Earlier this week I pointed to an article on the growing conservative rebellion against McCain's so-called moderate positions, including his proposals for climate change.

Turns out, not surprisingly, that McCain has already surrendered to the Republican base -- fair-weather maverick that he is -- and won't do anything meaningful to combat climate change if elected president.

By gutting his cap and trade proposal, McCain has revealed that when it comes to climate change, he's all no talk and no action.

Mark Matson makes a good point:

McCain is honestly clueless enough to be worried about global warming without realizing he is against every possible solution.

As McCain would say, that's not change.

A Siegel (via Stoller) reports:

According to Washington Post reporting, the coal industry is using an Astroturf organization, the Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, to wage a $35 million dollar effort to gain traction in the 2008 Presidential campaign for a more polluting future for America and the Globe....

ABEC is paying people to be at campaign events, in human billboards, and giving out leaflets at events. They have sponsored Presidential debates (here also).  They even had Santas giving out “Clean Coal” (reminder: that is ’somewhat less dirty coal’) at the Metro stations by the US Congress.

I've been encountering these ABEC folks around the web in my work to stop mountaintop removal coal mining at IloveMountains.org.

If $35 million in astroturf money isn't enough to convince you that 2008 is a defining year for coal, maybe their incredibly tactless website will:

[The ABEC website features an] array of young people, many of whom appear to be under 10 years of age, enlighten visitors about the happy, hunky-dory world of coal. Alicia sets down her book bag to explain how coal and environmentalism go hand in hand, while young Sarah tells how we have more energy in the form of coal than the Middle East has in oil. “I’m doing my homework,” she says. “You do yours too.”

You can "do your homework" by checking out the high cost of coal or discovering your power company's connection to mountaintop removal coal. If you like what you see, please join us in the fight.

$35 million is a lot of money, but not enough, perhaps, if you're on the wrong side of history.

This is just silly, and indicative of why Detroit is an empty shell of what it once was.

Rolling out the new Corvette at the Detroit auto show, chief engineer Tadge Juechter comments on the new energy bill by lamenting that "High-performance vehicles such as this may actually be legislated out of existence."

Preposterous, when, for the same amount of cash as a new Corvette, you can buy this all electric roadster, which, glad to say, is made in America.

But it's not made in Detroit.

For the past eighteen months or so, I've been working with the talented staff over at Appalachian Voices on the iLoveMountains.org campaign, using the web to raise awareness of the national tragedy that is mountaintop removal coal mining.

We've just launched a new webtool called My Connection that's worth checking out.

Ever think that mountaintop removal coal mining is just a regional issue, only effecting the people of Appalachia?

My Connection allows you to type in your ZIP code and find out if your utility sells electricity produced with coal mined from mountaintops in Appalachia.

Chances are, it does. No matter where we live, we're all connected. And that means we all have a responsibility to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

So check it out, and add your voice to the more than 23,000 Americans who have already pledged to end mountaintop removal.

Technorati Tags: global warming, energy, Google Earth, environment, conservation,

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Reasons to be relieved #233:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Sen. Barbara Boxer on Thursday promised major policy shifts on global warming, air quality and toxic-waste cleanup as she prepares to head the U.S. Senate's environmental committee.

''Time is running out, and we need to move forward on this,'' Boxer said of global warming during a conference call with reporters. ''The states are beginning to take steps, and we need to take steps as well.''

Boxer's elevation to chairwoman of the Senate Environmental Public Works Committee comes as the Democrats return to power in the Senate. It also marks a dramatic shift in ideology for the panel.

The California Democrat is one of the Senate's most liberal members and replaces one of the most conservative senators, Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma. Inhofe had blocked bills seeking to cut the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming, calling the issue ''the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people.''

Environmentalists were overjoyed at the change.

''That's like a tsunami hit the committee,'' said Karen Steuer, who heads government affairs at the National Environmental Trust, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. ''You can't find two members or people more ideologically different.'...

On global warming, Boxer said she would model federal legislation after a California law signed this summer by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. That law imposes the first statewide cap on greenhouse gases and seeks to cut California's emissions by 25 percent, dropping them to 1990 levels by 2020.

A top environmental aide at the White House signaled Thursday that the administration would work with Boxer.

It's a long way to go to pass a bill that is effective enough, of course. But at least now we can have a Congress that understands that the only great hoax that has been perpetrated on the American people in regards to global warming has been Inhofe himself.

The NYT (hat tip to Ed) has a good article on religious opposition to mountaintop removal mining:

Ms. Chapman-Crane, her colleagues at the Mennonite Central Committee Appalachia and other Appalachian Christians are trying to halt mountaintop removal, and at the heart of their work, they say, is their faith.

They are part of an awakening among religious people to environmental issues, said Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, an interreligious alliance. Increasingly, religious people across denominations are organizing around local issues, like preventing a landfill, preserving wetlands and changing mining.

“People of faith are thinking afresh about human place and purpose in the greater web of life,” Mr. Gorman said. “They are asking, What does it mean to be present in a crisis of God’s creation made by God’s children?”

Although Christian environmental activists speak out against mountaintop removal at different levels of government, many believe that showing the practice’s toll will persuade others to join them in seeking stricter regulation of it, if not an outright ban.

The scope of destruction caused by mountaintop removal mining is nearly impossible to imaging for those who haven't seen it, which is one of the reasons I worked with a group called Appalachian Voices to create ILoveMountains.org, which uses Google Earth and satellite mapping to allow users to "fly through" the more than 450 mountains in the United States that have already been destroyed by mountaintop removal mining.

Another feature we created to help people understand the scale of mountaintop removal projects are city tours that overlay mountaintop removal sites on top of maps of major cities. (New York City is in the image above left; click on the image to play a video that "lifts" a mountaintop removal site from West Virginia and lays it over Manhattan.)

You can also see the overlay in this introductory video:

So what can you do to end the practice? Start by adding your voice to the more than 2,600 Americans who have already pledged to help end mountaintop removal mining. Then, take a moment to forward a YouTube clip or invite your friends and family to join you in the effort after you've signed up.

While we're on the subject of wildlife (which, let's face it, is probably a far more worthwhile topic than anything in the news today), the New York Times today has a good article on the reappearance of the jaguar in southern Arizona and New Mexico:

Using the same clandestine routes as drug smugglers, male jaguars are crossing into the United States from Mexico.

Four of the elusive cats have been photographed in the last decade — one as recently as last February — in the formidable, rugged mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

And while no one knows exactly how many jaguars are here, or how long they hang around before sneaking back to their breeding grounds in Mexico, their presence has set off repercussions on both sides of the border.

At least 10 organizations are working to protect the jaguar in one or both countries. Conservationists are developing incentives to stop bounty hunters in Mexico from killing the big cats. Cameras have been set up near the border to monitor jaguar comings and goings and, inadvertently, the movements of “mules,” or drug runners.

Some environmentalists are pressing federal officials to declare parts of Arizona and New Mexico critical habitat for jaguars. But local ranchers and many jaguar experts say such a move is unnecessary because the animals show no signs of breeding here.

And then there is the fence. If the Border Patrol builds a 700-mile barrier in the region to deter illegal immigration, the natural corridors used by jaguars and other migratory wildlife will be cut off.

This piece from Sunday's New York Times is one of the saddest things I've read in a long time:

‘‘Everybody pretty much agrees that the relationship between elephants and people has dramatically changed,’’ Bradshaw told me recently. ‘‘What we are seeing today is extraordinary. Where for centuries humans and elephants lived in relatively peaceful coexistence, there is now hostility and violence. Now, I use the term ‘violence’ because of the intentionality associated with it, both in the aggression of humans and, at times, the recently observed behavior of elephants.’’

For a number of biologists and ethologists who have spent their careers studying elephant behavior, the attacks have become so abnormal in both number and kind that they can no longer be attributed entirely to the customary factors. Typically, elephant researchers have cited, as a cause of aggression, the high levels of testosterone in newly matured male elephants or the competition for land and resources between elephants and humans. But in ‘‘Elephant Breakdown,’’ a 2005 essay in the journal Nature, Bradshaw and several colleagues argued that today’s elephant populations are suffering from a form of chronic stress, a kind of species-wide trauma. Decades of poaching and culling and habitat loss, they claim, have so disrupted the intricate web of familial and societal relations by which young elephants have traditionally been raised in the wild, and by which established elephant herds are governed, that what we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture.

It has long been apparent that every large, land-based animal on this planet is ultimately fighting a losing battle with humankind. And yet entirely befitting of an animal with such a highly developed sensibility, a deep-rooted sense of family and, yes, such a good long-term memory, the elephant is not going out quietly. It is not leaving without making some kind of statement, one to which scientists from a variety of disciplines, including human psychology, are now beginning to pay close attention.

Read the whole thing.

While it's far too early to tell how this will play out, this news today out of California has the potential to radically impact the way companies deal with pollution -- and how we as a nation deal with both climate change and the oligarchy of the auto and oil industries:

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California filed suit against Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and three other carmakers on Wednesday, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have cost the state millions of dollars.

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California was the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions.

The lawsuit also names Chrysler Motors Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany's DaimlerChrysler, and the North American units of Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

It is not without precedent for states to attempt to internalize costs and liabilities that are otherwise viewed as externalities by industries -- big tobacco comes to mind, and (in terms of liability) the general aviation industry. But for a state to seek to internalize and recoup those costs from an industry as large and ubiquitous as the auto industry is incredible -- and has potential global repercussions.

This truly could be "astonishing" -- but the devil is in the details, and we've been greenwashed by the Bush administration and its cronies before (anyone driving a hydro car these days?):

President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming, senior Washington sources say.

After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources.

Administration insiders privately refer to the planned volte-face as Mr Bush's "Nixon goes to China moment", recalling how the former president amazed the world after years of refusing to deal with its Communist regime. Hardline global warming sceptics, however, are already publicly attacking the plans.

The rethink follows increasing pressure on the White House from Republican governors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mayors of more than 300 cities, business leaders and Congress.

Over the past few days rumours swept the capital that the "Toxic Texan" would announce his conversion this week, in an attempt to reduce the impact of a major speech tomorrow by Al Gore on solutions to climate change.

The White House denied the timing, but did not deny that a change of policy was on its way. Sources say that the most likely moment is the President's State of the Union address in January.

(Via Political Wire.)