In Oregon and Washington, proposals to construct several coal export terminals are on the table. If they move forward, about 150 million tons of coal each year would travel by train from Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to ports in Oregon and Washington, where it would be shipped to China, India, South Korea, and Japan.

Grist’s David Roberts published an excellent primer on the topic earlier this week, concluding as follows:

This is a case where local activist fights against fossil-fuel projects matter not just for the politics of climate change, but for climate change itself. They matter for China — how much it pays for coal, how much it burns, and how fast it develops alternatives. And they matter for the U.S. The American coal industry is on the ropes. Preventing export terminals can keep it there.

The activist instinct to harry coal at every stage — mining,transport, export, power plant — is the right instinct. Coal is the enemy of the human race. It needs to be kept in the damn ground.

Here’s a rundown on those local activist fights:

• A large and growing coalition of environmental groups, businesses, faith leaders, farmers, students, and other Pacific Northwest residents is waging an aggressive campaign to prevent coal export terminals from being approved and constructed.

• Since March 2011, the PowerPast Coal coalition has organized 23 “coal hard truth” forums — from Billings, Mont. to Bellingham, Wash. — to educate community members about the public health and environmental threats posed by coal export proposals. These forums have been organized in partnership with local environmental groups, and they’ve provided opportunities for activists to get involved in this fight at the local level. In total, more than 3,600 local residents have attended these forums.

• Pacific Northwest activists have submitted thousands of public comments to the Army Corps of Engineers requesting that it hold off approving permits for the proposed coal export terminals until it has conducted a complete review of the terminals’ cumulative environmental impact.

• After hearing from local activists, dozens of local government entities throughout the region have passed resolutions or sent letters to their respective governors expressing concerns about the potential of radically increased coal exports in the region.

• Tens of thousands of activists have signed petitions (and many others have made direct calls) to various decision makers, ranging from the Missoula City Council and local port CEOs to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire.

• In February, hundreds of activists in Washington called the state House of Representatives, helping to block a misguided bill that would have modified the Shoreline Management Act so coal export terminals could be approved without proper review.

• On Saturday, May 5, a courageous group of Canadian activists will be physically blocking coal trains from reaching coal export terminals in British Columbia.

The message these activists are delivering to elected officials and other decision makers couldn’t be simpler: Allowing big coal companies to turn the Pacific Northwest into a coal export hub is unacceptable, both in terms of local health and our global fight against climate change.

Recent developments suggests this message may be getting through:

• On Wednesday, Pacific Gas and Electric exercised its veto power as a major leaseholder at Oregon’s Port Westward to block a proposed coal export terminal there, effectively sending Kinder Morgan, the company proposing the terminal, back to the drawing board.

• Last week, Oregon Gov. Kitzhaber called on the federal government to conduct a “sweeping review” of the various proposals being considered. This move represents the highest-level call yet to call for such a review, and thousands of activists registered thanks here.

• In mid-April, the Environmental Protection Agency finally weighed in, telling the Army Corps of Engineers that the proposed coal export terminal at Oregon’s Port of Morrow has “the potential to significantly impact human health and the environment.” Crucially, the EPA also called on the Army Corps to take increased greenhouse gas emissions into account as it considers coal export proposals.

• Also in mid-April, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden called for a “time out” on consideration of coal exports, saying the U.S. should “start thinking about export policy that involves domestic security, national security, prices and what it means for the environment.”

Two events coming up in the next few days in the Pacific Northwest will extend this movement’s effort:

Monday, May 7, in Portland; Ore.: RallyAgainst Coal Exports with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Tuesday, May 8, in Tacoma, Wash.: PierceCountry Coal Hard Truth Forum

Mitt Romney released his much-hyped jobs plan [PDF] yesterday. Looking at the energy section alone, I identified nine inconsistencies and factually incorrect statements.

1. Cites projected job losses associated with a regulation Obama has already scrapped

Page 94:

But as anyone who follows environmental issues closely likely knows by now, President Obama announced on Friday that he was scrapping plans to update the ozone rule. Obama’s announcement came on Friday morning, a full 100 hours before Romney released his jobs plan.

2. Claims President Obama has “stifled the domestic energy sector”

Page 86:

Unfortunately, the first three years of the Obama administration have witnessed energy and environmental policies that have stifled the domestic energy sector.

But as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, there are more active drilling rigs in the United States right now than there have been at any time since 1987. And oil production is up 11 percent under President Obama, after decreasing 15 percent under President Bush. Jobs related to coal mining have also increased sharply in the past year.

3. Touts program championed and funded by President Obama

Page 96:

Mitt Romney believes the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) model — ensuring longterm, non-political sources of funding for a wide variety of competing, earlystage technologies — holds the most potential for achieving significant advances in the energy sector. Investment should be channeled through programs, such as “ARPA-E,” that seek to replicate DARPA’s success in energy-related fields.

Here’s USA Today, explaining the fact that Obama is the only president who has provided funds to ARPA-E:

Research, however, shows that Romney and Obama may have more in common on this issue that Romney apparently realizes. Obama is the only president who has dedicated any money to ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which was created without a budget by the America Competes Act of 2007 that President George W. Bush signed into law. The agency remained unfunded until the Obama administration’s 2009 stimulus plan put $400 million into the program. It received another $180 million in 2011.

4. Cites conflicting figures on job losses associated with Obama’s temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling

Page 89: “The result was a sweeping moratorium on underwater drilling that destroyed more than 10,000 jobs.”

Page 94: “19,000 jobs destroyed by Obama administration’s Gulf drilling moratorium.”

5. Claims Keystone XL pipeline would create more than 100,000 jobs

Page 87:

[T]he Obama administration has delayed the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which could bring enormous supplies of Canadian oil from Alberta to our market. The project could also create more than 100,000 American jobs.

TransCanada, the company that wants to build the Keystone XL pipeline, has cited job-creation estimates ranging from 3,500 jobs to 20,000 jobs. The State Department estimates that the project would create 5,000-6,000 temporary jobs.

6. Cites widely debunked Spanish green jobs study

Page 89:

The study this chart is based on has been thoroughly debunked, and was produced by a libertarian think tank that gets money from Exxon Mobil.

7. Opposes pricing carbon, despite economic adviser’s support of a carbon tax

Page 90:

Cap-and-trade died in Congress, but a similarly blithe disregard for the economic impact of his policies prompted President Obama to find another path to reach the same objective.

But Romney’s economic advisor Gregory Mankiw is a major proponent of taxing carbon. In 2007, he wrote, “if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. The first and more difficult step is to convince American voters, and therefore political consultants, that ‘tax’ is not a four-letter word.”

8. Claims the Clean Air Act wasn’t intended to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions

Page 92:

Additionally, the Clean Air Act was passed to protect us against pollutants that pose dangers to human health. It was not intended to control carbon-dioxide emissions, and is poorly tailored to that purpose.

But the United States Supreme Court disagrees:

On April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act.

9. Claims President Obama has “been waging war on the entire coal industry”

Page 88:

Rather than focus on refining technologies that burn coal cleanly, President Obama has been waging war on the entire coal industry.

But the Obama administration’s Department of Energy has repeatedly awarded grants for studying and developing technologies to burn coal cleanly.

Finally, today, the EPA finalized an updated version of this rule, now appropriately named the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (large PDF), which requires power plants in 27 eastern states and the District of Columbia to significantly reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution.

The public health benefits of this rule, which goes into effect at the beginning of 2012, promise to be enormous (PDF, p. 12):

The air quality improvements will also be tremendous, with the number of counties in violation of federal standards expected to drop from 207 to just two as soon as 2014. Here are the counties that violated air quality standards between 2003 and 2007 (PDF, p. 30):
And here are the two counties that are projected to be in violation by 2014 (PDF, p. 31), as well as the six that are projected to have maintenance problems:
Justifiably, the rule was praised today by countless respected people and organizations. Here’s a joint statement released this afternoon by Environment America, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club:

Stronger limits for power plant pollution will mean healthier, longer lives for millions of Americans. Smokestack emissions from power plants threaten public health by delivering harmful pollutants like sulfur dioxide, greenhouse gases and toxic mercury into the air we breathe and the water we drink, posing a particular threat to children and vulnerable populations like seniors. This much-needed update to clean air standards will significantly reduce the threat from this pollution and save lives.

Here’s Delaware Senator Tom Carper:

The EPA has developed a sensible approach that will reduce smog and particle pollution and in turn, give us cleaner air and prevent thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in healthcare costs. In the end, this rule will help us achieve better health care results for less money.

And here’s Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association:

Today’s ruling is an important and long overdue step to protect the health of Americans and clean up our environment. It’s a huge win-win. We praise EPA for its continued efforts to help create stronger, healthier and more productive communities for ourselves and our families.

Care to guess who criticized the rule? That’s right — Republican politicians and the coal industry. Here’s Texas Governor, potential GOP presidential candidate and former Al Gore supporter Rick Perry, who told Glenn Beck last week that he didn’t think the federal government should enforce clean air laws at all:

Today’s EPA announcement is another example of heavy-handed and misguided action from Washington, D.C., that threatens Texas jobs and families and puts at risk the reliable and affordable electricity our state needs to succeed.

Here’s the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which was caught sending fraudulent letters to members of Congress in August 20009:

America’s coal-fueled electric industry has been doing its part for the environment and the economy, but our industry needs adequate time to install clean coal technologies to comply with new regulations. Unfortunately, EPA doesn’t seem to care.

And here’s Pat Hemlepp, spokesman for American Electric Power:

Taking power plants out of service like this pulls tax dollars out of the communities, pulls jobs out of communities, in addition to increasing electricity costs

One side says this new rule will save tens of thousands of lives and improve air quality for 240 million Americans. They’re absolutely right. The other side says the rule is costly and unnecessary and will kill countless jobs. While this is mostly coal-industry spin, there is a kernel of truth to it. Implementing pollution controls on out-of-date coal-fired power plants is somewhat expensive, and if some plants choose to close down rather than modernizing, jobs will be lost. But as Harvard economist Robert Stavins explains, this is a more than worthwhile tradeoff. “It doesn’t mean that there are no costs, but the benefits of the transport rule in terms of human health protection tremendously outweigh the costs of this,” he told NPR.

Ultimately, that is what this rule comes down to. There are unintended consequences to nearly every action the government takes, but as a society, we’ve decided that saving thousands of lives and making it easier to breathe for hundreds of millions of Americans is a higher priority than protecting the profits of an unscrupulous industry. I think that’s a pretty wise decision, and I’m proud of the EPA for having the courage to go through with it while facing a seemingly endless onslaught of hysterical attacks.

But a new poll from the conservative-leaning Rasmussen** finds that an overwhelming majority of likely voters, including more than two-thirds of independents, disagree with Rep. Bachmann. When asked whether they “favor or oppose abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency,” 61% of likely voters indicated that they are opposed:

Notably, even likely Republican primary voters aren’t so sure about Bachmann’s proposal, with 42% wanting to abolish the EPA, 40% opposed to doing so and 18% unsure.

The new Rasmussen poll is largely in line with every other poll ever taken on the subject. A recent American Lung Association poll found that 66% of voters think the EPA should set pollution limits, rather than Congress. Similarly, a February 2011 poll found that 63% of Americans want the EPA to “do more to hold polluters accountable and protect the air and water.”

Voter support of the EPA is well-founded. As Kate Sheppard explains, a new CBO report (PDF) shows that “the EPA actually has the best track record among the agencies when it comes to setting rules whose pluses outnumber the minuses.” Here’s how the CBO explains the benefits of EPA’s rules:

It should be clear that the rules with the highest benefits and the highest costs, by far, come from the Environmental Protection Agency and in particular its Office of Air. More specifically, EPA rules account for 62 to 84 percent of the monetized benefits and 46 to 53 percent of the monetized costs. The rules that aim to improve air quality account for 95 to 97 percent of the benefits of EPA rules. 

At the same time, it’s worth pointing out that the EPA has also been remarkably successful at doing what it is actually supposed to do: protecting human health and the environment. To wit, in the 1960s and 1970s, the United States was a pretty polluted place. Rivers were catching on fire, and from what I’m told, cities like Washington, DC literally stunk. Human health and the environment were clearly not adequately protected. So in the early 1970s, the EPA was created and a bunch of landmark environmental laws were passed giving the new agency the authority (and legal obligation) to reduce pollution. Lo and behold, the pollutants targeted by EPA rules decreased drastically:

Honest observers will tell you that the EPA has been one of the most successful government agencies we’ve had in the past 40 years. It has largely accomplished the things it has set out to accomplish, and has done so in a way that generates more economic benefits than costs. You really couldn’t ask for much more.

And while Michele Bachman’s opposition to the agency is presumably based on some sort of principled stand against clean air, drinkable water and healthy communities, based on the polling I’ve seen, it seems highly unlikely to do her much good in the presidential campaign. Then again, if she’s actually running for Sarah Palin’s job, all bets are off.

**Rasmussen’s conservative bias is well documented. See here, here, here, here and here.

But as far as I can tell, they don’t have a plan to address the issue between the three of them.

The most recent was Mitt Romney, the presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor with a tendency to play both sides of every issue. At a town hall style campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday, Romney said:

I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.

This isn’t the first time Mitt Romney has sounded like an environmentalist. In 2003, he told his constituents that he would not “not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people,” while pointing at a coal plant. But six weeks ago he told Greta Van Susteren that he would lower gas prices by drilling for oil and burning lots of coal:

Well, you get the prices down by convincing people who are investing in gasoline futures, so to speak, the speculators — you let them understand that America is going to be producing enough energy for our needs. And that means we’re going to start drilling for oil. We’re going to use our natural gas resources, which are now extraordinarily plentiful, given new technology. We’re going to use our coal resources. Of course, we’re going to pursue all the renewables, but you have to have oil and gas to power America’s economy.

And at today’s town hall at the University of New Hampshire, Romney downplayed clean energy and electric cars. “I love solar and wind (power) but they don’t drive cars. And we’re not all going to drive Chevy Volts,” he said. He also warned against working to solve the problem unless China and Brazil were participating in the solution, reminding the crowd that “it’s not called American warming, it’s called global warming.”

Last week it was Chris Christie, the New Jersey Governor who is being recruited into the presidential race by a group of wealthy Iowans. In an impressive speech, Christie talked the talk:

When you have over 90% of the world’s scientists who have studied this stating that climate change is occurring and that humans play a contributing role it’s time to defer to the experts. Climate science is complex though and we’re just beginning to have a fuller understanding of humans’ role in all of this. But we know enough to know that we are at least a part of the problem. So looking forward, we need to work to put policies in place that act at reducing those contributing factors.

But at the same time, Christie announced that New Jersey would be leaving the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a 10-state, voluntary cap and trade system designed to reduce emissions. The New Jersey Sierra Club credited the governor with destroying “the first and most successful greenhouse gas reduction program in the country.” Brad Plumer convincingly argues that Christie had to distance himself from climate policy in order to play on the national stage.

In mid-May it was Jon Hunstman, the former Utah Governor and President Obama’s former Ambassador to China, forging the path that Chris Christie and Mitt Romney later followed. “This is an issue that ought to be answered by the scientific community; I’m not a meteorologist. All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring,” he told Time Magazine. “If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them. I respect science and the professionals behind the science so I tend to think it’s better left to the science community.”

If he had stopped there, that would have been fine. He meant climatologist and the 90% figure is low (it is more like 97%), but no major harm was done. But then he added, “though we can debate what that means for the energy and transportation sectors.” Asked about cap and trade, Huntsman kept digging. “Cap-and-trade ideas aren’t working; it hasn’t worked, and our economy’s in a different place than five years ago,” he said, concluding, “much of this discussion happened before the bottom fell out of the economy, and until it comes back, this isn’t the moment.”

Romney and Christie both went further than Huntsman did, saying we have to reduce emissions. And Huntsman and Christie both cited the same inaccurate 90% figure, with Huntsman even paraphrasing Al Gore with the doctor/scientist comparison. But what sticks out the most about their remarks is that all three are opposed to doing anything productive to solve the problem. If any of these three has a plan for dealing with climate change that doesn’t include cap and trade, a carbon tax or massive investments in clean energy, they should explain what their plan is and how it would work.

On Twitter, Bill Scher asked a compelling question: “Can he win by tarring Mitt, Newt, Tim, Jon w/past cap-trade support?”

I don’t think it will win him the nomination, but there is a segment of the Republican electorate that could be convinced to oppose Mitt/Newt/Tim/Jon solely because of their past support of cap and trade.

Anti-environmentalism has become a matter of faith in the modern Republican party, so predictably, every 2012 Republican presidential candidate has reversed their previous support of addressing climate change.

Mitt Romney went from denouncing coal jobs “that kill people” to opposing environmental laws because they are “bad for business and cost jobs.” Tim Pawlenty went from “come on Congress, cap greenhouses gases now” to “it is a really bad idea, it is going to be harmful to the economy. Newt Gingrich went from advocating for solutions alongside to Nancy Pelosi in an Al Gore funded TV ad to “It is inconceivable that any threat from global warming is big enough to justify destroying the American economy.” Even Sarah Palin thought climate change was a threat that needed to be addressed as recently as 2007.

With former energy industry lobbyist Haley Barbour now out of the picture, Santorum is now the the only consistently anti-environmental candidate Republican primary voters have to choose from.

Santorum’s anti-environmental record and pro-coal credentials have been solid throughout his career, and this might just be how the candidate tries to distinguish himself in a soon-to-be-crowded GOP field.

Consider Santorum’s June 2008 Philadelphia Inquirer piece entitled ‘Coal’ is not a dirty word if we are realistic about saving the Earth, in which he rattled off a laundry list of climate change denial canards. Or look at his appearance in Reno six weeks ago, in which he criticized President Obama and Senator Reid for their opposition to coal production. Or look to 2001, when Santorum touted coal as the future and “environmentally safe.”

During Mr. Santorum’s 2006 Senate campaign, which he lost by 18% to Democrat Bob Casey, one of his top priorities was “improving U.S. energy resources by converting coal into liquid fuels and natural gas.” And in 2003 he supported an awful Bush administration EPA rule to let coal companies upgrade facilities without installing modern pollution controls. In 2009 he called global warming the “latest scientific non-controversy” and accused other politicians of using “science to destroy national economies.”

Santorum’s barely-existent campaign website doesn’t mention coal but it does boldly feature a kickass slogan: Fighting to make America America again. During his second Senate campaign in 2000, when he was challenged by a working-class populist candidate, he wore his grandfather’s career in the coal mines (and subsequent black lung disease) on his sleeve.

You can even look all the way back to 1993, Santorum’s third year in the House, when he worked to exempt coal from an energy tax.

Among Republicans, concern about environmental issues is at an all time low. But how important is a consistent position to GOP primary voters? If they insist on backing candidates who have been consistently opposed environmental laws through their career, Rick Santorum may just have an opening on the issue. If they aren’t concerned about integrity and don’t mind candidates who have held every position imaginable on the issue, Romney, Gingrich, Pawlenty, Palin or one of the other candidates will do just fine.

With all of the said, Santorum’s nascent campaign has a long way to go. A Gallup poll released yesterday has Santorum near the bottom of the pack, attracting support from just 2% of Republican voters.

I’ll be curious to see how whether Santorum tries to use this angle, and how Republican primary voters react if he does so.

Will new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel get tough on coal?Photo: Daniel X. O’Neill

Some key facts about the Fisk and Crawford plants:

• These are the only large coal plants in the United States that are within the limits of a major city.
• They are owned by a California-based company, they burn Wyoming coal, and they provide electricity to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland.
• The Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods where the plants are located have more than 80 percent minority populations.
• Patio furniture in neighborhoods near the plants is literally covered in soot.
• Of all the coal plants in the United States that are near residential neighborhoods, Fisk has the highest population within one mile (47,000) and Crawford has the highest population within three miles (373,300).

Opposition to the Fisk and Crawford plants, which has been building for years, reached a fever pitch in early 2011. In the city council, the Clean Power Ordinance, which would require the plants to either drastically reduce emissions or shut down, attracted 26 cosponsors by spring. But in late April, a key council committee decided not to act on the legislation, effectively punting to the next council and to the administration of incoming mayor Rahm Emanuel (D).

Emanuel’s first day in office is today, and it still isn’t clear how he plans to deal with this problem.

During the campaign, Emanuel was asked the following question: “Will you strongly advocate for the Chicago Clean Power Ordinance and take other actions to require the clean up of all pollutants or the shut down of the highly-polluting Fisk and Crawford coal plants by 2015?” While he didn’t offer his support for the Clean Power Ordinance, he did indicate that he intends to address the problem. “Midwest Generation must clean up these two plants, either by installing the necessary infrastructure to dramatically reduce the pollution they emit, or by converting to natural gas or another clean fuel,” he said. “I will work closely with state and federal regulators and the city council to make sure it happens,” then-candidate Emanuel added.

At CREDO Action, we’re working to make sure Rahm follows through on his commitment to deal with pollution from Fisk and Crawford. Today, with help from our friends at Greenpeace and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, we delivered a petition signed by 3,534 Chicagoans to Mayor Emanuel, urging him to address the problem immediately. The petition reads: “I urge you to do everything in your power to immediately reduce coal pollution from the Fisk and Crawford coal plants. The pollution limits outlined in the Clean Power Ordinance should be the bare minimum to protect our city from their devastating pollution.”

Bolling Hosted Skeptic To Claim “There Is No Global Warming.” Bolling hosted Brian Sussman, radio host and author of Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes The Global Warming Scam, who asserted that “there is no global warming.” Sussman claimed that the “hottest decade in history was the 1930s.”

Bolling: “I think We Warm And We Cool. It’s The Globe.” Discussing a Rasmussen poll asking respondents “how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data,” Bolling stated: “Listen, you know where I stand on this. I’m not — I think we warm and we cool. It’s the globe.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 12/4/09]

Bolling Falsely Suggested Snow Disproves Global Warming. On Fox & Friends, referring to the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Bolling stated: “I think, a couple of years ago, they were in Washington. It was snowed out. The global warming issue wasn’t, I guess, a factor there. But they solved that problem going to Cancun.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 12/9/09]

In fact, the decade from 2001-2010 was the hottest on record, and as Alliance for Climate Protection Chairman Al Gore explained in a recent blog post, extreme weather events — including heavy snow — are entirely consistent with climate science.

So why would Bolling repeatedly push these discredited ideas? One possibility is the fact that the managing editor of Fox News specifically instructed the network’s on-air personalities to do just that.

This unfortunate myopia extends beyond Fox’s news and opinion programming — it affects the advertisements that Fox viewers are permitted to see. Last May, VoteVets.org ran an ad on cable that made “the familiar case that climate legislation would have national security benefits by reducing the oil profits of hostile Middle Eastern states.” CNN and MSNBC aired the ad. But Fox viewers weren’t allowed to see the ad because it was “too confusing.”

Unfortunately, Fox’s deliberate attempts to mislead their viewers about climate change appear to be working. A pair of recent studies found that Fox viewers are far more likely to be confused about climate change than the general public. A December 2010 University of Maryland study found: “Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring.” Incredibly, regular Fox News viewers were 30% more likely (PDF) to believe that most scientists don’t agree about climate change, when compared to Americans who don’t watch Fox News.

A December 2010 Woods Institute for the Environment poll (PDF) had similar findings with regard to Americans’ understanding of basic climate science:

Among Americans who watched no Fox News, 82% believed that the Earth’s temperature has been rising, and 85% of them believed that any temperature increase is caused mostly by things people do, or about equally by things people do and natural causes.

Among the most frequent viewers of Fox News, 63% believed that the Earth’s temperature has been rising, and 60% of the most frequent Fox News viewers believed that the temperature increase is caused mostly by things people do or about equally by things people do and natural causes.

While these findings are unfortunate, a more important point is this: Climate science is bigger than politics. Despite the best efforts of conservative-leaning news outlets such as Fox News, Americans from across the political spectrum are concerned about climate change and understand the need to take immediate action to address it.

Consider former Congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who recently said, “As a Republican, I believe we should be talking about conservation,” he explained. “Because that’s our heritage. If you go back to Teddy Roosevelt, that’s who we are.” Or take Senator Lugar of Indiana, who once said, “Changes in climate will bring more droughts, floods and extreme weather events. Pests and disease will spread into new regions of the world threatening public health and economic growth. More conflicts will arise.”

Fox News viewers, we hope you’ll join us, and we’ll gladly welcome you to the cause. Climate change is too big of a problem to solve without your help.

“The fever of buying cars in China is so strong,” Dr. An said.Photo: Juergen

Recognizing this, the Innovation Center for Energy and Technology (iCET) — a nonprofit think tank with offices in Beijing, Los Angeles, and New York — launched a new website Monday that aims to empower Chinese consumers to take sustainability into account when purchasing automobiles. The website, GreenCarChina.org, has lifecycle sustainability data for 88 car manufacturers, and more will be added as additional cars become available on the Chinese market.

I spoke on Thursday with Dr. Feng An, president and executive director of iCET, about the green car rating system. “It’s a tool to educate consumers,” he said. “The fever of buying cars in China is so strong. New car sales increased 40 percent last year and I think they are going to increase another 40 percent next year. It’s just incredible. In the U.S. and the rest of the world, you have a very mature car market, but in China it’s white hot.”

The problem, he explained, is that consumers aren’t especially well informed. There also just aren’t very many good sources of information on vehicle sustainability — unlike in the United States, where EPA fuel-economy ratings are prominently featured in car commercials.

“There is a lack of education among consumers when it comes to how green the vehicles are. There is no independent reporting about the subject — it’s all PR. There’s no third-party, honest, independent views about vehicles.” That’s exactly where iCET’s Green Car Rating system comes in. “Since we aren’t paid by car companies, we can give very independent advice and information about cars,” he said.

The main challenge will be reaching Chinese consumers, but iCET has an aggressive plan for doing so. “We teamed up with a mobile phone developer to create a downloadable application. I think that will have a big impact,” he said. “And we’ve talked to a lot of media people — TV people and newspaper people — to get the information out.” The group also held a press conference Monday in Cancun, which can be viewed here.

Feng An seems to be the right person to lead this project. In 2002 and 2003, he was an advisor to the Chinese government, laying the groundwork for the country’s first-ever automobile fue- efficiency standards. Those standards are now in phase two, with further modifications already scheduled for the years to come. “The first fuel-economy standard went into place in 2004 and 2005, and the second phase went into place in 2009 and 2010. Now they are starting phase three, which will be implemented between 2012 and 2015,” he said.

With China’s rapidly expanding car market, efforts to educate consumers and potential car-buyers about the sustainability of various makes and models are hugely important. The impact of iCET’s rating system will depend on its ability to reach a critical mass of Chinese consumers, but if it succeeds in doing so, its role in changing consumer behavior could be quite significant.

The discussion was framed by President Obama’s top environmental advisor Nancy Sutley, who serves as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. She explained why state and local governments are particularly well suited to take the lead on adaptation projects. “I think it is important that we have the perspectives of all levels of government as we talk about adaptation. We understand that action in Washington, D.C., is certainly not enough.” she said. “Climate impacts, as the science suggests, will likely vary a great deal from city to city and state to state. That’s why we’re seeing some of the most forward-thinking work on climate-change adaptation coming out of state and local governments.”

Specifics of how state and local governments are implementing adaptation projects were covered by the other two panelists: ICLEI USA Executive Director Martin Chávez and California Deputy Secretary for Climate Change Michael Gibbs.

Chávez, who leads a group that works with local governments to address climate change, began by telling the crowd that “local governments have been very active and very aggressive on this issue.” He then shared an impressive list of such efforts, starting with King County, Wash., which includes Seattle. “What they’ve done there is fully integrated adaptation in all of their comprehensive plans,” he said. One example of King County’s aggressive approach to adaptation [PDF] is its work on flood planning and control. They’ve invested more than $300 million in improvements on the county’s 500 levees, made efforts to increase river capacity, and purchased some properties that are especially vulnerable to flooding. They’ve made significant modifications to major bridges, have plans to replace dozens of others, and replaced culverts that could destroy fish habitats during storm events with larger and more effective drainage systems.

Chávez pointed out that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to adaptation planning. To drive that point home, he cited Keane, N.H., “the smallest community in the United States that has completed an adaptation plan.” Other local communities he mentioned include Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Flint, Mich.; southeast Florida; and San Diego. Adaptation efforts are underway at the local level nationwide. “All around the country, almost every major city has a serious urban forestry initiative, and it’s not just to provide a cool spot, but also to operate as a carbon sink,” he said.

Gibbs shared some specifics on the research California is doing on climate impacts with an eye toward adaptation projects. “Water resources are a major risk area for California. A substantial portion of our summer water comes from our mountain snow melt each year,” he said. “These changes really put our water system at risk, and understanding what we can do to mitigate these changes is one of our primary areas of focus.” He also pointed out a negative impact of warmer temperatures that generally doesn’t get as much attention as droughts, extreme weather or sea level rise. “One of the things that we’re seeing in California is that the warmer temperatures also will be impacting our air quality to the point that the progress we’ve made will be substantially reversed as a result of climate change,” he said. “What this means is that we’re going to have to redouble our efforts to improve air quality.”

While Martin Chávez was correct to point out that “adaptation is an expression of a failure to mitigate,” it was extremely encouraging to learn about some of the adaptation efforts currently underway in states and cities across the country.