Glenn Beck, idiot wannabe provocateur of Fox News, is undoubtedly more than happy to take the credit for Van Jones’ resignation as green jobs adviser to the Obama administration – but the fact is, he just isn’t doesn’t have the brainpower to be the mastermind behind the attacks.

Beck launched a vicious smear campaign against Jones, accusing him of being a communist and 9/11 truther among other things, on national television. But the campaign was actually orchestrated by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative think-tank that’s also responsible for a vast global warming denial campaign.

From DeSmogBlog:

On Fox News forum AFP’s director of policy, Phil Kerpen brags about how his organization brought down Van Jones:

“I spent the next two weeks researching everything I could find about Jones and the Apollo Alliance (much of which is still to be published, including a forthcoming paper from the Capital Research Center next month), the national umbrella organization for coordinating between the environmentalists, the labor unions, and the social justice street organizers that Jones has served as a board member and a primary national spokesman for.”

This was all then fed to Glenn Beck who gleefully took it to town and hammered away on Van Jones. No kidding, Beck is bent on bringing this administration to its knees and rallying the right-wing fringe players to follow suit. And it won’t stop here, the likes of Kerpen and AFP have found their rallying cry: “Don’t argue clean energy, but instead paint Obama’s policies as a socialist/communist plot to control America.”

There’s no doubt that Jones made a mistake when he signed that 9/11 petition – but he’s not a Truther, nor do any of the other epithets thrown at him recent weeks apply. David Roberts of Grist wrote two excellent articles about the whole debacle that refute the accusations made against Jones (Cleaning Some of the Fox Off Van Jones and Thoughts on Van Jones’ Resignation).

Is it any surprise that Americans for Prosperity has received vast amounts of cash from Exxon in the past? This is an anti-green organization that will do anything to preserve the status quo, and they’re happy to take down anyone in their way. Beck is just their puppet.

Link [DeSmogBlog]

It’s a dubious honor, but one that Monsanto doesn’t seem too eager to refuse. The world’s most hated corporation has been aggressively greenwashing its reputation for years and has recently stepped up its efforts to claim that its earth- and people-unfriendly practices are “sustainable”.

In fact, Monsanto’s website is packed full of sickeningly misleading claims about how their iron grip on the world’s food supply is actually good for us and for the environment. There are dozens of different ways in which this is just plain wrong – but The Guardian has focused on one in particular: Monsanto’s thirst for water.

Monsanto trumpets its patented water-efficient seeds, so one would expect the company to be sensitive about its own water usage. However, on the Hawaiian island of Molokai – where Monsanto is the largest employer and does a lot of reseach into genetically modified crops – this corporate giant has caused water shortages.

From The Guardian:

Nature on Molokai has suffered badly from the invasion of Monsanto and other big-farm companies. In recompense, Monsanto puts money into a Nature Conservancy programme on the island to “preserve biodiversity and protect water sources”.

The company has nonetheless gained a bad reputation there as a water bully. As a local journalist wrote there last year in the Molokai Dispatch, “Monsanto’s thirst for more water” threatens its future on the island. “Like most large corporations, Monsanto’s number one priority is to maximise profits. In this case it means planting as many acres as possible, and using a lot of water,” wrote Todd Yamashita.

Recently, during a drought that emptied reservoirs and forced the local irrigation company to demand 20% water cutbacks from local farmers, Monsanto insisted on the right to take more water and lobbied for a new aquifer to be tapped.

Of course, this is only one small example of Monsanto’s jaw-dropping offenses. The capacity for evil that this company has is seemingly endless. Learn more:

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
Millions Against Monsanto Campaign
Monsanto – SourceWatch
MonsantoWatch
The World According to Monsanto (Documentary)

Link [The Guardian]
Photo credit: Greenpeace

You’d think that Big Oil would be more than happy to wave a bunch of American flags around while holding their fake grassroots rallies – especially in Texas, of all places. Yet activists bearing the old Stars & Stripes were turned away at the American Petroleum Institute rally in Houston, where oil company employees gathered to hear oil billionaire Drayton McClane Jr. whine about Obama’s clean energy plans.

Check out the video:

Partial transcript from Wonk Room:

ACTIVIST: They said, “We won’t let you have an American flag either.” They said they won’t let you have this, and then the guy touched this, the American flag.

ANOTHER ACTIVIST: I got an email from Freedomworks saying, “Come, it’s free, free food,” doodah doodah. And then I get here and they say, “Well, it’s against fire code to let people in the door.” And then, they let all these people in. Granted, one of the people was Drayton McLane. He’s got more money than God, so, I guess…

Umm, it’s pretty obvious that the uninvited people trying to get into this rally are on the side of Big Oil, so WTF are they worried about? As if the old dude bearing a book called ‘Liberal Facism’ is a spy for the ‘other side’.

Could it be any more clear that this was anything but a grassroots rally? It was one big oil industry whack-a-thon. You would think that these pro-oil citizens (the real ones, not the energy employees) would have caught on by now that the oil industry doesn’t give a shit about them.

Link [Wonk Room]

You can smell the desperation of the dirty energy industry from a mile away. It’s the smell of a slow death, a filthy, oozing, gangrenous smell that emits from Big Oil and Big Coal as they attempt to lie, cheat and steal their way to maintaining the status quo.

Last month, lobbyists working for a coal industry front group were caught red-handed forging anti-climate-bill letters to a member of Congress. Now, it’s been revealed that the American Energy Alliance (the unholy spawn of the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute) is faking broad public opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

From the NRDC:

According to the AEA’s round-up release:  “In Newspapers Coast-to-Coast, Energy Rationing Bill Continues to Get Exposed for What it is: A Job Killer.” And how do our oily friends reach that conclusion?  In a move that is unlikely to represent a threat to the future of scientific polling, AEA bases its claims on eight letters to the editor and one op-ed.

What do the selected editorial page items tell us?  First, AEA is apparently endorsing flat-out, wild-eyed howling-at-the-moon denial of global warming science.   Take this “op-ed” found in the Springfield (MO) News Leader:

“I told you in my column on July 10 that global warming was a hoax. Just when I thought the cap and trade lunatics could not be any more ignorant, along comes the Democrat-controlled Congress with the Waxman-Markey bill on climate change. Cap and tax or con and tax are all better names for this abhorrent bill.”

Message: AEA appears to be 100 percent comfortable in embracing this full-throated, know-nothing approach to trashing the consensus view on global warming science.

The NRDC asks, “Couldn’t we just do the same thing by collating positive letters to the editor from across the nation?” and then proceeds to quote from seven such supportive letters – which actually appear in major publications, not BFE pennysavers.

Scruples: lobbyists do not haz dem.

Link [NRDC]
Photo credit: I Can Has Cheezburger?

A couple weeks ago, The Huffington Post warned readers to be on the lookout for dirty tricks orchestrated by right-wing groups attempting to derail the climate bill. Sure enough, a Washington D.C. based lobbyist group got caught sending five forged letters purportedly from Hispanic voters and the NAACP to a congressman in the hopes that it would sway his vote.

It didn’t work. Congressman Tom Perriello of West Virginia voted in favor of the Waxman-Markey climate bill, and lobbyist group Bonner & Associates is taking the heat for its abhorrent tactics.

Congressman Ed Markey announced that he would hold an official House hearing into the forgeries, saying:

“This fraud on Congress shows that some opponents of clean energy have resorted to forgery and theft to block progress.  This is an appalling abuse, and Congressman Tom Perriello deserves great credit for seeing through it and casting a vote that will create clean energy jobs in Virginia and throughout the United States. I encourage all Members of Congress to be on the lookout for other suspicious and illegal materials. My Select Committee will immediately begin an investigation of the extent and scope of this activity.”

Not that Bonner & Associates are actually admitting any wrongdoing. The group blames a ‘temporary employee’ who supposedly sent out the letters unbeknownst to the rest of the firm.

Nice try, says The Huffington Post – Bonner has a history of tricking people into supporting their causes. HuffPo found a 2002 story by the Baltimore Sun, which called out another forgery in the group’s past:

Donna J. Stanley, director of Associated Black Charities, was ready to mobilize for political battle after she received a fax marked “urgent” this week.

The fax told her she needed to sign an attached petition “today” to prevent 600,000 of Maryland’s poor and disabled from losing access to affordable prescription drugs. The fax, sent to dozens of community leaders, had the markings of a grass-roots effort, including grammatical errors and a handwritten cover letter.

But the appeal was actually generated by a sophisticated Washington lobbying firm trying to defeat several bills before the General Assembly supported by advocates for the poor.

So, how’d they explain that one away? Jack Bonner said it was “a great exercise in the First Amendment”. Bonner & Associates had allied itself with a puppet group for the pharmaceutical industry, using the organization’s letterhead to fool legislators into thinking they were hearing legitimate concerns from voters.

Abolishing the practice of lobbying lawmakers, and imposing strict term limits on all politicians – wouldn’t that go a long way toward cleaning up our government? Lobbyists clearly have no scruples when it comes to getting favors for Big Oil, Big Pharma and other corporate entities intent on putting greed before the good of the earth and its people.

Link [The Huffington Post]

All Paul McCarthy of the Greenfield area of Pittsburgh wanted to do was help his neighborhood live up to its name. The 62-year-old former city electrician began cleaning up litter and overgrowth along a section of town called ‘The Run’, piling it along the sidewalk for Public Works to pick up. Only they didn’t, and those piles have led to legal troubles for McCarthy, who’s currently being treated for cancer.

McCarthy’s efforts have led to fines because, according to the city, he didn’t do enough. While the ill man toiled over trimming weeds along sidewalks and gathering debris, he wasn’t bagging the waste or coordinating his efforts with Public Works. But McCarthy had repeatedly called the city’s help line when he noticed the trash, and got no response.

From the Post-Gazette:

To Rob Kaczorowski, city Public Works Department’s deputy director of operations, fighting litter is all about communication and coordination — something Mr. McCarthy’s vigilante clean-up push lacked.

“We’re all for volunteer efforts, but it has to be coordinated,” Mr. Kaczorowski said. “Some of the stuff he does, I think he does to aggravate us.”

Bill Smith, executive director of the Greenfield Organization, said his group does mass clean-ups with city help, but added that there’s a place for Mr. McCarthy’s approach.

“From my perspective, this is the kind of thing the city wants people to do,” he said. Public works staff “are put out because this is creating a little more work for them.”

McCarthy got citations twice. The Department of Public Works had concluded that it was the only way to stop him, and it worked: McCarthy is no longer bothering to clean anything up. The Post-Gazette reports that new bags and cups have started to accumulate.

A 62-year-old cancer patient wants to help make the city he lives in more beautiful, and gets fined for it. Awesome. Great job, Pittsburgh Public Works.

Link [Post-Gazette]

When people who don’t know what they’re talking about spew utter hogwash about an important issue to people who don’t really grasp the issue in the first place, can anything important ever get done? Unlikely – and that’s the reality we’re living today as both parties of government debate climate change in front of an American public that can’t tell they’re being bullshitted.

WorldChanging is paying attention, and sorting out the truth from the half-truths, misrepresentations, lies and propaganda. They’ve put together the Top 10 Bogus Statements (BS) in the US Climate Debate, with a reality check following each one.

Check out the first two:

No. 10 BS: The United States can’t make a firm commitment to reduce greenhouse gases until China and India do.

Reality check: With this statement, international climate negotiations assume the stature of an Alphonse and Gaston routine. The modern version – “I’m not going to do the right thing until you do the right thing” – would be comical if it weren’t so childish and potentially tragic.

Why shouldn’t the United States make a hard commitment to cut carbon before China, India and other developing nations do? We’re responsible for most of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today. We have been emitting them with abandon for generations.

On the other hand, many developing nations such as China and India are attempting to pull millions of their people from poverty. I don’t believe they deny their obligation to help solve the climate problem. In fact, many of China’s clean energy goals are more aggressive than ours. But they want the leeway to help their people approach the standard of living people enjoy in the U.S.

What the hell: Let’s be big about this and agree to go first. If the US is worried about a trade disadvantage with countries that don’t have carbon regulation, then let’s institute a “border adjustment” – the price those countries should pay for not agreeing to hard targets.

No. 9 BS: Coal will be with us for a long time to come.

In a recent interview with Grist, the chief White House environmental advisor, Nancy Sutley of the Council on Environmental Quality, said: “[C]learly coal is a part of our energy mix now and it’s likely to be so in the future… [E]ven if we were to stop using coal tomorrow, it’s used around the world and we have to deal with its environmental impacts.”

Reality check: Of course we must deal with coal’s environmental problems, but the best way to do that is to stop using it. Accepting that coal is part of our future is not the policy that motivates us to find substitutes. And whether we can deal with its environmental impacts is open to question. We don’t yet have and may never find a cost-effective and safe way to permanently sequester huge amounts of carbon dioxide from coal. If the technology ever is perfected, it will significantly increase the price of electric power from coal, while the price of power from renewable resources is coming down.

Then there’s mountain top removal and all the other environmental damages and carbon emissions associated with extraction and production (See No. 7 below). Let’s shoot for an international climate agreement that sets specific near-term targets for phasing out coal power, along with an aggressive program to replace it worldwide first with natural gas, then with renewable low-carbon fuels.

Head on over to WorldChanging for the rest, which includes statements about domestic oil production, mountaintop coal removal, putting a price on carbon and more.

Link [WorldChanging]
Photo credit: Flickr user dullhunk

We can always count on DeSmogBlog to call out the lies of global warming deniers – and explain why they’re wrong in a way that’s easy to understand, and backed up by facts. They’ve done it again with the “30,000 Global Warming Petition” that’s being touted by skeptics as evidence that the scientific community shares their doubts about anthropogenic global warming.

Kevin Grandia delves into the petition’s sordid beginnings, the inability to verify any of the identities of the so-called ‘experts’ that signed the petition and the fact that out of all the signers, only .001% actually have a background in climatology – 39 out of 30,000.

When I think I’m having chest pains I don’t go to Dermatologist, I go to a Cardiologist because it would be absurd to go to skin doctor for a heart problem. It would be equally absurd to look to a scientist with a background in Medicine (of which there are 3,046 on the petition) for an expert opinion on the science of climate change. With science broken down into very narrow specialties a scientific expert in one specialty does not make that person an automatic authority in all things science.

In this way the logic of the 30,000 petition is completely flawed, which isn’t surprising given its questionable beginnings.

The petition and the documents included were all made to look like official papers from the prestigious National Academy of Science. They weren’t, and this attempt to mislead has been well-documented.

Along with the petition there was a cover letter from Dr. Fred Seitz (who has since deceased) a notorious climate change denier (and big tobacco scientist), who over 30 years ago was the president of the National Academy of Science.

Read more about why this petition reeks of bullshit over at DeSmogBlog.

Link [DeSmogBlog]

The climate bill that many environmentalists have decried as weak and ineffectual is being touted by right-wing pundits as a vast conspiracy to take their money (shocking, eh?). The usual suspects – Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin – are frothing at the mouth and waving pitchforks over the prospect of the bill being passed in the Senate.

From the NRDC Switchboard:

Among the most unhinged of the commentators has been the venerable Rush Limbaugh.  According to this host, the Waxman-Markey legislation should be called “Madoff-Waxman-Markey” because “this bill is a con game.”  You can see the Dittohead in Chief bloviate here courtesy of our friends at Media Matters.

In case you think Rush was alone in being off his rocker in comparing some of America’s most visionary lawmakers with the nation’s most notorious financial crook, check out Mr. Sensitivity, Glenn Beck’s rantings.

Beck suggests that lawmakers and the mainstream media have somehow colluded to use the death of Michael Jackson (!) to keep the public’s attention off climate change.   I promise you that we are not making this up:

“… it pays for everyone to be extra-vigilant.  Who stands to benefit from cap and trade? Why do we need to do it now? What does a ‘green banking center’ have to do with cooling the Earth?  And, most importantly, is there still a chance to stop this insanity in the Senate or will our politicians there simply wait for the next celebrity death before once again convening in the middle of the night to sell America out to highest bidder?”

Even worse is Michelle Malkin’s witch hunt, complete with wanted poster, of the eight GOP senators who have dared to support a cap-and-trade solution to climate change.

The NRDC goes on to question the legality/morality of shady campaigns by the Fox News-fueled “Tea Party Patriots” – be sure to give it a read.

But, when it comes down to it, the motivations of each side are telling. For what purpose, ultimately, would people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin raise hell over a climate bill that doesn’t even measure up to the standards of environmentalists? Simple – getting attention, so they can make more money.

On the other hand, we dastardly environmentalists act out of the greedy desire to prevent humans from making the world uninhabitable for our own kind (as well as millions of other species). We’re so evil, aren’t we?

Link [NRDC Switchboard]

Republicans have spent the last couple months circulating false claims about how much the House climate change bill would cost consumers, with estimates skyrocketing into the ridiculous. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann recently claimed that the cost of climate action would be between $3,128 and $4,000 per household, and called for “armed and dangerous” opposition against climate action.

The Congressional Budget Office has put an end to all of the partisan speculation, confirming that climate change legislation would cost the average household a mere $175 a year by 2020, with the poorest 20% of households actually netting $40 annually.

From The Washington Post:

The costs would result from higher prices for carbon-based fuels, offset by a complex series of tax breaks and free allowances, new technologies and behavioral changes, and impacts on corporations and their profits.

The CBO, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, said it did not take into account any indirect benefits of slowing climate change, which are substantial but difficult to quantify.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman  Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the CBO report shows that his bill is “effective and affordable.”  Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), the bill’s lead co-sponsor, said it showed that the cost would be about the same as a postage stamp a day for the average household.

But Michael Steel, a spokesman for House  Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said that the CBO analysts “got an unrealistically low number for cost per family because they didn’t factor in the millions of American jobs that will move overseas if the United States imposes this tax and our foreign competitors, like China and India, do not. I don’t know what color the sky is in a world where that won’t happen, but I’m sure you can ask the unicorns.”

Boehner’s office is hardly known for responsible and accurate number crunching. It was Boehner who initially claimed the $3,128 – $4,000 figure, citing some math done using a study by an MIT professor on a two-year-old cap and trade bill. But John Reilly, who conducted the study, says Boehner inflated the cost 10-fold by ignoring the offsetting benefits.

Eh, you know how it is. You can smell the desperation of Republican lawmakers from a mile away. They’ll do anything to con Americans into siding with them.

Link [The Washington Post]
Photo credit: [Jezebel] + [Esquire]