Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. At a campaign stop in Iowa Monday night, Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) claimed that the Obama administration is "trying to scare people" about natural gas fracking. He told the attendees of a house party in Cedar Rapids that natural gas drilling with hydraulic fracturing has never damaged groundwater, and expressed concern that Iowans would miss out on the natural gas boom: You have this administration talking about stopping hydraulic fracking, trying to scare people, saying that hydraulic fracking somehow or other is going to damage the groundwater, and so we've got to stop this. Not one …

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Monday, Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) issued the first policy position of his presidential campaign by asking the White House to issue a "moratorium on regulations across this country": We're calling today on the president of the United States to put a moratorium on regulations across this country, because his regulations, his EPA regulations, are killing jobs all across America. Watch it: "We're sending out a request today asking President Obama to put a moratorium on all regulations," Perry said on WHO radio in Iowa, recorded live by ThinkProgress. Under such a moratorium, the Food and Drug …

Photo: Kevin DooleyCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has watched firsthand the ravages of a warming climate, first as his state's agriculture commissioner (killer droughts and record heat in 1996 and 1998) then as governor (droughts in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, with Texas' hottest July in history). Perry declared the 1996 drought "the worst natural disaster in Texas in the 20th century." He issued an official proclamation to pray for rain this year (it didn't work). However, he argues that climate science is "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart …

Fred Upton.Photo: republicanconferenceCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. A ThinkProgress analysis finds that a majority of the members on the congressional special fiscal committee oppose regulation of global warming pollution. Even with the three House Democrats left to be named, seven of the 12-member committee are known to be climate zombies. Every Republican on the so-called Super Congress, as well as Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), have voted to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) work to limit greenhouse-gas pollution. Most of the Republicans named to the committee are proud torchbearers of global warming denial: Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.): "I do not say …

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Over 80 percent of Americans and over half of the world's population live in cities. By 2050, over 70 percent of the global population is expected to be urban. By then -- less than four decades away -- human civilization needs to be carbon neutral if we are to have any hope of averting catastrophic climate change. Figuring out how to eliminate greenhouse pollution from cities is a necessary component of that challenge. The city of Seattle, a global leader in the fight against climate change, commissioned the Stockholm Environment Institute, Cascadia Consulting Group, and ICF …

Photo: divinenephronCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. The fight against global warming pollution requires the investment of everyone, including the world's multinational corporate giants. Many companies have taken official stances on climate pollution, pledging to reduce their greenhouse footprint in order to reduce the threat of a destabilized climate. However, a number of these same companies are sponsoring toxic, far-right denial of climate science. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pushes an extremist denier agenda throughout the United States, funded in secret by corporations. ThinkProgress has acquired a list of the sponsors of ALEC's 2011 annual meeting, held last week in New …

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. A little more than a year after its negligence led to the despoilment of the Gulf of Mexico, oil giant BP is funding a right-wing lobbying group that opposes regulation of offshore drilling. This week, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is holding its annual meeting in New Orleans, La. ALEC is a political corruption group funded by Koch Industries and other corporations to write legislation for state-level Republican legislators. ThinkProgress has obtained a list of the conference's sponsors, and BP is at the head of the list as a "President" level funder. According to sources, …

Sen. Dick Durbin. Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Sunday night, President Obama claimed his debt ceiling deal would lift the "cloud of uncertainty that hangs over our economy." While he expresses concern for the political weather, the actual weather -- poisoned by carbon pollution -- is growing more devastating. The drastic cuts in federal investment that are requirements of the debt deal will leave the nation in deadly peril from our superheated climate, just as full mobilization is needed. Last week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) brought attention to the deadly scourge of severe weather fueled by climate change, and to the …

We still have plenty of reasons to be alarmed about climate change. Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. The climate denier blogosphere is going mad over a new paper that supposedly "should dramatically alter the global warming debate" by showing that "far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted." The paper [PDF], written by conservative climate scientist Roy Spencer and his University of Alabama colleague William Braswell, finds that "satellite observations and climate models display markedly different behaviors," and posits, with caveats, that there may be "lower climate sensitivity of the real climate system." As LiveScience's Stephanie Pappas …

Photo: OZinOHCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Florida Tea Party members believe that federal efforts to protect manatees from extinction are part of a United Nations conspiracy to place manatee over man. Freshman Rep. Rich Nugent (R-Fla.) is now standing up for the Tea Partiers against the feared manatee overlords, offering an amendment to the FY 2012 Interior and Environment appropriations bill (HR 2584) that would block the creation of a manatee refuge in Citrus County: U.S. Rep. Rich Nugent is asking Congress to withhold funding for a proposed manatee-protection rule involving Crystal River and King's Bay, effectively stopping the rule before …