The State Department’s “don’t worry” environmental impact statement for the proposed Keystone XL tarsands pipeline, released late Friday afternoon, was written not by government officials but by a private company in the pay of the pipeline’s owner. The “sustainability consultancy” Environmental Resources Management (ERM) was paid an undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement, which is now an official government document.  The statement estimates, and then dismisses, the pipeline’s massive carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, because, it asserts, the mining and burning of the tar sands is unstoppable.

The department’s contractor-written Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement even says the pipeline will be safe from the climate impacts to which it will contribute.

The documents from the ERM-TransCanada agreement are on the State Department’s website, but payment amounts and other clients and past work of ERM are redacted. In the contract documents, ERM partner Steven J. Koster certifies that his company has no conflicts of interest. He also certifies that ERM has no business relationship with TransCanada or “any business entity that could be affected in any way by the proposed work” (notwithstanding the impact statement contract itself). In a cover letter, Koster promises State Department NEPA Coordinator Genevieve Walker that ERM understands “the need for an efficient and expedited process to meet the demands of the desired project schedule.”

An investigation by Inside Climate News finds that ERM’s report draws from work done by other oil industry contractors, Ensys Energy and ICF International.

Because the impact statement was written by a TransCanada contractor, not by State Department officials, it should come as no surprise that it presents a worldview of a global economy inevitably dependent on dirty fossil fuels that is entirely at odds with the expressed views of Secretary of State John Kerry.

As Secretary of State John Kerry said six years ago, “we’re on an urgent clock” to confront fossil-fueled climate change, which he compared to the threat of nuclear weaponry as a “man-made” and “uncontrolled” weapon with “the ability to change life as we know it on this Earth.” Kerry’s recognition of the scientific necessity to keep global concentrations of carbon dioxide below 450 ppm should preclude the possibility of building a pipeline designed to pump 7 gigatons of carbon dioxide worth of tar sands crude over decades.

According to TransCanada’s paid report, “production of WCSB and Bakken crude oil will proceed with or without the proposed Project.”

As Kerry said last month, “We need to find the courage to leave a far different legacy.”

As President Obama embarks on his second term, many are already discussing his legacy. Will he be the president who stood by while the climate crisis unfolded? Or will he be our generation’s Abraham Lincoln, rallying the nation to tackle the fundamental moral challenge of our time?

The president sounded all the right notes on Monday:

 We will respond to the threat of climate change … knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

But he still hasn’t told us what he plans to do.  And if we’ve learned anything about this president, we need to make him do it. Over 10,000 members of Forecast the Facts have signed our petition to President Obama:

Our Petition: History will judge your presidency by whether or not you acted on climate change. Please deliver on your recent pledge to make climate change a top second term priority by outlining a detailed plan for curbing fossil fuel pollution in your upcoming State of the Union address.

President Obama has been courting Lincoln comparisons from even before he was elected. Obama announced his 2008 candidacy on the steps of the Illinois State House, where Lincoln began his political career. He used Lincoln’s bible when being sworn in for his first term. And he is even giving this year’s State of the Union on Lincoln’s birthday.

Despite the evident ambition, Obama’s climate legacy thus far is muddled. The president is at serious risk of shirking from the central challenge of our time, even as the fields of Kansas burn and the shores of Staten Island flood.

We know President Obama is capable of bold leadership, particularly if current events provide the necessary push. When dozens of children and teachers recently died in the horrible Newtown school shooting, the president rallied the nation and presented a comprehensive plan to address gun violence, urging Congress to pass sweeping legislation, and outlining 23 executive actions he will undertake to reduce gun deaths.

But while scores of Americans died in Hurricane Sandy, while climate disasters continue to rage across the U.S. and the world, while report after report foretells massive societal disruption from fossil-fueled climate change, the president has done little to turn those tragedies and warnings into political will. His stirring Inaugural address was funded with $260,000 from Exxon Mobil. He has still not made a final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. One of his first acts after winning re-election was to sign legislation blocking climate regulations for airlines. It’s time for that to end.

One of President Obama’s favorite refrains is to call on citizens to “make him do it,” to demand action on the issues we care about. Now is our time to make him take action on climate change — by demonstrating that we understand the moral urgency of the climate crisis. Please join us in calling on the president to lay out an ambitious climate agenda in his upcoming State of the Union, and leave no uncertain terms that he plans to lead our country away from the tyranny of fossil fuels.

P.S. for David Roberts: Forecast the Facts members have also been challenging Congress to act and holding their representatives accountable for betraying their future.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

Ethical Electric, a new venture by progressive activist Tom Matzzie, aims to transform how Americans get power. It’s an electricity delivery company that will provide 100 percent renewable electricity to its members, while also mobilizing them on progressive energy and climate action.

In an interview with Sarah Laskow for GOOD, Matzzie describes how he began working on Ethical Electric when his father, who had spent his life downwind of a coal-fired power plant, died of cancer in 2010:

I’d been a supporter of addressing climate change and clean energy as a progressive, but it became much more personal. I didn’t want to spend any more of my money on dirty energy. I wanted to only support 100 percent clean energy.

Laskow explains that Ethical Electric will operate in deregulated electricity markets as a competitive retail electric provider in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, starting this year:

In deregulated electricity markets, delivering power — maintaining the power lines and the infrastructure that make up the grid — and selling power are two different businesses. If all goes as planned, Ethical Electric will sell power sourced from renewable energy projects to customers, starting this fall in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

As the Washington, D.C., director for MoveOn.org, Matzzie mobilized efforts against the Iraq war. He was also director of online organizing for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004 and the online mobilization director at the AFL-CIO from 2000 to 2004.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

The Obama campaign is acting as if it is already in a general-election fight, against a Big Oil-Mitt Romney ticket. In a new ad, President Obama attacks “Big Oil” and Mitt Romney, pushing back against oil-industry campaign ads that accuse Obama of raising gas prices. The front group American Energy Alliance, secretly funded by Koch Industries and other oil giants, is running a $3.6 million ad campaign that criticizes Obama policies that don’t favor the oil-industry agenda. Oil companies have been profiting from American suffering at the gas pump, but they believe they would do even better under a Romney presidency, the new Obama ad argues:

Under President Obama, domestic oil production’s at an eight-year high. So why is Big Oil attacking him? Because he’s fighting to end their tax breaks. He’s raising mileage standards, and doubling renewable energy. In all these fights, Mitt Romney stood with Big Oil, for their tax breaks, attacking higher mileage standards and renewables. So when you see this ad, remember who paid for it and what they want.

Watch the ad:

Because of Citizens United, the spending by Koch-funded front groups on this election is practically unlimited, especially as the oil industry pulls in $200 million more every time the price of gas goes up a penny.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

As long-delayed rules to enforce the Clean Air Act against coal pollution go into force, the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign has launched Mr. Coal Guy, a new social-media campaign with satirical videos that parody the coal industry’s multi-million-dollar advertising campaigns. These videos feature Mr. Coal Guy, played by Mr. Show’s John Ennis, using iconic TV shows from the 1980s to portray coal as fun, hip, and totally safe. In one video, Mr. Coal Guy provides the voice-over to a clip of Bob Ross’ timeless landscape painting to promote mountaintop removal coal mining (“scrapey scrapey good-bye lakey!”):

Another video portrays a coal-executive beach party celebrating “the fact that coal pollution never causes any health problems”:

The $300,000 campaign is “a funny send-up of just how desperate dirty fossil fuel execs are to keep our country chained to the dirty, outdated 19th-century energy source,” says Mary Anne Hitt, the director of the Beyond Coal campaign. The campaign is on Facebook and Twitter at @mrcoalguy.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

Speaking at a high-dollar Chicago fundraiser hosted by Oprah Winfrey as the city basked in June-like weather last week, President Barack Obama admitted to being “a little nervous” about global warming:

“We’ve had a good day,” Obama said. “It’s warm every place. It gets you a little nervous about what’s happening to global temperatures. But when it’s 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March it gets you thinking … ”

“Something’s wrong,” Oprah interjected.

“Yeah,” Obama said. “On other hand we really have enjoyed the nice weather.”

Instead of temperatures in the mid-40s, the historical average, Chicago is in a record-breaking streak of 80-degree-F weather. This “extreme and unprecedented” heat wave began last Wednesday and may continue through this Wednesday. “Before the heat wave, there had only been 10 March days on record that reached 80 degrees, and on average Chicago would see one 80 degree day in March every 14 years,” the Daily Herald reports. Most of the nation has been gripped by a record heat wave of weather as much as 30 to 40 degrees F above normal. Global warming pollution is continuing to accumulate and heat the planet at a rapid pace.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

Mitt Romney’s top individual donor is Environmental Defense Fund board member Julian H. Robertson Jr., who has given $1.3 million to the Romney super PAC Restore Our Future even though Romney has viciously attacked the climate cap-and-trade policies EDF supports. A spokesperson for the hedge-fund billionaire said Robertson is confident Romney would “do the right thing” if elected:

In terms of the environment and climate-change controls, which [Robertson] does believe is one of the most important issues the country and the world faces, he has confidence that Romney, once he’s in there, will do the right thing.

Robertson has been a long-time supporter of Romney, saying he’s “the smartest guy I’ve ever seen” in 2007. Robertson vigorously supported Obama’s cap-and-trade bill in 2009, because of the “danger of global warming.”

If Romney intends to support climate-change controls as president, he certainly hasn’t given any such indication on the campaign trail. Consider these quotes:

“My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.” [10/28/11]

“I can tell you the right course for America with regard to energy policy is to focus on job creation and not global warming.” [11/2/11]

“I do not believe in a cap-and-trade program.” [10/28/11]

“In place of real energy, Obama has focused on an imaginary world where government-subsidized windmills and solar panels could power the economy. This vision has failed.” [3/5/12]

“I would get the EPA out of its effort to manage carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and trucks.” [12/5/11]

Is Romney hiding his true climate agenda? (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Other donors are also betting on a colossal climate flip-flop by Romney, Politico reports, including billionaire Trammel Crow [PDF], Republicans for Environmental Protection President Rob Sisson, and former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean (R). Romney is advised by Greg Mankiw, a conservative Harvard economist who has called for a carbon tax.

However, Team Romney is flush with oil and coal supporters, including oil-shale billionaire Harold Hamm, coal kingpin Bill Koch, tar-sands lobbyist David Wilkins, coal-power lobbyist Jeffrey Holmstead, and coal lobbyist Jim Talent. Coal, oil, and gas companies have contributed at least $1.2 million to Romney’s super PAC.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

Rush Limbaugh continued his bizarre attacks on clean energy innovation Monday, claiming that the solar and wind energy sectors don’t exist. Limbaugh was responding to a ThinkProgress Green post that noted his role in scaring American customers against the Chevy Volt. He has even claimed that GM is “trying to kill its customers.” Attempting to justify his denigration of the extended-range electric vehicle, Limbaugh said that “all of Obama’s green energy” is a mirage (listen here):

The problem with the Volt is just like all of Obama’s green energy, there’s no business there yet. There’s no solar energy business yet. There’s no wind energy yet. It’s not there yet. But we can’t have more oil. We can’t have cheaper gasoline prices.

Limbaugh is wrong. Clean energy isn’t just the future of the 21st century economy, it’s driving the present.

In 2010, global investment in wind, solar, and biomass energy hit $187 billion, exceeding the $157 billion spent on fossil fuel energy. U.S. solar installations more than doubled in 2011. U.S. wind power capacity represents more than 20 percent of the world’s installed wind power. Over 400 manufacturing facilities across the U.S. make components for wind turbines. In July 2011, the Brookings Institute found that the green energy sector has had “explosive job gains” since 2003.

Limbaugh’s attitudes about energy, like his opinions about women, are stuck in the 19th century.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

In an address on energy policy at the University of Miami, President Barack Obama mocked the GOP drumbeat for a drill-baby-drill response to rising gas prices. Noting that “it’s an election year,” Obama alluded to Newt Gingrich’s promise to deliver $2.50 gas with a return of drill-everywhere platform. Obama described the “three-point plans for $2 gas”: “Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling.”

I mean, the American people aren’t stupid. They know that’s not a plan — especially since we’re already drilling. That’s a bumper sticker. It’s not a strategy to solve our energy challenge. That’s a strategy to get politicians through an election. You know there are no quick fixes to this problem. You know we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices. If we’re going to take control of our energy future, and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year when the economy starts getting better, world demand starts increasing, turmoil in the Middle East or some other parts of the world, if we’re going to stop being at the mercy of these world events, then we need a sustained, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy — oil, gas, wind, solar, and nuclear, and biofuels, and more. We need to keep developing the technology that allows us to use less oil in our cars and trucks, less energy for our buildings and our plants and our factories. That’s the strategy we’re pursuing, and that’s the only real solution to this challenge. [Emphasis added.]

Watch it:

In his speech, Obama also noted the role of Wall Street speculators who now dominate oil markets and called for an end to the “outrageous” billions in tax subsidies the massively profitable oil companies receive from the American people.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

The founder of Conservation Hawks, an organization of sportsmen dedicated to fighting climate change, will give up his gun if global warming is a hoax.

“If you can convince Conservation Hawks chairman Todd Tanner that he’s wasting his time, that he does not have to worry about climate change, he will present to you his most prized possession: a Beretta Silver Pigeon 12 gauge over/under that was a gift from his wife, and has been a faithful companion on many a Montana bird hunt,” Hal Herring writes at The Conservationist. “I know the gun, and I’ve hunted and fished with Todd for years. He’s not kidding. You convince him, he’ll give you the gun.” Tanner told The Conservationist:

Let’s say you are walking down a trail in the wilderness with your wife and kids, and you come upon a grizzly sow, standing on a carcass. She charges, flat out. You’re in front of your family. What do you do? Just give up? Pretend it’s not happening? Let her maul you and everything you care about? Of course you don’t. You take action. That is how I see climate change. It’s real, it’s threatening everything we love. Not taking action is not an option.

Tanner rebuffed the argument that action on global warming pollution just means a government takeover. “You want to talk about government intrusion, think about what it means if we don’t address this now while we have the time and resources,” he said. “We will lose the freedoms that we have because somebody — and it will be government — will be in an all-out effort to try and address the effects of our neglect. We’ll face the worst thing of all — losing our freedom. And we’ll already have lost most of hunting and fishing. That’s how serious I believe this is.”

So those of you who deny the threat of global warming — Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Rush Limbaugh, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, David Koch — this could be yours if you can convince Tanner that there’s really just a scientific conspiracy to trick people that greenhouse pollution is dangerous:

A Beretta Silver Pigeon 12 gauge shotgun.