What's Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) up to? Under pressure from Stewart Resnick, billionaire corporate farmer & major campaign donor, Feinstein is attempting to put a legislative limit on how much water from the California Bay-Delta system goes to rescuing the region's endangered fisheries. It would quite literally erase biological science & replace it with political language. Sen. Feinstein reportedly plans to attach a rider to the jobs bill that would divert water away from the struggling fisheries to help farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. Blocking protections required under the Endangered Species Act, one of the nation's bedrock environmental laws, …

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)At first it seemed like simply one bad idea from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But now we know the real story -- a tangled web of public officials, polluter lobbyists, and efforts to gut the Clean Air Act.  And every day it seems we're learning more -- more about the revolving door between the Bush administration and polluter lobbyists; more about their influence with senators and their staffers; and more about who's really pulling the strings on efforts to block climate action -- Big Oil's MVP, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Some of the best reporting this week …

Warning: If the season finale of Entourage is waiting on your TiVO and you haven't watched it yet, come back and read this post later as it contains spoilers. On the season finale of HBO's Entourage, Matt Damon stole the show with a guest appearance as a well-meaning yet overbearing version of himself. But another dazzling cameo slipped under the radar. Damon pressures Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) to contribute time and money to OneXOne, a charity for which Damon is a real-life ambassador. Damon won't take no for an answer, enlisting Bono and LeBron James to help pressure the vacuous …

Is there any media outlet that enables global warming denial more effectively than the Washington Post? After today's op-ed from one of the top deniers in the world, the latest in a long line of denial op-eds, you have to wonder. While Fox "News," Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal, and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review all deliver daily doses of denial, they're all expected to. The Washington Post, on the other hand, somehow is known as a flagbearer of the fictional Liberal Media Establishment despite having a center-right editorial page editor and more conservatives than liberals on its op-ed roster. So when …

A friend just alerted me to the website PlantsNeedCO2.org, which is running ads on NYTimes.com. From the site's "about us" page: Our mission is to educate the public on the positive effects of additional atmospheric CO2 and help prevent the inadvertent negative impact to human, plant and animal life if we reduce CO2. Plants Need CO2 is a 501 (c)(3) non profit corporation. How do I say this? False. I know you're never gonna believe who really owns the website ... Big Oil. It's registered to Quintana Minerals Corporation: Quintana Minerals Corporation provides oil and gas exploration services to the …

In today's Washington Post, David Fahrenthold's front-page story spends its first 15 paragraphs detailing Big Oil's massive campaign against clean energy while incredibly avoiding any mention of one little detail: money. In fact, to believe the first 15 paragraphs, the reason polluters have such a strong voice in the national debate is because conservation groups are "struggling" and "slow." Not a single mention of polluters' massive money advantage in the first 540 words. Then, almost as an afterthought, Fahrenthold drops this in as paragraph 16: Oil and natural gas groups have always had deeper pockets. In the first six months …

UPDATE 12:35pm: I'm now hearing NAM/ACCF has indefinitely postponed their press call to release their bogus jobs study. Apparently they're saying they need to "further analyze" the numbers. Does that mean "even with our thumbs on the scale, we couldn't outweigh the benefits of clean energy, so we need more time to figure out how to come up with better phony-baloney numbers"? Two industry groups, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), are getting ready to release an "independent" study today on the American Clean Energy and Security Act. But if this study …

Republicans in the Senate claim to have an “alternative" to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act. (OK, so it was just Sen. Lamar Alexander, but we’ll accept his claim that he has some so-far-anonymous colleagues behind him). But on closer inspection, chances that their plans would affect clean energy or energy security seem dim. First, let’s look at what ACES aims to accomplish: To reduce global warming pollution and increase our energy security by creating new incentives for clean, made-in-America energy while containing costs to consumers. So would Sen. Alexander’s plan address these issues? Let’s break it down: …

If you're a green blogger who wants to cover a Heartland Institute event, you better pony up hundreds of dollars in entrance fees or you're not allowed inside. But if you're a Congressman holding a hearing on global warming and you don't invite a spokesman from the Heartland Institute to testify, you're a fascist who silences dissenting voices:

Can I cover Heartland Institute events as media? It depends on who's watching when I ask the question. Back in March 2008, the Heartland Institute held its "First International Conference on Climate Change" in New York City. Heartland is one of the leading oil industry-funded deniers of global warming. According to ExxonSecrets.org, it's received $561,500 (unadjusted for inflation) from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005. When I emailed to request credentials to cover the event as a blogger, Heartland's events manager told me, "I am so sorry but we are sold out, I have no extra space." But when I showed …