GOP Representative Gregg Harper is quite a charmer. When asked by Politico what the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus does, this Mississippi lawmaker pulled quite a gem of Republican hunting humor out of his butt.

From Treehugger:

While hunters, sportsmen, and trappers across the country are actually helping ‘liberal democrats’ to pass climate legislation, GOP Representative Gregg Harper is talking about murdering them. When Politico asked him what the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus does–Harper is a member–he replied, “We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.”

The remark was given during a routine interview with Politico, in which he not so subtly displayed his distaste for environmentalists and members of the opposite party.

And that’s a pretty grim joke if I’ve heard one. What politician–especially in the age of the omnipresent sound byte–thinks it’s a good idea to talk about killing their political opponents? The punchline of this joke isn’t ‘environmentalist Democrats are stupid’ or backwards, it’s literally that they deserve death. Um, ha?

Asked later about the comment, Harper was unrepentant, stating through his spokesperson that it was supposed to be fun.

The sad thing is, we’d be willing to bet that the majority of the Fox News audience that caught that comment thought it was hilarious. These are people who take Glenn Beck seriously and enjoy watching Larry the Cable Guy. Enough said.

Link [Treehugger]
Photo credit: Boing Boing

Few industries have been spared during the global recession, with many still bracing for things to get worse before they get better. But farmers in Bulgaria have found a product that is seemingly recession-proof: snails. The cost to raise them is low and demand is so high, farmers can’t keep up with orders.

From MSNBC:

Businesses may shut by the day across Europe, and Bulgarian agriculture has been declining for 20 years, but snails — a delicacy particularly popular in France and Italy — have become a dynamic niche for the European Union’s poorest country.

September is harvest season and demand is outstripping supply for “escargots”, as the French call them (”ohlyuvi” in Bulgarian). The country has seized the chance to reinforce a position exporting luxury foods that are rarely consumed at home.

About 800 to 900 tons of snails and snail products — six times more than in 2008 — will be exported from Bulgaria this year to please the palates of aficionados, mostly in France.

300 new snail farms are set to open in Bulgaria next year as orders come in from all over Europe. People are really hungry for some snails.

Hey, sometimes tradition trumps smart spending, and people want little luxuries these days. Though why disgusting little slimy creatures are a luxury, I’ll never know.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user AussieGall

What’s more important – actual facts, or talking points filled with false figures designed to knock down the competition at any cost? To the GOP, it’s clearly the latter. They’ve never been known for fighting fair, but in the past year or so the Republican Party has apparently decided that anything goes, with a series of jaw-droppingly dirty tactics centered upon outright lies and propaganda.

So, it’s not too surprising that eight GOP politicians are continuing to parrot talking points about the supposed costs of climate legislation, despite the fact that they’ve been repeatedly proven false. The $1,761 figure is an inflated estimate of the cost of a bill that was never even considered by Congress.

Hell, in the right-wing sphere, claims made on the news don’t have to have any basis in truth whatsoever. ThinkProgress has a great rundown on the process used to spread these false figures (via The Huffington Post):

STEP ONE: “News” generated by right-wing think tank.

STEP TWO: Right-wing print journalists write “breaking news” story.

STEP THREE: Promoted by Drudge, story repeated endlessly on right-wing blogs, Twitter, and talk radio.

STEP FOUR: Republican politicians, right-wing think tanks, and polluter front groups release statements of shock and outrage.

STEP FIVE: On Fox News, Glenn Beck calls President Obama a liar/socialist/Marxist/communist/fascist/racist.

Josh Nelson of EnviroKnow listed the many politicians who have repeated the false figure including Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. James Inhofe, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Rep. Roy Blunt, Rep. Fred Upton, Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence. Check out the details at The Huffington Post – it’s truly sickening.

The GOP is happy to use any means necessary to protect their wealth and power against any perceived threat, real or imaginary. But who cares about climate change or health care as long as Republicans can keep their Hummers and McMansions?

Link [ThinkProgress] + [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Flickr user Ingrid Taylar

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says that CO2 will be declared a dangerous pollutant within a few months. This move could help push climate change legislation through Congress at a pace slightly faster than that of a melting iceberg.

A formal “endangerment finding” would force the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act regardless of whether Congress passes a final climate change bill. Top senators have recently declared that they plan to delay introducing legislation that would cap carbon emissions.

From SF Gate:

The EPA kick-started the regulatory process in April when it proposed declaring carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases as pollutants that jeopardize the public health and welfare. EPA scientists believe the greenhouse gases contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The EPA can formalize the finding anytime, now that it has closed a 60-day public comment period that netted more than 300,000 responses.

President Obama and Jackson have said they would prefer that Congress – rather than the EPA – take the lead in implementing new greenhouse gas limits. Businesses and energy industry leaders also have largely favored congressional action over EPA-imposed limits, because they believe lawmakers are better positioned to combine economic safeguards with any new carbon cap.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases qualified as pollutants and could be regulated, if the government were to determine that they threatened the public.

No doubt, this news will immediately cause opponents of climate change action to howl about CO2 being the source of life on this planet, and predict fines for exhaling. “Everybody hold your breath!” Har har har.

Common sense should tell these people that such a fear is absurd, but you know what they say about common sense. Climate change deniers don’t have any.

Link [SF Gate]

The Sierra Club has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate lobbying firm Bonner & Associates to see if it has faked letters to other legislators in the past after the firm was caught forging anti-climate bill letters.

Bonner & Associates sent letters purporting to be from two West Virginia minority groups to Rep. Tom Perriello in an attempt to trick him into voting against the Waxman-Markey climate bill that narrowly passed in the House last month. It didn’t work – Perriello voted for the bill anyway – but, the Sierra Club asks, how many other faked letters has this firm sent out?

From the Sierra Club’s letter to the Attorney General, via Treehugger:

Dear Attorney General Holder,

I am writing to urge you to initiate an investigation into the recent, apparently illegal activities of Bonner & Associates, a consulting firm located in Washington, D.C. In June of 2009 Bonner & Associates, on behalf of an unspecified client, sent letters via fax machine to the offices of U.S. Representative Tom Perriello. These letters purported to come from community organizations within Rep. Perriello’s Congressional district – including Creciendo Juntos and the Charlottesville, Virginia chapter of the NAACP – and utilized the letterhead of these organizations.

…The letters were sent without authorization of any representative of the community organizations. The individuals whose names and signatures appear on the letters do not exist.

…On behalf of Sierra Club, I therefore urge you to initiate an investigation into Bonner & Associates. First, the Department of Justice should ascertain whether forged letters were sent to other Representatives or Senators. Second, the Department of Justice should investigate whether other community organizations were similarly misrepresented.

That ‘unspecified client’ has turned out to be none other than the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a front group for the coal industry. ACCCE claims not to have known about the tactics, saying in a press release “we are outraged at the conduct of Bonner & Associates”.

The Sierra Club, for one, isn’t buying it. They ran a full-page advertisement today in CQ, The Hill, Politico, Roll Call, and the National Journal’s Congress Daily AM. Treehugger reports that the ad says “When Dirty-Energy Washington Lobbyists couldn’t get any real-life supporters to defeat comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation, they made them up instead.”

Read the full letter from the Sierra Club to the DOJ (PDF) as well as ACCCE’s full response to the controversy.

Link [Treehugger]
Photo credit: Flickr user david drexler

As Greenpeace activists fight for action on global warming in Italy during the G8 Summit, climate change legislation here in the States faces an even tougher challenge. After passing in the House last week, President Obama’s climate change bill will likely see major erosion of environmental goals by the time the Senate is through with it.

Democrats had hoped to get some GOP support for the bill, but any votes coming from the other side of the aisle – and, indeed, from some lawmakers in their own party – would likely come at the expense of several key points in the bill.

From The Washington Post:

Senators will weigh a slew of potential compromises — everything from allowing more offshore drilling for oil and natural gas to increasing funding for nuclear energy — that they think would inch the package closer to passage. But environmental activists warn that the 1,400-page House version of the bill already includes so many giveaways to corporate America that more horse-trading in the Senate could lead them to oppose the final version.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) is counting on a handful of committee chairs to complete their portion of the legislation, which would create a cap-and-trade system, requiring major greenhouse gas emitters to either reduce their emissions or buy allowances.

As of today, Reid can count on the support of about 40 to 45 senators for that basic premise, according to aides and outside activists backing the legislation. Supporters are targeting a pool of roughly two dozen lawmakers — including about 15 of Reid’s Democrats — who will determine the legislation’s fate.

Democrats from the Rust Belt states of West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan are pushing for more incentives to help their depressed industries shift to alternative energy sources. The same senators also will likely want more funding for carbon capture and sequestration, a controversial and still-evolving technology described by its developers as “clean coal” but derided by many environmentalists. The technology is already slated for $10 billion in government-funded research in legislation that passed the House. A trio of Democrats from the Dakotas want more funding for wind power.

The only likely backers of the bill in the GOP are moderate Maine senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. In order to get more GOP support, the bill would have to include funding for nuclear options.

The bill is expected to hit the Senate floor sometime in the fall. By the time they’re done with it, however, the bill will likely be so diluted and full of concessions that environmentalists will want nothing to do with it.

This could get ugly. We envision Jerry Springer-like ‘Bitch, I’ll tear out yo weave’ cat fights over various interests – which would be fun, if it weren’t for the whole ‘the world is at stake’ thing.

Link [The Washington Post]

President Obama has lived up to his word on greening the federal fleet, ordering 14,105 fuel-efficient vehicles worth $210 million. The vehicles will be paid for with funds from the Recovery Act. The U.S. General Services Administration said that it ordered the vehicles from GM, Chrysler and Ford last week.

From GreenBiz.com:

“GSA is committed to spending Recovery dollars quickly and wisely,” Commissioner James A. Williams of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service said in a statement. “Simultaneously, we are focused on acquiring vehicles that will provide long-term environmental benefits and savings by increasing the fuel efficiency of the federal fleet.”

On March 30, Obama directed his administration to purchase about 17,600 commercially available, fuel efficient vehicles from American auto companies by June 1, to use funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — and to get the job done swiftly to boost the nation’s auto industry and replace aging vehicles with greener ones.

As Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, the vehicle orders is “good for our economy, good for our workers, and good for our environment”. Way to go green and give people jobs at the same time – a fantastic way to approach both the economic and climate crises.

Link [GreenBiz.com]
Photo credit: The Huffington Post

How low can the GOP go? The battered party is struggling with an identity crisis as millions of its members jump ship, and its scattered cast of current ‘leaders’ is making things even worse. The remarks that came out of Texas Rep. Joe Barton’s mouth on Tuesday morning illustrate the sort of dumbfounding stupidity – or perhaps willful refusal to accept the facts – that has come to define the Republican party.

Rep. Barton, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, claims that we shouldn’t be concerned at all about carbon emissions. After all, CO2 is in our Coca-Cola!

“It’s odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn’t cause cancer, doesn’t cause asthma… there’s nobody that’s ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning.” Stunning logic there, Congressman!

The Economist said it best:

Please don’t get me wrong, it’s not simply that Mr Barton is a climate-change sceptic. There are plenty of those and some make decent arguments against moving ahead with measures to control emissions. The problem with Mr Barton is that he is wholly uninterested in the science and statistics of the global warming debate. He is about as curious as a dead cat, as is his colleague in the Senate, James Inhofe.

Link [The Huffington Post] + [The Economist]

From CNN, via The Good Human:

The measure passed 275-155 in a largely party-line vote, and will now move to the Senate for further review.

Among other things, the bill allocates substantial funds for improvements along the Gulf Coast, where many school districts are still struggling to repair buildings damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The committee says the bill would require that 100 percent of the funds go toward green projects by 2015, which is the final year of funding under the bill.

“All students and teachers deserve safe and healthy learning environments, but too often, their schools are literally falling apart,” said Rep. George Miller, D-California, who is the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee and one of the bill’s sponsors.

“This legislation is a victory for students, workers and our planet. It will help improve educational opportunities and boost student achievement, it will help transition us toward a green economy by making our classrooms more environmentally friendly,” he said.

Of course, Republicans criticized the high cost, never able to look beyond today and see what tomorrow will bring. They also have a problem with the ‘increasing role of federal government’, claiming that the power to construct and renovate schools is a ‘fundamental right’ of state government.

It’s easy for old, rich white men whose grandchildren are more than likely enrolled in private schools to complain about such things while millions of school kids sit in public schools with sagging roofs, mold in the walls, peeling vinyl floors and other major problems. The American Society of Engineers says that one-third of America’s schools need extensive repair or replacement. This $6.4 billion is just a small fraction of the $112 billion the ASE says is needed to bring the nation’s public schools into an overall good condition.

Rachel Gutter of the U.S. Green Building Council emphasizes the benefits:

“The typical green school saves $100,000 a year on direct operating expenses. In school terms, that’s enough to hire two new teachers, purchase 200 new computers or 5,000 textbooks,” Gutter said.

“So these are major savings. And that’s just one year. The typical school lasts 40 years. And when you do the math, it starts to become some serious savings. … It pays for itself after a few years of operation.”

Link [CNN] via [The Good Human]
Photo credit: Flickr user woodleywonderworks

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer who has spent much of her career defending major polluters to a sensitive environmental post.

Yes, you read that correctly.

If you feel like you’re experiencing an especially vivid and painful flashback to the days of former President Bush’s environmental follies, you’re not alone. It was common Bush administration practice to put the fox in charge of the hen house. The term ‘conflict of interest’ was seemingly meaningless to an administration that put nepotism ahead of the interests of the people and the land.

But it’s not something that most liberals would expect from President Obama, who has sought to separate himself from such practices.

From Think Progress:

On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“: Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create.

Before General Electric, Moreno worked as a corporate attorney at Spriggs and Hollingsworth. Moreno’s name is found in the Westlaw database as an attorney defending General Motors in another Superfund case, the GM Powertrain facility in Bedford, Indiana: Historical uses and management of PCB containing hydraulic oils and PCB impacted materials has contaminated on-site areas as well as the sediment and floodplain soil within Bailey’s Branch and the Pleasant Run Creek watershed.

If confirmed, Moreno will be in charge of the office that enforces environmental laws and defends federal regulations in lawsuits. Her experience lies in defending polluters, not enforcing environmental justice. And considering the particularly heinous nature of the crimes she has defended – like GM’s PCBs – can she really be expected to do the right thing?

Some say that Moreno’s industry experience could actually help her enforce the law, including Eric Schaeffer, director of the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. Schaeffer, who resigned as chief of the EPA’s enforcement office in 2002 in protest of the Bush administration’s enforcement tactics, thinks that Moreno can use her knowledge to the government’s advantage. But who’s to say that Moreno has had a change of heart?

It’s an understatement to say that environmentalists are concerned about this nomination. I think ‘sputtering outrage’ more accurately captures the general sentiment. We expect better than this from President Obama.

Link [Think Progress] + [The New York Times]
Photo credit: The Daily Mail