Mitt is thinking hard about which boring white man to choose as his running mate. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

OK, alright, Romney hasn’t actually picked his VP candidate yet, but we can already say with near-100 percent certainly that it’ll be someone who’s skeptical about the climate crisis and doubts that it’s significantly driven by human activity.

This is because virtually all high-level Republicans are skeptical about the climate crisis, at least judging by their public statements and actions. To find a Republican who believes that we ought to do even a little something about global warming, Romney would have to wade into the garbage bin of GOP politics and consort with losers and has-beens like Charlie Crist and Jon Huntsman. Fat chance.

Here are some of the incredibly boring white guys Romney might actually pick (along with a few outlier options who are non-white, non-boring, and/or non-guys), and some of the illuminating things they’ve said about climate change:

Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida

“I’m a skeptic. I’m not a scientist. I think the science has been politicized. I would be very wary of hollowing out our industrial base even further … It may be only partially man-made. It may not be warming by the way. The last six years we’ve actually had mean temperatures that are cooler.”

Mitch Daniels

Mitch Daniels, governor of Indiana

“The [climate] debate, so far, has been dominated by ‘experts’ from the University of Hollywood and the P.C. Institute of Technology. … Any dissident voice is likely to be the target of a fatwa issued by one Alatollah [sic] or another of the climate change theocracy, branding the dissenter as a ‘denier’ for refusing to bow down to the ‘scientific consensus.’”

Bobby Jindal

Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana

“President Obama claims to be focusing this election year on the American economy. To make that pledge true, he must make wholesale changes to his energy policy and put energy prices and energy independence ahead of zealous adherence to left-wing environmental theory.”
(He didn’t say the word “climate,” but we can read between the lines.)

Susana Martinez (Photo by Albuquerque Public Schools)

Susana Martinez, governor of New Mexico

“[T]here is disagreement in the science community concerning the causes of global warming.”

Bob McDonnell

Bob McDonnell, governor of Virginia

“Humans might be part of the cause, but too often in the debate it’s missed that the Earth has been warmer in the past and it has been a lot cooler in the past. … So I would say the science is mixed on a lot of those things.”

Tim Pawlenty

Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota

“So there is climate change, but the reality is the science of it indicates that most of it, if not all of it, is caused by natural causes. And as to the potential human contribution to that, there’s a great scientific dispute about that very issue.”

Rob Portman

Rob Portman, senator from Ohio

“When you analyze all the data, there is a warming trend according to science. But the jury is out on the degree of how much is man-made.”

Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio, senator from Florida

“The climate is always changing. The climate is never static. The question is whether it’s caused by man-made activity and whether it justifies economically destructive government regulation.”

Paul Ryan (Photo by Republican Conference)

Paul Ryan, rep from Wisconsin

“Unilateral economic restraint in the name of fighting global warming has been a tough sell in our communities, where much of the state is buried under snow … [E]mail exchanges from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit … undermine confidence in the scientific data driving the climate change debates.”

Chris Christie (Photo by Bob Jagendorf)

Chris Christie, governor of New Jersey

“I’ve always said that climate change is real … we know enough to know that we are at least a part of the problem.”

Hey, wait, that’s not total denial! But Christie said it in a speech announcing that he was pulling New Jersey out of the first mandatory carbon cap-and-trade system in the country, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, so take it with your daily recommended allowance of salt.

Still, environmental issues are getting talked about, often obliquely as part of larger discussions about energy — though the words don’t always mean what you might think they mean. And the words politicians don’t say can tell you as much as the words they do.

Here’s a guide to energy and environmental buzzwords you’ll be hearing, or not, this election year:

Gas prices
Republicans thought they’d get a lot of mileage out of this phrase, but now it looks like it might not get them too far. When gas prices were trending upward earlier this year, Republicans went all out blaming Obama and the Democrats. Now that gas prices have come back down, the Republican messaging has gotten muddled.  Still, the GOP is not quite ready to drop the issue.

Never mind that the president and Congress can’t do a damn thing to control prices at the pump.

Energy subsidies
“Subsidy” is a bad word in Washington these days, synonymous with “taxpayer giveaway” and “crony capitalism.”

If a politician wants to steer money to an industry, s/he’ll instead use words like “investment,” “support,” and “job creation.” See: Republicans defending oil and gas subsidies (an increasingly awkward endeavor), and Democrats defending clean energy subsidies.

If a politician wants to cut off money to an industry, that’s when the word “subsidy” comes out. See: Obama railing against oil and gas subsidies and other Democrats pushing the new End Polluter Welfare Act, and Republicans railing against subsidies for renewables and fulminating about Solyndra (more on that below).

Democrats would seem to have the upper hand with the subsidy buzzword this year, as most Americans are sick of supporting Big Oil and eager to support renewables.

Big Oil
Speaking of, “Big Oil” is a phrase you’ll only hear from Democrats this year. Obama’s particularly fond of it. Republicans don’t have a great rejoinder, as Big Solar and Big Wind don’t yet exist.

Keystone
If you hear a politician say the word “Keystone” this year, you can bet s/he’s a Republican.

Obama has been trying to please everyone on the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline — denying it a permit in January, then praising its southern leg in March. Predictably, he’s just managed to piss everyone off, so expect him to avoid the topic from here on out.

Republicans, on the other hand, are doing everything in their power to keep the issue in the news — and they’re getting help from pipeline builder TransCanada, which recently reapplied for a permit. The GOP argues that Obama’s unwillingness to rubber-stamp the pipeline is hampering the economy and making America less energy secure — even though those arguments are false. Currently the GOP is trying to force Keystone approval into a big transportation bill.

Many Democrats, meanwhile, are walking on eggshells around this one. They don’t want to anger the green wing of the base, which showed its might by elevating Keystone into a national issue last year. But they also don’t want to be painted as anti-job or tick off any of the unions that want to help build the pipeline (the labor community is split on the issue). A poll released by Hart Research in February suggested that the Keystone fight is winnable for Dems if they articulate a clear message — say, that the pipeline would create as few as 50 permanent jobs, according [PDF] to researchers at Cornell University, and that much of the oil it transports would be shipped overseas. But savvy, strategic messaging is not a Democratic strong suit of late.

Solyndra
If you hear a politician say the word “Solyndra” this year, you can know s/he’s a Republican.

Republicans will keep harping on the bankruptcy of solar company Solyndra, which got a federal loan guarantee of more than half a billion dollars. They say it shows the folly of the federal government trying to pick winners in the energy sector and boost the economy through stimulus spending, and recent ads from GOP groups go further with salacious (and bogus) Solyndra-related charges. Romney slipped up earlier this year and said “Solyndra” when he meant “Keystone,” betraying the fact that Republicans see both issues primarily as cudgels with which to bash Obama.

Obama has been defending his administration’s Solyndra investment, albeit without mentioning the company’s name. His first TV ad of the campaign season went after his Solyndra critics. In March, he said, “Each successive generation recognizes that some technologies are going to work; some won’t. Some companies will fail; some companies will succeed,” echoing language from his State of the Union address in January. Other Dems have been less sure-footed in their responses to the Solyndra mess. Expect them to avoid the topic like the plague.

Clean energy
“Green jobs” is soooo 2008. “Clean energy” is now the phrase du jour if you want to talk about shifting to an economy based on renewables and efficiency — and so far, only Democrats do.

Obama is running hard on this theme: “I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy,” he’s said more than once. The president regularly visits cleantech companies and highlights the economic promise of cleantech jobs.

Republicans counter by talking about “energy jobs” — the kind that come from building pipelines and mining coal and fracking. “Drill baby drill” talk continues to resonate with the GOP base, while right-wing groups are trying to spark an anti-wind movement. Still, a handful of Republicans from states with big wind potential are calling for extension of a wind-energy tax credit that’s set to expire at the end of the year, recognizing that clean energy can be a job creator.

Poll after poll finds widespread support from voters across the spectrum for renewable power, so you’d think smart politicians would try to tap that vein.

Climate
In 2008, from the presidential candidates on down the ticket, Democrats and Republicans alike offered up plans for combating climate change. But you won’t be hearing “climate change” or “global warming” in many of this year’s stump speeches — and that absence speaks volumes.

President Obama recently told Rolling Stone that he thinks climate will become a campaign issue, but even he doesn’t seem to believe it. He didn’t even bother to mention climate change in his most recent Earth Day address. The president thinks he’ll reach more independents by talking about clean energy, energy innovation, and an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy (snatched right from the Republican playbook). Many of his fellow Democrats are following his lead and shunting climate into the shadows, still smarting from the ignominious death of climate legislation in 2010.

Mitt Romney doesn’t like to talk about climate change either because he’s flip-flopped on the issue. Most other Republican politicians bring up climate change only if they want to voice their skepticism. Former GOP Rep. Bob Inglis (S.C.) is launching a new group to promote conservative solutions to climate change, but don’t expect that effort to gain much traction this year.

Yes, that’s right, the most critical issue ever to face humanity is getting less attention this election season than dogs.

A version of this post was originally published in SEJournal.

Melinda Gates has big plans. (Photo by World Economic Forum)

Can Melinda Gates do for family planning what Al Gore did for climate change? Gates has decided to make birth control her signature issue. “My goal is to get this back on the global agenda,” she tells Newsweek. As co-chair of the richest foundation in the world, she might actually be able to do it.

The contraceptive cause could certainly use a high-profile advocate: 215 million women [PDF] around the world want to avoid pregnancy but aren’t currently using modern birth control. As Gates explained last month during a TEDxChange presentation on family planning, “This is a life-and-death crisis. Every year, 100,000 women who don’t want to be pregnant die in childbirth. About 600,000 women who don’t want to be pregnant give birth to a baby who dies in her first month of life. I know everybody wants to save these mothers and babies.”

That TEDx talk was Gates’ coming-out moment as a family-planning champion:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded family-planning projects since its inception in 1999, but it hasn’t been a major focus until now. Melinda Gates says that as she traveled the world on behalf of the foundation over the last decade, she heard over and over again from women in developing countries that they need consistent access to reliable birth control. “I finally said, OK, I’m the person that’s going to do that,” she says.

Gates’ approach is to stress that contraception shouldn’t be controversial. “We’re not talking about abortion,” she said in her TEDx talk. “We’re not talking about population control. What I’m talking about is giving women the power to save their lives, to save their children’s lives, and to give their families the best possible future.” Reports Newsweek, “Part of what Gates hopes to do is to re-create the former broad-based consensus behind global family planning, but in a way that’s focused on women’s needs rather than on demographics.”

Gates hangs with women in Kenya. (Photo by Gates Foundation)

The foundation has launched a No Controversy website where people can post their answers to the question, “How have contraceptives changed your life?” And it’s pushing out a #NoControversy hashtag on Twitter.

Still, Gates did have to get over some Catholic qualms before embracing her new mission. As Newsweek reports,

she went through a lot of soul-searching before she was ready to champion the issue publicly. “I had to wrestle with which pieces of religion do I use and believe in my life, what would I counsel my daughters to do,” she says. Defying church teachings was difficult, she adds, but also came to seem morally necessary. Otherwise, she says, “we’re not serving the other piece of the Catholic mission, which is social justice.”

Even most Catholics would seem to side with Gates on this. Ninety-eight percent of Catholic women in the U.S. use modern birth control, just as Gates herself did when she spaced out the births of her three children.

The Gates Foundation is cosponsoring a family-planning summit for world leaders in London in July, working in tandem with British government and the U.N. Population Fund. The goal is to start raising $4 billion for the cause, which is what the foundation says it will cost to get contraceptives to 120 million more women by 2020.

The foundation is also investing in research on new contraceptives, a sorely neglected field — and it’s thinking big and bold.

Right now, it’s funding research into contraceptives that women could inject themselves, sparing them onerous clinic trips. Aware that many women reject the birth-control pill because of side effects, the foundation is investing in a search for a contraceptive medication that works without hormones, a “potential whole new class” of drug, says [Gary] Darmstadt, [director of family health at the foundation’s global health program].

Another of the “crazy ideas we’ve been dreaming about,” he says, “is whether we could create an implantable device that would be woman-controlled, and that you could put it in, and it could last her reproductive lifetime.” She could turn it on and off at will, and it would never need to be removed. “That’s something that I think every woman everywhere in the world could potentially benefit from,” he says.

Now that would be revolutionary. But even if the foundation doesn’t hit on that holy grail anytime soon, a boost in awareness and funding for contraceptive access could literally change millions of women’s lives.

“[T]here’s a global movement waiting to happen and ready to get behind this totally uncontroversial idea,” says Gates.

As Gore learned, getting attention is one thing, making actual progress is another. And just because something shouldn’t be controversial doesn’t mean it isn’t. Unfortunately, birth control unites an unholy alliance of opponents, from American right-wingers to the Vatican to Islamic fundamentalists.

All the more reason to join the fight, and Gates could be just the woman to lead the charge.

E. O. Wilson thinks you should get out there and make some noise.

We had lots of questions for acclaimed biologist and conservationist Edward O. Wilson when he dropped by the Grist office recently while touring to promote his latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth.

But Wilson directed the toughest question of the day back at us: Why aren’t you young people out protesting the mess that’s being made of the planet?

As we squirmed in our seats, Wilson, 82, continued: “Why are you not repeating what was done in the ‘60s? Why aren’t you in the streets? And what in the world has happened to the green movement that used to be on our minds and accompanied by outrage and high hopes? What went wrong?”

We didn’t have great answers, so we’re going to turn the questioning on you, dear readers: Why aren’t you out in the streets? And if you are, where, why, and who else is out there with you? Should more of us be staging ’60s-style protests? Can online activism or lobbying in the halls of power make just as much of a difference, or more? Tell us what you think in comments below.

Now back to the questions we asked Wilson about his life’s work and his new book. Over the course of his long career as a professor at Harvard, he’s conducted pioneering research on ants, written seminal books on sociobiology and biogeography, published ant-centric fiction in The New Yorker, and led major efforts to preserve global biodiversity. His new book traces human morality, religion, and arts to their biological roots, and turns traditional Darwinism on its head, arguing that social groups and tribes are the primary drivers of natural selection.

Q. The title of your book has the word social in it. Social has become a buzzword for online networking, this new way of forming groups. Are you on Facebook? Are you using the internet to look at the way groups behave?

A. No, others are doing that.

We are entering a new world, but we’re entering it as Paleolithic brains. Here’s my formula for Earth’s civilization: We are a Star Wars civilization. We have Stone Age emotions. We have medieval institutions — most notably, the churches. And we have god-like technology. And this god-like technology is dragging us forward in ways that are totally unpredictable.

We have not gotten beyond the powerful propensity to believe our group is superior to other comparable groups. However, we are draining away the instinctual energy from nationalism — that’s a big help. I think we’re seeing the beginning of the draining away from the dreadfully dissolutive, oppressive institutions of organized religion. Seeing what’s happening is part of the reason for the Tea Party and the populist revolt now that has kidnapped the Republican Party. There’s a resentment about the old bonds and the old groups dissolving and new groups being formed.

Q. Have you seen concern about biodiversity decline over the last decade? A lot of energy seems to be going toward climate change and not as much toward biodiversity.

A. Isn’t that astonishing? We’re destroying the rest of life in one century. We’ll be down to half the species of plants and animals by the end of the century if we keep at this rate. Very few people are paying any attention, just dedicated groups. The only way we’ve been able to get people’s attention is through big issues like pollution and climate change. They can’t deny pollution because you can give them the taste test. You can say, “We just took this out of the Charles River. Here, drink.” But they can deny climate change. We’re in a state of cosmic or global denial.

However, there are changes. The general direction is going up the right way. The only question is how much damage are we going to do to biodiversity before we catch on. Right now I’m going to national parks around the world — I’ve been to Ecuador, Mozambique, the southwest Pacific, all of Western Europe. I’m going to write a series on national parks — what the basic philosophy of national parks and reserves should be, and how it relates to our own self-image and our own hopes for immortality as a species.

We have to do everything we possibly can. I like to tell this the way a former Southern Baptist would tell it, in the original accent. Then you’ll see what I’m trying to say when I say we have to use every weapon at our disposal, all the time, everything from science to activism to political influence, etc. So this is Billy Sunday, a pioneer in Southern evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the ’20s: “I hate sin. I hate sin so much I’m going to fight it till my arms won’t move no more. When my arms don’t move no more, I’m gonna bite it. And when all my teeth are gone, I’m gonna gum it.” Now you get the picture. We all have to do that. When there’s nothing else at hand, gum it.

Q. Some of our readers sent questions for you via Twitter. One asked, What three lessons should we learn from ants?

A. None. We learned a lot of science from ants, but, for heaven’s sake, let’s not do what ants do. Ants are totally subservient to instinctual rules. Males are produced only a short time each year, and they have only one function, which I won’t go into, and when they perform that, then they die. Also, ants are the most war-like of all known creatures. They are at perfect harmony in a colony, but they’re always at war with any colony they encounter. And furthermore, a lot of species kill and eat their injured. So let’s not go the ant way.

Q. Here’s another: What findings among all of your research still surprise and amaze you?

A. Well, after I found them, they don’t amaze me.

Q. One of our readers wants to know what your favorite ant is.

A. Aren’t some of the readers worrying about biodiversity?

Q. We got four or five variations of this question: Are we doomed?

A. I’d like to say no. I’m surely not going to be stupid enough to say yes. What I will say is: no, I hope.

Here’s my favorite little maxim. It’s from Abba Eban, foreign minister of Israel during the 1967 war, one more dumb, senseless war in the Middle East: “When all else fails, men turn to reason.”

I think maybe we are really and truly ready to start trying to solve problems for once in human history by using our forebrain.

“Immigrants cause global warming!” says Stephen Colbert. “It’s always an immigrant who’s cutting my grass with an exhaust-spewing lawnmower. … And their spicy food always increases my emissions.”

In a smart segment this week, Colbert rips apart noxious ads that criticize immigrants for increasing their carbon footprints. The ads, being run on MSNBC, come from anti-immigration group Californians for Population Stabilization. Watch:

Mitt Romney pushed for smart-growth policies in Massachusetts. (Photo by Gage Skidmore.)

Everyone knows that “Obamacare” was modeled on Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health-care law. But did you know that a key Obama “smart growth” initiative — the Partnership for Sustainable Communities — was also created in the mold of a Romney program?

Tea Partiers rallied to quash funding for this Obama partnership last fall. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), conservative darling, criticized the idea for the partnership when it first arose and accused the Obama administration of trying to impose “an urban-utopian fantasy through an unprecedented intrusion of the Federal Government into the shaping of local communities.” The Republican National Committee recently warned that smart growth is part of a U.N. conspiracy (green helicopters, anyone?).

This is yet another issue on which the party’s presumptive presidential nominee looks to be seriously out of sync with the GOP base.

Romney’s “get smart” phase

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney actively fought sprawl and promoted density. He ran on a smart-growth platform: “Sprawl is the most important quality-of-life issue facing Massachusetts,” he said in 2002.

After winning, Romney swiftly set about remaking state government to encourage smarter land use. He created a powerful new Office for Commonwealth Development, and appointed an aggressive environmental activist to run it — Douglas Foy, who for 25 years had headed the Conservation Law Foundation, a litigious regional environmental group. The state’s business community was appalled.

The Office for Commonwealth Development served as a “super-secretariat” or umbrella office for state agencies dealing with transportation, housing, energy, and the environment. It made sure the agencies were all pulling in the same direction toward smart-growth goals — concentrating development in town centers, constructing housing near transit stations, fixing existing roads instead of building new ones.

“I think [Romney] views sprawl as inefficient land use, and he’s all about efficiency. From a business perspective, he thinks smart growth makes a lot of sense,” says Anthony Flint, who served as a policy advisor in the Office for Commonwealth Development under Romney, and is now a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass.

The Romney administration pursued smart growth not through strict regulation but through incentives. The Office for Commonwealth Development channeled hundreds of millions in state funds to cities and towns that changed zoning rules to allow more high-density housing and adopted other smart-growth policies.

Romney was a vocal advocate for the cause. “I very much believe in the concept known as smart growth or sustainable development, which is the phrase I used in the campaign,” Romney told CommonWealth magazine in 2003. “You do not want to deplete your green space and air and water [in order] to grow, and the only way that’s possible is if your growth is done in a thoughtful, coherent, strategic way.”

As Romney put it in 2005, “By targeting development to areas where there is already infrastructure in place, not only can we revitalize our older communities, but we can also curb sprawl as well.” His administration actively pursued a “sustainable development agenda” and promoted “transit-oriented development,” “multi-modal transportation,” “village-style zoning,” “green building,” “mixed-use” development, “mixed-income housing,” and other approaches that would delight any green-leaning city planner — and rile up any red-blooded Tea Partier.

Environmental activists still found plenty to criticize in Romney’s approach to land use and development, but many greens and smart-growth advocates were pleasantly surprised, at least in the first half of Romney’s term. In 2006, the U.S. EPA gave Massachusetts’ Office for Commonwealth Development its National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.

Obama follows Romney’s lead

Under President Obama, the EPA moved from praising Romney’s smart-growth office to mimicking it.

In June 2009, the Obama team created the Partnership for Sustainable Communities in the silo-busting mold of Romney’s Office for Commonwealth Development. The partnership brings together the EPA, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to jointly promote smart growth.

“We want to make sure that when we’re building infrastructure, we’re considering how housing, transportation, and the environment all impact each other,” Obama explained in 2010, sounding an awful lot like the Romney of yore.

Just as Romney’s Office for Commonwealth Development incentivized local communities to embrace smart growth by offering grants, so does the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Since its launch, the partnership has helped to allocate about $3.5 billion in grants and other assistance to more than 700 communities that want to better coordinate housing, transportation, and economic-development projects and make neighborhoods more walkable, transit-accessible, and sustainable.

Tea Partiers go nuts

You might think this all sounds benign or common sense, or even classically conservative — conserving land, conserving gas, and conserving taxpayer dollars by preventing the construction of new roads and sewer systems for sprawling new communities. But that’s not how today’s Republican Party sees it.

Tea Partiers are fighting smart-growth programs tooth and nail, believing them to be part of an insidious U.N. plot. Their fears center around a once-obscure, non-binding U.N. sustainability plan called Agenda 21, which came out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and called for, among other things, “fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems” and — gasp! — “sustainable land-use planning and management.”  Like most non-binding U.N. documents — in fact, like most binding U.N. documents — Agenda 21 was widely ignored. That is, until American right-wingers latched onto it a few years ago.

Last fall, Tea Partiers erroneously linked Obama’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities to Agenda 21, and groups around the country mobilized to fight its funding in Congress. “This funding has been using YOUR tax dollars to promote the United Nations’ plan to control our government,” warned the Gainsville Tea Party. It’s an “assault on property rights and America’s way of life,” railed the Sandia Tea Party of New Mexico. “STOP THE GRAVY TRAIN!!!” demanded the Southwest Virginia Tea Party. Congress did cut some funding for the partnership’s grant making, but the partnership lives on and continues to help allocate funds to local communities.

Meanwhile, as the Agenda 21 conspiracy theorizing has grown louder over the past year, big-name Republicans have joined in. Newt Gingrich inveighed against Agenda 21 on the campaign trail last year, and even mentioned it during a debate in November. That same month, Rick Santorum warned about Agenda 21 in a Facebook post.

In January, the Republican National Committee adopted a resolution “exposing” Agenda 21 as a “comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control.” In an apparent slam against the Sustainable Communities grant program, the resolution called for “rejection of any grant monies” linked to Agenda 21. The resolution could make it into the official Republican Party platform that will be decided upon at the national convention in August.

Where’s Mitt now?

As you might expect, Romney has not been talking about sprawl or smart growth on the campaign trail, and his campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

With other issues — like health care, abortion, and immigration — Romney has flip-flopped from the centrist views he held as governor to right-wing positions now preferred by the GOP base. Because smart growth hasn’t risen to the level of national discussion, Romney hasn’t had to clarify his position on this topic.

Romney told a small group of donors last week that he might completely eliminate one of the departments involved in the Partnership for Sustainable Communities — HUD, which his father headed during the Nixon administration. A few months ago, Romney said the EPA under Obama was “out of control,” though he’s stopped short of calling for it to be abolished. Considering those views, it seems highly unlikely that Romney would want anything like the partnership operating under his watch.

Perhaps, in the same way he has defended his Massachusetts health-care program, Romney would argue that pursuing smart growth at the state level makes sense while doing so at the federal level would be overreach. But as both Romney’s Office for Commonwealth Development and Obama’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities used taxpayer dollars to influence what local communities do, is there really such a dramatic distinction between them?

People who worked with or closely observed Romney during his governorship aren’t sure what his current, or “real,” views on smart growth are.

Foy, the first head of Romney’s Office for Commonwealth Development, recently told The New Republic, “I’m proud of what we did, and I think he’s proud of what we did.” But Foy quit the administration after three years, shortly following Romney’s surprise move to pull Massachusetts out of a Northeast cap-and-trade program that Foy had helped to develop, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Jack Clarke, director of public policy at Mass Audubon and a former environmental official under Massachusetts Gov. William Weld (R), credits Romney with appointing good people to work on smart growth, but says “it wasn’t a core value” for the governor. He doesn’t believe Romney would do anything to advance the cause as president.

Flint, who worked under Foy, says, “Romney the governor was very active on the environment and smart growth and, for a time, climate change.” And now? “His positions on those topics have certainly changed, so I’m not sure what to think.”

Mitt Romney, brownwasher in chief. (Photo by Gage Skidmore.)

Mitt Romney might be the country’s No. 1 brownwasher. While corporate America tries to paint itself as greener than it really is, corporate America’s presumptive candidate tries to paint himself as browner than he really is — or at least was.

We aren’t fooled. Sure, he mocks efficient cars, extols the virtues of coal, and argues that we should be drill-baby-drilling our way to lower gas prices. Yes, he bashes the EPA and has packed his staff with EPA haters. OK, he wants to keep handing out billions to Big Oil and rubber-stamp the Keystone XL pipeline.

But if you chip away at that brown paint, there’s a layer of green underneath. (As for what’s beneath that layer, and then the one below that, who knows?) When he was governor of Massachusetts, Romney was about as green as Republicans get (if you don’t count the now-disgraced Governator, and many Republicans don’t). Check out these eco-friendly stances from Romney’s past:

Coal: While Romney was in the governor’s mansion, Massachusetts cracked down on pollution from coal-fired power plants. In a feisty speech in front of one particularly filthy plant in 2003, Romney said he would not support coal-plant jobs “that kill people.”

Now he says, “In my administration, coal will not be a four-letter word.” He wants to “utilize” our coal reserves “to the fullest extent,” even if the resulting pollution is lethal.

Gas prices: In 2006, during a price spike, Romney swatted away calls to suspend a state gas tax, saying, “I don’t think that now is the time, and I’m not sure there will be the right time, for us to encourage the use of more gasoline.”

Now he says, “The best thing we can do to get the price of gas to be more moderate and not have to be dependent upon the cartel is: drill in the Gulf, drill in the outer continent shelf, drill in ANWR, drill in North Dakota, South Dakota, drill in Oklahoma and Texas” — never mind that his own economic team disagrees.

Cleantech investment: In 2003, Romney created a taxpayer-financed Green Energy Fund to help renewable-energy companies get off the ground.

Now he bashes Obama for doing the same thing at the federal level.

Fuel economy: In 2007, Romney called for autos to get 50 miles per gallon, and lamented that CAFE standards hadn’t been applied to trucks.

Now he argues CAFE rules have been “disadvantageous for domestic manufacturers” and says, “We need to get the government out of these companies’ hair.”

Plug-in cars: In 2007, Romney called for more plug-in electric cars as a way of reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Now he ridicules the Chevy Volt, an American-made plug-in hybrid electric, and pours scorn on clean energy and green cars alike by saying, “you can’t drive a car with a windmill on top.”

Climate change: As governor, Romney introduced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, and helped promote and shape a carbon cap-and-trade program for Northeastern states, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (though he pulled his state out at the last minute — coincidentally, just as he started angling to run for president). In his 2010 book, he wrote, “I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor.” In 2011, he said that we need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, a comment that won him praise from Al Gore.

That nod from the Goracle might have been what goaded him into brownwashing his record, as he’s been steadily backing away from even modest climate concern ever since. A few months ago, he went so far as to say, “we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet.”

Careful with your neck there — you could get whiplash trying to keep track of all this.

So which of these views represent the real Romney? Some of his big-money backers think he’s got a green core and would fight climate change once in office. Don’t bet on it. A President Romney would be beholden to conservative donors, surrounded by conservative advisors, and solicitous of conservative voters — at least until he won a second term.

On Earth Day, April 22, Romney is scheduled to visit Greencastle, Penn., and make a speech at the Green Grove Gardens event center. The old Romney might have grooved on that green theme. The new Romney might want to move his speech to Brownsville, Penn., instead.

The name goes ...

Once upon a time, there were green Republicans.

Like John McCain, who sponsored the first climate cap-and-trade bill in the Senate — before getting all bitter about that whole being-crushed-by-Obama thing.

Like former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who set bold targets for cutting his state’s greenhouse gas emissions — before getting walloped in a Senate race by Tea Party darling Marco Rubio.

Like Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, who championed cap-and-trade and got high marks from the League of Conservation Voters — before getting fed up with Senate dysfunction and polarization and GOP anti-contraception lunacy.

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who proudly signed California’s groundbreaking climate bill and fought back against oil industry efforts to repeal it — before being exposed as a serial philanderer who had a love child with his family’s housekeeper.

Now the ranks of green Republicans have gotten so thin that the nonprofit Republicans for Environmental Protection is dropping “Republicans” from its name.

Well, that’s not how the group itself explains it. Jim DiPeso, policy director for the newly christened ConservAmerica, says, “We thought it was important to hammer home the connections between conservation and traditional conservative values.”

... but the elephant stays.

DiPeso says the Republican trend toward climate denial is “disturbing,” but his group certainly isn’t giving up on the party. ConservAmerica will continue spotlighting green Republican ideas and endorsing green Republican candidates, even if they’re few and far between these days.

The group was excited about Jon Huntsman — and they might have been the only ones. As Huntsman drily told Grist after dropping out of the Republican presidential primary race, his position on climate change “didn’t help at all” during the campaign.

As for Romney, says DiPeso, “We’re still trying to figure out the man and the candidate.”

ConservAmerica has reached out to the Romney campaign and offered to brief the candidate on environmental issues. I suggest they not wait by the phone.

According to a new study in Social Science Research, “controlling for other factors, in nations where women’s status is higher, CO2 emissions are lower.”

Study coauthors Christina Ergas and Richard York, sociologists at the University of Oregon–Eugene, write:

even when controlling for a variety of measures of “modernization,” world-system position, and democracy, nations where women have higher political status — as indicated by the length of time women have had the right to vote and women’s representation in parliament and ministerial government — tend to have lower CO2 emissions per capita. This finding suggests that efforts to improve women’s political status around the world, clearly worthy on their own merits, may work synergistically with efforts to reduce CO2 emissions and avert dramatic global climate change.

Ergas and York say they can’t explain why this correlation exists, but, among other potential reasons, it’s “possible that women make different decisions than do men when placed in positions of power.” Like, say, not giving away the family store to oil barons, not building a massive, leak-prone, climate-screwing pipeline right down the middle of the country, not squandering $4 trillion on two simultaneous, senseless wars …

If we want better decisions, women need to hold about one-third of decision-making positions, according to research cited by Ergas and York. At lower levels of representation, women’s “voices may be ignored, they may feel too intimidated to comment, or they may not be particularly representative of women in general, having been selected because their views were consistent with the men in the organization.”

The Ergas/York paper includes an interesting overview of recent social science research on gender and the environment. A few choice nuggets:

• “nations with higher proportions of women in parliament ratify a greater number of environmental treaties”

• “women in the United States demonstrate greater scientific knowledge of climate change”

• women “tend to perceive environmental risks as more threatening”

• women “are less optimistic about the potential to solve problems by relying solely on technical fixes”

• women “are more active in environmental reform projects”

• “although they are not as active as men in mainstream environmental organizations, women are estimated to make up 60% to 80% of grassroots environmental organization membership”

• “women often cite their roles as caregivers as the primary reason they are active in grassroots environmental movements”

Here in the U.S., as of last year, men held 83.2 percent of seats in Congress, 88 percent of governorships, and 76.7 percent of state legislator positions. No wonder we’re such a mess.

Should Hillary run? (Photo by CSIS.)

Will Hillary Clinton run for president in 2016? She’s given no indication that she will — in fact, she’s said very clearly that she won’t — but that isn’t stopping rampant speculation. (No wonder, as we’re all sick to death of talking about Mitt Romney’s dog and Rick Santorum’s vajihad.)

Political journalist and Game Change coauthor John Heilemann last week predicted there’s a 99.4 percent chance she’ll run. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd argued that Clinton is just the tough broad we need to lead the resistance against the “war on women.” Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch personally encouraged Clinton to get into the race during last week’s state dinner at the White House. Democratic strategist and Clinton family friend James Carville suggested that she might not be able to resist the urge to run.

Clinton announced a year ago that she wouldn’t stay on for a second term as secretary of state if Obama wins reelection, and she reiterated that point in January. Perhaps she wants to spend more time with her family. Then again, her family members are awfully busy themselves.

Clinton will turn 69 just before Election Day in 2016, but she’d still be younger than Ronald Reagan was when he took office — and I’d put big money on septuagenarian Hillary besting a septuagenarian Gipper (or a 40-something Marco Rubio, for that matter) in a battle of wits.

So, what might green-minded voters make of a Hillary run?

Clinton understands the threat of climate change and the importance of building a clean energy economy, as she made clear during her 2008 run for president, and she had a solid green record in the Senate. Then again, ditto for Obama, and see how much good that’s done us?

As secretary of state, Clinton’s biggest green failing, many enviros would argue, has been her inclination to rubber-stamp the Keystone XL pipeline. And she, as part of the larger Obama administration, has failed to make notable progress toward an ambitious global climate agreement — though she can hardly take full blame for widespread global intransigence on this issue.

But while international negotiations are treading water (or slowly drowning), she has led the State Department forward on other climate initiatives.

Last month, Clinton launched an international effort to tackle “short-lived climate pollutants“: black carbon, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and methane, which together account for about a third of current global warming. As she explained:

[C]limate change is one of the most serious and complex problems facing our world. We know its impacts. It impacts global security, the global economy, global food and water supplies, and the health and well-being of people everywhere. And we know that in the principal effort necessary to reduce the effects of carbon dioxide, the world has not yet done enough. So when we discover effective and affordable ways to reduce global warming — not just a little, but by a lot — it is a call to action.

In 2010, she unveiled the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, working to get rid of the open fires and dirty stoves that as many as 3 billion people in the developing world still rely on. “I know that maybe this sounds hard to believe, but by upgrading these stoves, millions of lives could be saved and improved,” she said in announcing the initiative. “This could be as transformative as bed nets or even vaccines.” And it would curb climate pollution too. “Whether you’re passionate about health or the environment or sustainable development or women’s empowerment, this is a project for you,” she said.

Speaking of women’s empowerment, Clinton has always been a fierce defender of her sex against right-wing loonies and other clueless men. She reminded the world of this a little more than a week ago at the Women in the World Summit:

Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women’s rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world. And it seems clear to me that to do that, we have to live our own values and we have to defend our own values.

Whatever her other failings, Clinton won’t stand idly by while men try to take away women’s reproductive health care and hard-won rights. Santorums of the world, consider yourselves warned.