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Here are five recommended reads for today (5/23/13).

1. AP reports , “Student activists at more than 200 colleges are trying a new tactic in hopes of slowing the pace of climate change: They are asking their schools to stop investing in fossil fuel companies.”
2. According to Climate Progress: “In what will likely prove as meaningless a vote as the 37th repeal vote of Obamacare, on Wednesday night 241 members of the House of Representatives voted to approve the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline…The 241 members who voted for the bill have taken a collective $39,150,812 in career contributions from the oil and gas industry, compared to $5,094,217 for those who voted no. Even more starkly, in the last election cycle, that split widens to $11,529,335 versus $742,125.”
3. Renewable Energy World reports: “last month PG&E chief executive officer Anthony Earley estimated that the first of these new contracts now delivering renewable power to the grid will likely add only 1 percent to 1.5 percent to PG&E ratepayers’ household bills. This is a startlingly low impact. With the average California household paying $100 a month, another dollar or so is a fairly negligible addition; the sort of variation in bills that is really just noise.”
4. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “A broad group of consumer and environmental advocates, business officials and nonprofit leaders urged Georgia Power to add more renewable energy to its electricity mix over the next two decades.”
5. Bloomberg reports, “Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), labeled a ‘loser’ by Mitt Romney during the U.S. election, is giving President Barack Obama’s green-energy strategy its biggest win after almost two years of failures pounced upon by Republicans.”

As we know, the fossil fuel industry has numerous servants in Washington, D.C. One of those is Rep. Edward “Ed” Whitfield , a U.S. Representative from Kentucky’s 1st Congressional District. Given this district’s location in “coal country,” the influence of coal, and other fossil fuels, on Rep. Whitfield is not particularly surprising. Still, it’s eye opening to actually look at the amounts of cash that have flowed from the dirty energy industry into Rep. Whitfield’s campaign coffers over the years. According to Open Secrets, that includes:  nearly $500,000 from “Electric Utilities” (mostly coal fired), $370,000 from “Oil & Gas,” and $280,000 from “Mining.”

With all of this dirty energy money funding Rep. Whitfield’s campaigns, it’s no wonder that he’s a good friend of carbon-based fuels, and no friend at all to clean energy.  Rep. Whitfield recently co-sponsored the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, which “would permanently remove EPA authority to curb greenhouse gases.” He also voted against clean air, clean water, etc. over and over again, and keeps pushing wildly exaggerated Keystone XL jobs numbers.  As if all that’s not bad enough, he’s also a climate science denier who believes that coal should be mined forever.

With regard to clean energy, Rep. Whitfield is notorious for spreading misinformation and outright lies. For instance, this past Wednesday, The Hill reported Rep. Whitfield’s laughable comments about wind power specifically, and clean energy generally.

“If you kill an eagle, and you happen to be a private business or you’re a power generator or you’re an oil company or a chemical company, you’re going to be fined,” he said. “But if you’re a wind energy company, even though the bird you killed may be protected under the Endangered Species Act, you’re going to be protected.

“America will not stand for a government that rewards its friends and punishes its opponents in a … discriminatory fashion.”

There’s so much wrong with these comments, it’s hard to know where to begin demolishing them.  First off, on the bird kill issue, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) has an excellent fact sheet, “Rhetoric vs. Reality: Wind Energy and Birds,” which among other things explains that “[w]ind turbines are estimated to cause less than three out of every 100,000 human-related bird deaths in the U.S.”  In stark contrast, AWEA points out, “[c]oal – which wind directly replaces – is by far the largest contributor to wildlife risks.”

Second, with regard to Rep. Whitfield’s imaginary war against the oil and gas industry, we would remind the good Congressman that the government doles out billions of dollars a year in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and has been doing so for decades.  This adds up to a great deal of money, even by Washington, D.C. standards. The Christian Science Monitor reported  that about $41 billion a year in subsidies is handed out to oil and gas companies, and that figure does not include the $500 billion per year in adverse health and environmental costs of coal.  Whatever the exact number, it’s enormous, and totally refutes Rep. Whitfield’s delusional contention that government “punishes” fossil fuels in any way, shape or form. To the contrary, the government lavishes fossil fuels with taxpayer dollars, and has done so for more than a century.

In addition, oil and gas production are up sharply under President Obama. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, natural gas production is up around 4 trillion cubic feet since 2008, while crude oil production is up 1.5 million barrels per day over that same period. As for coal production, it actually went up in 2010 and 2011.  If the government’s aim is to “punish” fossil fuels, it’s certainly not showing up in the statistics.

Finally, Rep. Whitfield should read this article, which reports that “[m]ore than two-thirds of the onshore and offshore acreage leased for oil and natural gas exploration remains idle” and this story, about how “[o]il and gas companies have plenty of public land – so much that ”20 million acres of leased lands and nearly 7,000 approved drilling permits lay idle.” Again, there’s no sign of any government “punishing” of fossil fuels. If anything, it’s the opposite, as the government allows natural gas “frackers” to frack and oil drillers to drill with near total freedom.

The bottom line is that, Rep. Whitfield is simply spouting the false talking points of the industries which fund him, and whose interests he loyally serves.  This is nothing new for Rep. Whitfield, of course, nor is this behavior isolated to him. Still, no matter how many times a lie is repeated, it doesn’t make it the truth. Certainly in Rep. Whitfield’s case, what he’s saying bears no connection to the truth whatsoever.

Here are five recommended reads for today (5/22/13).

1. The Washington Post reports, “An international group of solar industry trade associations meeting in Shanghai last week has issued a joint declaration appealing to China, the European Union and the United States to avert a trade war and negotiate a settlement to disputes over solar panels, according to one person who attended the meeting.”
2. According to Stephen Lacey of Greentech Media, securitization “could be one of the most effective tools for unlocking the vast potential of energy efficiency…[a]nd institutional investors — banks, pension funds, mutual funds and insurers — are expressing a lot of interest in efficiency as a pooled asset class.”
3. The New York Times reports, “The Obama administration and the European Union have each decided to negotiate settlements with China in the world’s largest antidumping and antisubsidy trade cases involving China’s roughly $30 billion a year in solar panel shipments to the West, officials and trade advisers in Beijing, Brussels and Washington said.”
4. InsideClimate News writes: “U.S. oil production is suddenly booming. Question now is, will Obama say yes to the Canadian tar sands being part of this fossil fuel revival?”
5. Spiegel Online International reports: “Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is rapidly losing its coral, to the point that UNESCO may soon place the natural wonder on its “in danger” list. Climate change is one culprit, but so is the country’s booming extraction industry. Environmentalists warn that time is running out for the reef.”

Courtesy of DeSmogBlog, which “partnered with Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore to produce this spoof video in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now.’” Spot-on satire, nice job!

P.S. We actually love the smell of clean energy in the morning. To us, that smells like victory – for America, for the environment, and for people everywhere – if not for the “frackers.”

Here are five recommended reads for today (5/21/13).

1. NBC reports, ‘Fracking boom triggers water battle in North Dakota.”
2. ClimateProgress lists “7 Very Wrong Things About Climate Science And Energy In House Science Chair Lamar Smith’s WashPost Op-Ed.”
3. According to DeSmogBlog, “New Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) replies have exposed more misdeeds by Professor Edward Wegman and Yasmin Said at George Mason University (GMU),  closely involved with the Kochs, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and many others known for attacks on climate science.”
4. Greentech Media reports, “Energy efficiency proponents rejoiced last month when Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rob Portman (R-OH) reintroduced a sweeping bill that would provide incentives, technical assistance and new standards for energy efficiency in the private and public sectors…However, a proposed amendment is dampening enthusiasm for the bill over at the U.S. Green Buildings Council (USGBC), the organization responsible for the popular LEED rating system for green buildings.”
5. An opinion piece in the Arizona Capital Times argues: “When studies show that for every $1 spent, clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels, what’s wrong with looking into alternative investments? Clean energy can increase the number of available jobs and address environmental and health issues people are concerned about. We know that coal fuel and compliance costs are going to continue to increase as time goes on, so why invest in technologies that only increase the cost of electricity? Why restrict the Navajo economy when diversifying the energy mix at NGS by adding wind, solar PV or solar CSP could create 3,000 new jobs?”