn our children, grand-children and future generations to pain as the globe warms.

So lets go back to the beginning of this post.  Some folks petitioned the EPA to reconsider its determination that the pollution causing global warming is causing harm, or is in danger of causing harm, to the public health, the environment or the climate.   Are you really surprised that EPA stood with science and rejected those challenges?

The really incredible thing is that despite the science, despite the reality of what is starting to unfold around us that U.S. Senate and large swaths of our society indulge in the expensive luxury of denial and refuse to take action.

There is so much to be done as we fight to cap global warming pollution, to make our society, homes and buildings more energy efficient, to build walkable and livable communities with good transit where gasoline is not the lubricant of our lives, and make the move to renewable clean energy . . . and the hour is getting late.