President-elect Obama’s remarks should quiet any remaining suspicions that his campaign pledges — the strongest energy and environmental platform by a presidential candidate ever — were merely fleeting campaign promises to be discarded after Election Day. (Though it should have long since been clear to anyone paying attention that Obama is very serious about clean energy.) Obama said over and over during the campaign that energy would be priority number one. Tuesday’s message left no doubt that his administration is committed to strong domestic and international efforts to combat global warming and that he will make the serious investments needed to make the clean energy future a reality. Watch here. Excerpts below.

My presidency will mark a new chapter in America’s leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process.

That will start with a federal cap and trade system. We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them an additional 80% by 2050.

Further, we will invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future. We will invest in solar power, wind power, and next generation biofuels. We will tap nuclear power, while making sure it’s safe. And we will develop clean coal technologies.

This investment will not only help us reduce our dependence on foreign oil, making the United States more secure. And it will not only help us bring about a clean energy future, saving our planet. It will also help us transform our industries and steer our country out of this economic crisis by generating five million new green jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.

These remarks come after similarly positive comments during Obama’s “60 Minutes” interview, the first since he was elected. Both pre- and post-election, the media has relentlessly pushed the idea that the economic downturn will force Obama to abandon his ambitious progressive agenda on everything from energy and climate to healthcare reform. Steve Kroft proved no exception, but Obama’s answer underscored his exceptional commitment to clean energy, green jobs, and a sustainable economic recovery. You can watch the whole interview here, but here’s the relevant section:

Kroft: When the price of oil was at $147 a barrel, there were a lot of spirited and profitable discussions that were held on energy independence. Now you’ve got the price of oil under $60.

Mr. Obama: Right.

Kroft: Does doing something about energy is it less important now than …

Mr. Obama: It’s more important. It may be a little harder politically, but it’s more important.

Kroft: Why?

Mr. Obama: Well, because this has been our pattern. We go from shock to trance. You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it’s not important, and we start, you know filling up our SUVs again.

And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It’s part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.

Change has come my friends — and in a big way. Plain and simple: Obama gets it when it comes to energy. And most importantly, he gets that clean energy is the only way to dig ourselves out of the economic morass in which George Bush’s failed policies have left us.

Obama has set a high bar, provided exceptional leadership, and struck a bipartisan tone. Now it’s time for the new Congress to do everything it can help the new administration met these lofty but essential goal. Our economy and our planet are depending on it.

This resurrects an old, discredited claim made this summer in the original "Celeb" ad. (Remember when we thought that was as low as the McCain camp could go?) It has been thoroughly debunked by FactCheck.org:

McCain’s new ad claims that Obama "says he’ll raise taxes on electricity." That’s false. Obama says no such thing.

McCain relies on a single quote from Obama who once – and only once so far as we can find – suggested taxing "dirty energy," including coal and natural gas. That was in response to a reporter’s suggestion that a tax on wind power could fund education. Obama isn’t proposing any new tax on electricity or "dirty energy" as part of his platform, and he never has.

It’s true that a coal/gas tax would raise electric rates, but so would a cap-and-trade program to restrict carbon emissions. Cap-and-trade is an idea that both McCain and Obama support, in different forms. Neither candidate characterizes cap-and-trade as a "tax."

It’s interesting that they throw in the claim about home heating oil to make it fresh as colder temperatures (and skyrocketing bills for home heating) draw near. Since 2005, McCain has voted against funding for the Low Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP) at least five times. In fact, just before the August recess his Republican colleagues in the Senate blocked attempts to double funding for the program.

In case you’ve forgotten what it was like when the McCain campaign was only petty, not petty, dishonest, and nasty, here’s the ad from this summer:

She quickly made a name for herself after being elected to Congress in 2006. In fact, she gained some dubious notoriety even before being elected, announcing to a Brooklyn Park, Minnesota congregation in October 2006 that "God then called [her] to run for the United States Congress."

If possibly violating election laws weren’t enough, Bachmann really upped the ante once she got to D.C. Following the 2007 State of the Union speech, she got an autograph from President Bush as he was exiting the House Chamber and then infamously held onto his shoulder for over 30 seconds until she could lean back in for a kiss on the lips:

Bachmann began this week with their tactic du jour, a malicious attack upon Nancy Pelosi (e.g. Minority Leader Boehner recently said that the American people would “hang” Pelosi over offshore drilling). Bachmann put her own special twist on the attack by making reference to a recent comment by Pelosi that she is “trying to save the planet” and “will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.” Bachmann’s unbelievable retort? We don’t need Nancy Pelosi, Jesus already saved the planet:

[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.

Bachmann followed this up later in the week, appearing on CNN to say that following a trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, she thinks that it’s “the most perfect place on the planet to drill.” Watch it:

Two months ago, she claimed that caribou would just love more drilling and pipelines, saying that pipelines have “become a meeting ground and ‘coffee klatch’ for the caribou.”

And it’s not just drilling that Bachmann is confused about. Last month, during an appearance on harpy cum right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham’s show, she complained that the Democrats were hypocrites when it comes to renewable energy:

They’re so strange Laura, they won’t even pass the tax credit for solar and wind right now. I mean, they claim to be the big solar/wind people, they won’t even pass that.

It is of course actually Senate conservatives, led by Senator John McCain, that have blocked the clean energy tax incentives, forcing Congressional leaders to hold more than a dozen votes on the issue in the hopes of avoiding 116,000 layoffs [PDF] in the wind and solar industries alone.

Conservatives blocked the Senate from even taking up the incentives twice in as many days the week just before Congress went on recess. What’s more, Bachmann herself joined 159 other conservatives in voting against the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act when it last came up in the House. She also voted against repealing Big Oil’s tax breaks (several times), against a Renewable Electricity Standard, and against the first increase in fuel economy standards in over 30 (twice).

And just to round out this week’s energy idiocy from House conservatives, I give you Rep. Bill Sali of Idaho: “there could be up to 40 barrels of oil in a single tree.”

Knock on wood that Nancy Pelosi is in charge of the House and doesn’t take such “hoaxes” lying down.

[editor's note, by Josh Dorner]:Forgot to thank my friends at ThinkProgress for pulling together all of these great videos. So thanks!

Carbon County, in a poetic turn, is now set to host the second largest solar facility in the nation. State Rep. Keith McCall (D-Carbon) is working with Green Energy Capital Partners to bring the Pennsylvania Solar Park to the area. At 10.6 megawatts, it will avoid some 320,000 tons of carbon emissions over its lifetime. It will be the largest of its kind in Pennsylvania and the second largest in the country.

Other changes are also afoot in the region. Weatherly (one of the boroughs in Carbon County) recently applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a permit to install a turbine at an existing dam on the Lehigh River. It would be enough to meet all of the borough’s electricity needs. The New York Times reported in June that neighboring Schuylkill County was considering switching from sacrosanct anthracite to cleaner-burning natural gas — another energy source on the rise in the state and across the country thanks to new discoveries and new methods of extracting it from shale formations — to fuel the county’s boilers.

Though coal may putatively (and politically) remain king in many areas of the country — particularly in Appalachia, the number of people employed in coal mining has plunged. Coal employment in Pennsylvania, for example, peaked at 121,000 in 1942 and hovers at just 8,000 today. The tenacious and powerful United Mine Workers had half a million members in the 1950s, today it is left with just 86,600 members and now represents just 42 percent of the workers in the industry. The loss of jobs in the coal industry has not only brought deepening economic hardship to Appalachia, but since it has come in no small measure as result of mountaintop removal mining it has also wrought environmental disaster. Here’s what the Goreacle himself had to say about this “atrocity” at Netroots Nation:

By contrast, renewable energy is bringing new opportunities to economically depressed communities, including parts of Pennsylvania that were decimated by the collapse of the steel industry. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Gov. Ed Rendell (D) (and smart policies like a state Renewable Electricity Standard and other incentives), Gamesa, the Spanish wind company, has located four factories and its North American headquarters in Pennsylvania — creating over 1,000 new, union-represented jobs and over $1 billion in U.S. sales in under four years. Smart policy played a pivotal role in luring the company, as wind-rich [PDF] Minnesota lost out to wind-mediocre Pennsylvania in the competition for the company’s HQ and first factory in part because Minnesota had no state RES at the time. Rendell’s efforts have lured numerous other renewable energy projects — with some 10,000 new jobs — to the state.

If Carbon County can kick the habit, then who can’t?

1. 100 percent wind power is now cheaper than dirty electricity in Texas.

If folks didn’t know before that Texas was wind central, then T. Boone Pickens and his $58 million worth of ads have probably fixed that. The state is the nation’s wind leader with 5,249 megawatts of wind (one-third of the U.S. total) and a whopping 18,000 more on the way. I nearly fell over, however, when my oilman father announced that they had switched to 100 percent wind power because it was cheaper. Given that their more or less typical for Texas suburban house usually sucks down almost $400 worth of juice each month in the summer (read: March-October), cost is king and wind’s relative cheapness makes clean power extremely appealing. (Rates have shot up dramatically in recent years due to Texas’ disastrous, George Bush-championed electricity deregulation.)

There are more than twenty 100 percent renewable power offers available in their service area, ranging in price from 15.6 to 22.1 cents/kWh. Dirty power ranges 14.8 cents to a high of 23.6 cents/kWh for Reliant Energy plan with just 2 percent wind power. This is proof positive of Dave’s axiom that doing the right thing will not necessarily mean pain and suffering in the short-run.

This development is particularly important since Texas is basically its own independent electrical grid. Also, turns out that a much-carped-about drop in wind was not in fact to blame for a near-blackout in Texas back in February — it was the failure of “traditional providers” to perform as promised that caused the power emergency.

2. Renewable energy is a big issue in a Houston congressional race.

Michael Skelly, the Democratic challenger, in Texas’ seventh congressional district began a three-and-a-half month long run of ads on July 15, with the first one focusing exclusively on renewable energy. The ad was running wall-to-wall on broadcast TV during my brief visit. Even with money to burn, it’s unlikely Skelly would run an ad — especially his introductory one — on the topic if he thought it wouldn’t make a difference

Now, we’re not talking about Lloyd Doggett’s district here. This is a highly affluent, conservative district that once elected none other than George H.W. Bush. Nevertheless, Skelly is self-funding, but has already racked up more than twice as much campaign cash as his opponent John Culberson — who has a less-than-impressive zero LCV score — without throwing in more than $200,000 of his own money so far. Local politicos I talked to were hopeful and it appears some numbers and outside observers see the seat as anything but safe for Culberson.

3. Even Houstonians are dumping their gas guzzlers.

When I last visited Houston back in February, my rental was the only Prius I saw on the road and it was generally dwarfed by the massive SUVs that towered over me while all sat in the city’s trademark gridlock.

Fast forward to today. The local Smart car dealer’s inventory is booked through 2009 and one local family parked their Suburban and bought three Honda Fits instead. (Incidentally, Honda cruised to a $1.7 billion profit while Ford lost a record $8.7 billion last quarter.)

Overall, truck sales in Houston dropped to their second-lowest monthly total ever, while cars sales in the city hit their highest level in seven years.

4. Houston is going green — at least if Mayor Bill White gets his way.

I first learned about the Mayor’s exciting plan to make Houston the world leader of green buildings back in February and that appears to be moving forward, along with a variety of environmental initiatives. For instance, the city now gets 25 percent of its power from wind, making it the largest municipal purchaser of clean power in the country. (Incidentally, White was Deputy Energy Secretary in the 1970s.)

Median S&P 500 CEO compensation: $9.9 million. Big Oil CEO pay range: $15-$21.7 million (!)

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, raked in an astonishing $21.7 million and is sitting on nearly $78 million of unvested stock options. (Though this is chump change compared to the obscene $500 million golden parachute his predecessor, Lee Raymond, received upon retirement. That is of course also the same amount ExxonMobil will have to pay in punitive damages for the ExxonValdez disaster, thanks to a recent wrongheaded Supreme Court decision.)

David O’Reilly, CEO of Chevron, made $15.7 million and is sitting on $26.3 million in unvested options.

James Mulva of ConocoPhillips made $15 million and has a whopping $234 million in options.

“If we use unconventional fossil fuels then there’s no hope.”

On the Bush-McCain plan for offshore oil drilling:

“It’s just a crazy thing to do.”

– Dr. James Hansen, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon, which honored him and commemorated the 20th anniversary of the landmark 1988 Senate hearing on global warming.

Drinking a glass of water from a tailings pond would be like drinking a diluted glass of oil or gasoline.

Whether the bitumen is cooked in situ while still underground or scraped off, carted away, and processed elsewhere — either process requiring both huge amounts of energy and water — millions of tons of global warming pollution are produced and nearly unfathomable amounts of toxic wastewater and tailings are left behind. Indeed, it is estimated that producing one barrel of oil from tar sands requires between 2 and 4.5 barrels of water. Last year alone, the Alberta tar sands industry was permitted water withdrawals totaling a staggering 119.5 billion gallons.

Unluckily enough for birds and other forest creatures, the tar sands lie under Canada’s hitherto pristine boreal forest and directly below major migratory flyways. In 2006, some 50 square kilometers of the formerly forested area were covered by the toxic tailings ponds, to say nothing of the additional hundreds of squares miles of forests that have been ripped away to get to the bitumen underneath.

Canada Syncrude Ltd, the company responsible for the environmental tragedy, blamed it on its failure to make operational a set of 13 propane-powered noise cannons meant to scare fowl away from the ponds. Such cannons and scarecrows must generally remain in use in perpetuity, even in areas that have been “reclaimed” after production is complete.

All of this comes as the provincial government of Alberta, which is now experiencing a Wild West-like boom thanks to the tar sands, is set to launch a $25 million, three-year taxpayer-funded PR campaign to persuade Americans and others that the tar sands are “environmentally responsible.”

Ed Stelmach, the Conservative Premier of Alberta, claims that the campaign is necessary to combat the “myth,” propagated by the likes of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, that the tar sands are an environmental disaster. He likens the provincial government to a David fighting against a green Goliath. This, of course, is the same “David” that once brought a gigantic hauler all the way to the Smithsonian Folklike Festival on the National Mall to serve as the centerpiece of an exhibit about how fabulous Alberta and the tar sands are.

And rivaling coal-fired corn-ethanol distilleries in the contest for the Worst Idea Ever, the province is also considering plans to use nuclear reactors to produce the massive amounts of energy needed to extract oil from the tar sands.

The provincial energy minister was forced to apologize to the Sierra Club this week after claiming during a heated floor debate on the subject that the Club was pro-nukes and ran ads to that effect in Europe. The Club (in both its American and Canadian incarnations), of course, remains staunchly anti-nuke and doesn’t even operate in Europe. It seems that minister had confused the Club with ex-Greenpeacer-turned-industry shill Patrick Moore.

The tar sands are even at the center of a growing diplomatic row between the U.S. and Canada. A little-noticed provision of the 2007 energy bill prohibits the federal government from purchasing unconventional fuels with lifecycle global warming emissions greater than conventional fuels like gas or diesel. The provision — meant mainly as a body block to liquid coal — has also ensnared fuels produced from tar sands oil, most of which is refined at specialized refineries here in the U.S.

Despite all of the environmental concerns and serious doubts raised by investors, BP and Shell have plunged headlong into the tar sands boom. This is particularly troubling as both companies have also begun to signal a move away from investments in renewable energy.

Finally, it’s no coincidence that as Canada has moved rapidly to develop the tar sands, it finds itself miles away from its Kyoto target: a reduction of 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. In fact, Canada now finds itself some 25 percent above 1990 levels.

The same New York Times piece points out that Big Oil is now suffering from an “embarrassment of riches” that may prove politically inconvenient to say the least. Obama, Clinton, and some Senate Democrats have all called for a windfall profits tax, and the measure may be included in a sweeping new gas price/oil-related “energy bill” ($ub. req’d) due to be introduced in the Senate any minute now.

I gagged a little at the tortured explanation offered yesterday by Shell CEO John Hofmeister for why Big Oil’s profits aren’t that big, really and for true. Unsurprisingly, Hofmeister also echoed President Bush’s strategy for dealing with the crisis: Drill in the Arctic, drill in the polar bear seas (where the company snatched up a passel of the leases that the Minerals Management Service rushed to offer before a decision on listing the polar bear as endangered could be made), and drill off our coasts. (Check out the video here.)

Meanwhile, as fuel prices hit yet another record yesterday morning ($3.623 for gas and $4.251 for diesel), Exxon announced it will pay out a cash dividend of 40 cents a share. This marks an increase of 14 percent over last year, when the company paid out a whopping $7.62 billion in dividends to shareholders. This will be the 26th straight year that it has increased its payouts to shareholders.

Update [2008-5-2 10:24:30 by Josh Dorner]:: BusinessWeek questions whether ExxonMobil is paying too much in taxes. My response:

“We don’t think oil companies are paying enough taxes. There are literally billions of dollars in subsidies and giveaways and misguided regulatory schemes. Politicians have chosen Big Oil before clean energy and their constituents.”

Today, that analyst was joined in his prediction by none other than the chief of OPEC, Chakib Khelil (who’s also Algeria’s energy minister). Mr. Khelil’s comments were not date-specific, though this article leads me to believe he was thinking $200 oil could come much sooner than 2012.

Meanwhile, we saw more of the same from both President Bush and Big Oil.

For its part, Big Oil began yet another round of record quarterly profit reports, with Royal Dutch Shell raking in $9.08 billion and BP pulling down some $7.62 billion. It’s remarkable that each company’s take is not only record-breaking but each beat analysts’ expectations by around $1 billion. Even more extraordinary is that BP made nearly $3 billion more than the same quarter last year, with Shell improving its profits by almost $2 billion. And all of this while BP had nearly zero growth in year-on production and Shell’s production grew just 1 percent.

As both gas and diesel prices set new records ($3.607 and $4.244, respectively), President Bush’s main strategy for dealing with the present energy and economic crises was to berate Congress and call for more of the same failed energy policies we’ve seen for the last seven years. This included the same tired call for drilling in the Arctic Refuge — something that would do little more than boost Big Oil’s profits.

As Carl Pope said:

Two years ago President Bush said America was addicted to oil but today he complained that we just need a bigger fix.

In regard to the president’s wrongheaded call for drilling in the Arctic, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) echoed Pope, reports The New York Times:

In his remarks on Capitol Hill, Mr. Schumer took particular issue with Mr. Bush’s characterization of the energy crisis, saying that the president’s proposed solution of drilling in ANWR would reduce the price of oil by a single penny in 20 years. During that time, Mr. Schumer said, Americans would continue to pay higher gas prices at the pump, while profits for oil companies would soar.

Update [2008-4-29 14:9:42 by Josh Dorner]:: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also shot back at the President for scolding Congress while threatening to veto a bill passed overwhelmingly by the House that would take back $13.5 billion in taxpayer-funded giveaways to Big Oil and use the money to support tax incentives for renewable energy:

“The President can take three actions today to help our economy: lower gas prices by halting deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; save 116,000 green jobs and create hundreds of thousands more by dropping his veto threat from House legislation creating tax credits for renewable energy…”

The Associated Press also offers a thorough debunk of the speech here.