Climate Romnesia: I was there when Romney had a “Climate Protection Plan”

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Kert Davies

While Governor of Massachusetts, Romney was so concerned about climate change he ordered a Climate Protection Plan. What changed his mind?

This is a guest blog from Jane Bright of Healthlink, a local environmental health citizens group in Salem, Massachusetts.

Have you seen Romney’s 50 page “Climate Protection Plan”?

No? Well there’s a reason for that: He doesn’t have one and he is hiding from the issue on the campaign trail. Romney mocked climate change at the Republican National Convention in August and his campaign website reads:

“Mitt Romney will eliminate the regulations promulgated in pursuit of the Obama administration’s costly and ineffective anti-carbon agenda.”

So Romney’s only current “climate plan” is to attack the Obama EPA and its efforts to cut global warming pollution from power plants and other sources.

Just eight years ago, in 2004, Romney was so concerned about climate change that he implemented a comprehensive “Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan”. Continue reading →

Global warming = Sandy. Which politicians get it, which don’t

Posted on October 30, 2012 by David Pomerantz

Meet Hurricane Sandy, brought to you by global warming.

Aerial views of damage caused by Hurricane Sandy along the New Jersey coast on October 30, 2012.

That’s a tough message to swallow right now. It means that the devastating scenes we are seeing from the Northeast are not a freak coincidence, but a reflection of our new reality on a hotter, less stable planet, and a reality that will get much worse if we don’t do something about it.

Fortunately there are things we can do, both to better prepare ourselves for more extreme weather events like Sandy, and to slow down the global warming at their root.

But whatever we do won’t matter until our politicians start getting honest about the problem.

Some are doing so. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo connected the dots in his briefing this morning:

“There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement. That is a factual statement. Anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality … I said to the president kiddingly the other day we have a 100-year flood every two years now.”

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm sees the obvious too:

“There’s a clear link to climate change. And, yet, for the first time in over a quarter century, climate change was not brought up even once at the presidential debates.”

President Clinton may have drawn the sharpest, clearest connection so far, in a critique of Gov. Romney earlier today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Wlq6NWHnBTo

Clinton gets the facts slightly wrong in his scathing take-down of Gov. Romney (he made his “rising seas” joke at the RNC, not in a debate) but his point stands that Romney’s campaign has completely ignored the looming thread of climate change, and even flirted with denying it. Perhaps even worse than Romney’s joke that Clinton mentioned – one that is likely to become infamous in the post-Sandy world – is the fact that Romney’s budget proposal would cut FEMA funding by 40 %. That’s not exactly a smart resilience policy for a hotter planet with more extreme weather events.

Despite President Clinton’s praise, President Obama has also been mostly silent on the climate discussion for some time. While Obama has made strides on clean energy in his presidency, he has run a campaign almost entirely devoid of any mentions of climate change, instead trying to out-embrace Gov. Romney for who could better endear himself to the fossil fuel industry responsible for the problem in the first place.

It may feel funny to talk about politicians right now, but if we are serious about steeling ourselves for the next disaster and slowing down the global warming that’s putting these hurricanes on steroids, then part of picking up the pieces means finding out which politicians we can trust to be honest about what’s exacerbating these disasters.

That starts with the next president. Pres. Obama and Gov. Romney will likely both be talking about Sandy this week: it’s a good chance for them to show they’ll be one of the politicians who gets it.

Record amounts of ad spending by dirty energy industries, same old deceptions

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Jesse Coleman

This year, the oil, gas and coal industries combined have spent more than $153 million on ads promoting fossil fuels and attacking renewables, according to the New York Times. That’s almost four times the amount spent on clean energy advertising in the same time frame.

It’s also a third more than was spent by the fossil fuels industries in 2008.

So what message is worth the record amounts of advertising dollars?

Well, as it turns out, the fossil fuel industries really don’t like regulation, the EPA, or president Obama, and they want the voting public behind them.

Though the dirty energy industries’ dislike of Obama seems a bit misplaced, (between allowing widespread fracking and his support of drilling offshore and in the arctic, Obama has given the fossil fuel lobby plenty) it does make sense that they would support Mitt Romney. After all, Romney is not concerned with “healing the planet,” and neither are the oil and coal corporations of America. It’s a natural fit.

However, the majority of the fossil fuel funded commercials are actually repeats of the same messages that the Big Coal and Big Oil have been trumpeting for years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Zjt03uHaxMY#!

A recent Greenpeace investigation in to coal advertising over the last 40 years has found that the fear mongering and hysterical accusations made today by coal companies – that regulations kill jobs or coal can be “clean” for instance – are literally decades old.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a coal front group, has spent $12 million dollars so far this year on ads that, except for being in color and on youtube, could have been straight from 1970.

“The stakes are high,” said Steve Miller, the recently retired president of ACCCE. Well, hopefully Mr. Miller is high if he thinks people will buy the same tired deceptions that the coal industry has been threatening us with for years.