No surprises here: Boston physician Jill Stein bested second runner (and former sitcom star) Roseanne Barr by a 41 percent margin, winning 193.5 of a total 294 delegates. (One delegate was apparently split between Stein and a third candidate.) Stein, who ran against Romney in the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial election and won 3 percent of the vote, is running on a platform centered on her Green New Deal, an ambitious plan that would guarantee full employment of all Americans at a living wage, develop a green economy based on renewable energy sources, tax banker bonuses at a 90-percent rate, and legalize marijuana.

In her acceptance speech Saturday afternoon, Stein railed against a two-party system that she says offers little in the way of alternatives. The U.S. is “at the breaking point, for our people, for our economy, for our democracy, and for our planet,” she said.

Stein’s vice-presidential running mate will be Cheri Honkala, who ran for sheriff in Philadelphia in 2011. In her acceptance speech, Honkala talked about being a homeless, single mom in Minnesota. After she lost her apartment, she and her son lived in her car, then, when a drunk driver totaled that car, sought refuge in an abandoned house during winter. The Green Party, with its promises of jobs and health care for all, was a natural fit for her and her values.

“We are the new and unsettling force that Martin Luther King spoke for,” Honkala said.

Stein and Honkala addressed a crowd of a few hundred delegates crowded into the Chesapeake Room of the Holiday Inn on Baltimore’s Lombard Street. Representatives from all 50 states were there, including one delegate from Hawaii with a Chester A. Arthur-like beard who insisted the state was a sovereign nation. A majority of the crowd appeared to be middle-aged, although there were also college-age activists, like University of Wisconsin-Madison occupier Leland Pan.

The group slow-clapped to quiet the room, while delegates signaled their collective approval with the phalange-waving charm of spirit fingers. One speaker addressed them not as “fellow Americans,” but as “brothers and sisters.”

This, after a Friday night Green Party bash at an art and music venue in Baltimore’s Station North arts and entertainment district. Some 75 convention-goers enjoyed the musical stylings of eco-conscious band Woven Green, whose lead singer, Ashley Cash, sported frilly boots and an Earth-child headband. It was like an urban All Good Festival with booze, T-shirts for auction, and an arm-waving elderly man with a white ponytail who, given enough liquid lubricant, could have bested Beyonce in a “Single Ladies” dance-off.

But this was no Arab Spring. Even the Occupy movement was scarcely visible, save for a delegate from Delaware who demanded a mic check to quiet the room on Saturday, then led everyone in a “banks got bailed out, we got sold out” chant.

For a fledgling party, this year represents a small step forward. The Greens qualified for federal matching funds for the first time, but while party leaders can rile up a crowd of like-minded insiders, they seem woefully naïve when it comes to the politicking needed to build a national coalition and convince others outside the base to join in.

“The biggest challenge for any Green Party in any country is messaging,” said Richard Leckinger, a member of the Green Party leadership in New Zealand, where the Greens own 14 of 120 total seats in Parliament, making them third in terms of party representation. (Leckinger decided to attend the convention after realizing it coincided with a visit to his mother for her 80th birthday.) “You have to learn to talk to voters. I’m not sure the U.S. Greens are there yet,” he told me.

Of course, the Kiwis’ mixed-member, proportional electoral system, where people vote for both a party and a member of parliament, guarantees political parties seats in parliament even if they don’t win any electorate seats, but do win at least 5 percent of the party vote. (Still confused? Watch this video.)

Contrast that to our nation’s winner-take-all system, where a candidate with just 50.1 percent of the popular vote snags all a state’s electoral college votes, and the Green Party — which isn’t even currently tracked on Gallup’s 2012 election page — has a lot of work to do if it expects to have any impact on national politics.

Stein’s name is on the ballot in just 21 states right now, and her campaign lacks the money to purchase television advertisements. (The Green Party has no uber-rich super PACs.) She told the Boston Globe she’ll run a “traditional campaign,” traveling from state to state, and is counting on social media to spread the word about her candidacy.

Still, none of this seemed to matter Saturday. When Stein walked down the center aisle, assumed her place behind the lectern, and thundered in spite of her delicate frame, “This is the year we take our country back,” a Boeing 747’s worth of people rose to their feet in a standing ovation.

Now, if only some network other than C-SPAN had had its cameras rolling.

The Green Party came cruising into Baltimore on Thursday — er, wait, came riding into Baltimore. No. Had party members been able to walk and ride bicycles into Baltimore, I’m sure they would have, but even presumptive presidential nominee Jill Stein found herself riding in a jumbo jet in order to get here in a timely fashion.

But they made it nonetheless, and here they’ll stay for the next three days, holding workshops, fundraisers, and nominating their candidate for the highest office in the land. Barring any magical Roseanne Barr love-fest tomorrow at the nominating convention (the former sitcom star also tossed her hat in the ring), it will be Stein’s name on the ballot in, more than likely, 45 states by November.

In some ways it seems fitting that the Green Party chose Charm City as the location for its presidential nominating convention. Baltimore is sometimes forgotten to its bigger cousins, Washington, D.C., and New York City. It’s often seen as quirky and eccentric. And it’s easily stereotyped by the images we see in popular culture. (No, not every block is straight out of The Wire.)

Welcome to the Green Party, hanging on the heels of the Republican and Democrat parties, populated by an array of disparate interest groups, and written off by state election boards as unserious, tree-hugging, dove-releasing, organic-farming, grass-fed beef-ing … you get the point.

Stein, a Boston physician who was inspired to take up politics by environmental health epidemics, is perhaps a more mainstream candidate than the party has put forward in recent years. But still, it seems that nary a story can pass through the national media without the specter of her most prominent predecessor hanging overhead. Here’s the Times, yesterday:

While Ms. Stein barely registers a blip in national polling, experts point to Ralph Nader, the Green Party nominee in 2000, who was seen by many Democrats as siphoning just enough votes from Al Gore in one state, Florida, to tip the election to the Republican, George W. Bush. Nationally, Mr. Nader had captured only 3 percent of the vote.

Could such a situation unfold again?

Stein brushes off these fears. “We have 10 years of experience with muzzling ourselves politically, and it’s very clear now that silence has not been an effective political strategy,” she said in an interview with Grist earlier this year. “The politics of fear in fact has delivered all those things that we were afraid of.”

“The challenge for us is overcoming conventional communications, which is corporate-sponsored and would like to keep us down and out,” Stein told me in an interview Thursday night. “The political system is very engineered to silence any opposition party that’s not the corporate-controlled, big Wall Street power.”

Certainly the Green Party has made strides. For the first time in its 11-year existence, it has qualified for matching funds from the feds, up to donations of $250. Spirits have been buoyed by the Occupy movement that exploded onto the national media scene last fall, which was, to a large degree, a physical embodiment of the political philosophy of Greens: health care for all, forgiveness of college student debt, employment for everyone, an emphasis on environmentalism and green jobs, a reformed pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Oh, and, legal weed.

“Everybody’s worried about a job, paying their college debt,” said Stein, who chose anti-poverty advocate Cheri Honkala to be her vice-presidential running mate. “This movement is vibrant and strong and unstoppable.”

Stein believes many people agree with Greens, and doesn’t understand, for instance, why banks get bailed out and students don’t. “A political campaign provides another rallying point for this very pent-up, frustrated energy that we can do better and the current system isn’t providing it,” she says. “It’s like a pressure-cooker now, and it needs an outlet.”

Whether that outlet is the Green Party, and whether people will be willing to cast their votes for Stein with the ghost of Ralph Nader – and the very real Mitt Romney — lurking about, remains to be seen. Perhaps, at the very least, her presence will prod President Obama to pay a little more heed to members of his “base” who might be tempted to jump ship. (In the last month, Obama has skipped both the Earth Summit and the national convention of the NAACP.)

This weekend in Baltimore may offer some hints as to what the coming months hold. The Greens have been hosting a series of workshops these first two days, about the Green New Deal, the green economy, and how to get money out of politics. Tonight they’ll throw a fundraiser at an art gallery and music venue in the city’s Station North arts and entertainment district. (Cover charge: $20.) Tomorrow will bring a string of speeches from national thinkers and activists, including 2008 vice-presidential nominee Rosa Clemente, and nominating speeches from Stein and Barr.

The turnout thus far would make anyone look askance at setting up more than two rows of chairs in a tiny press room, but organizers say there are 250 registered delegates, and expect up to 400 people to attend the convention.

As to why the Green Party picked Baltimore, Stein assured me that “a lot of thought” went into the decision. Something about a strong Green Party in the city. But if it’s here, it’s well hidden — or perhaps it’s just composed mostly of photosynthesis-loving organisms. The Maryland State Board of Elections revoked the party’s space on the state ballot last year because the Greens had failed to win 1 percent of the vote in the most recent election. Party members are now trying to collect the 3,000 signatures required to get back on the ballot.

Where are all those occupiers when you need them?

Broadly, what’s happened is that both parties now perceive, accurately, that the public is pro-energy. That’s why both parties are grappling for the “all of the above” slogan.

“Pro-energy,” in the U.S. public’s case, means pro more energy, cheaper energy, cleaner energy, and more secure energy. What the public does not like is the trade-offs between those goals. It doesn’t like hearing that it has to give anything up. It doesn’t like hearing about “anti-energy” penalties and prohibitions. And it never likes favoritism, waste, fraud, or generic “spending.”

Given that all energy policies involve trade-offs between various desiderata, a political party’s ability to sell an energy policy to the public hinges on its ability to evoke the right frames. More/cheaper/cleaner/safer energy always polls well. Restraints, added cost, pollution, and foreign-ness (especially Middle Eastern-ness) do not.

This basic dynamic helps explain why Mitt Romney is not dropping Solyndra. Conservatives still see it as one of their bests attacks on Obama. It evokes Big Government spending, cronyism, waste, and failure (i.e., less energy). It tars the rest of Obama’s clean-energy programs, nay his entire agenda, by association.

The dynamic also explains why the right is going after Obama for allegedly (though not actually) leaving coal and other fossil fuels out of his energy strategy. They don’t want him to capture the pro-energy label. “All of the above,” says Romney, means that Obama is “for all sources of energy that come from above the ground, not for things that come below the ground.” He’s not really pro-energy — he’s just pro-some-energy!

The Dem response has two tracks, one I think is politically smart and one I worry is shortsighted and ultimately self-defeating.

The smart response is to double-down on being the pro-energy candidate. That’s what Obama and his cabinet have been doing. They boast about increased oil and natural gas production while also insisting that clean energy innovation is a key part of an “all of the above” strategy — a part that the GOP is leaving out. Republicans aren’t pro-energy — they’re just pro-some-energy!

This is obviously not what any climate hawk would choose. “All of the above” is, as a matter of policy guidance, absurd. Nonetheless, it is aimed squarely at the bulk of public opinion; that’s the battle that must be fought and won.

The other track of the Dem response is less wise. It amounts to, “They did it too!” History is littered with Republicans enthusiastically grubbing for federal support for clean energy (and dirty energy) projects and companies in their home districts. Their sudden indignation at loan guarantees and the like smells of hypocrisy. I’ve indulged in this kind of thing myself on occasion.

The latest such twist, which Politico says may “undercut attacks on Solyndra,” is focused on a solar company called Konarka.

You see, Romney helped secure the company a $1.5 million loan when he was governor of Massachusetts, and — here’s the twist — it recently declared bankruptcy! Ha ha! Romney “picked winners” in a failed bid at crony capitalism! I’m rubber, you’re glue, bounces off me and sticks to you.

This is an entirely Beltway-focused line of attack, meant to serve journalists the hypocrisy stories they find irresistible. But at what cost? The intent of the attack, as I hear it, is to show that Republicans generally and Romney specifically were “for it before they were against it” — they’ve flip-flopped on alternative energy, from moderate to far right.

Is that what’s coming across, though? When Konarka is called “Romney’s Solyndra,” I suspect political elites do not hear “Romney’s civic-minded attempt to support clean energy.” They hear scandal and vulnerability. They hear that funding clean-energy companies is a dark secret to be embarrassed about; that government support for clean energy is always cronyism; that solar is not a viable business, even with subsidies.

This does not play to cleantech’s advantage. And it’s not true. It is absolutely in the public interest to support clean energy, programs like the stimulus bill and the DOE loan guarantee program [PDF] have been run incredibly well, and solar employs over 100,000 Americans and is rapidly approaching grid parity.

Konarka has been around since 2001. It was a spin-off from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, using organic chemistry and nanotechnology to make thin, flexible solar panels and spray-on solar dyes. In addition to $170 million worth of private funding, it received $20 million in help from the government, including from the Pentagon, the Bush White House, and, in a splashy 2003 press conference, then-Gov. Romney.

Konarka, like Solyndra, was based on a fateful bet against silicon solar panels. The hope was to innovate more efficient non-silicon alternatives and drive down the price enough to compete with silicon. Lots of companies were involved in that bet, as was quite a bit of bipartisan government support. Then along came China with its huge subsidies, manufacturing silicon panels in massive quantities, driving down the per-unit price, flooding the world with cheap product, and undercutting alternatives.

Eventually, silicon prices will rise and alternatives will become more competitive. When that day comes, we will look back on the demise of our domestic solar innovators with great regret. The fight to support them is no embarrassing secret, whether Romney or Obama did it. It was and is in our country’s best public-health, economic, and security interests. It’s a point of pride. It would be unfortunate if, in their enthusiasm to win a news cycle or two, Democrats and their spin doctors implied otherwise.

I respond in accordance with internet tradition: a listicle!

5. Conservatives have a long history of advancing environmental progress. In a column directed to Mitt Romney, Thomas Friedman reels off (one suspects from memory) “the G.O.P.’s long tradition of environmental stewardship that some Republicans are still proud of: Teddy Roosevelt bequeathed us national parks, Richard Nixon the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, Ronald Reagan the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer and George H. W. Bush cap-and-trade that reduced acid rain.” This familiar litany is slightly misleading, attributing to presidents what is mostly the work of Congresses, but the basic point is valid enough: In the 20th century, Republicans have frequently played a constructive role on the environment.

4. There is a conservative approach to addressing climate change. Law professor Jonathan Adler has laid it out in the past and does so again in a much-discussed post over at The Atlantic. He suggests prizes for innovation, reduced regulatory barriers to alternative energy, a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and some measure of adaptation.

It’ll be no surprise to Adler or anyone else that I believe the problem is more severe than he does; solving it — as opposed to just “doing something” — will involve a far more vigorous government role than he envisions. But he makes an eloquent, principled case for the simple notion that “embrace of limited government principles need not entail the denial of environmental claims.” Conservatives could, if they wanted, spend their time arguing for their preferred solutions rather than denying scientific results.

3. There are conservatives who believe in taking action on climate change. Even those dismal polls we’re always talking about find 30 or 40 percent of Republicans acknowledging the threat of climate change. And support for clean air and clean energy policies remains high across the board. Heck, some — OK, a tiny handful of — conservatives are even brave enough to say so in public! It’s really only the hard nut of the GOP, anywhere from 15 to 30 percent, depending on how you measure, that is intensely and ideologically opposed to climate science and solutions alike. Oh, and almost all Republicans in Congress.

2. Mitt Romney used to say and do moderate things on green issues when he was governor of Massachusetts. He spoke in favor of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system for Northeastern states, and introduced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan. He wasn’t afraid to crack down on coal plants — I never get tired of this remarkable video:

Romney also directed considerable state funding to renewable energy companies and waged open war on sprawl. It’s almost like he was running a state where that kind of stuff was popular.

1. The Republican establishment has gone nuts on climate change and the environment.

This, more than anything, is what American voters need to know about the Republican Party — not what Republicans used to do, or what one or two outliers say, but what the party as an extant political force is devoted to today. The actually existing GOP wants to dismantle the EPA, open more public land to coal mining and oil drilling, remove what regulatory constraints remain on fossil-fuel companies, slash the budget for clean-energy research and deployment, scrap CAFE and efficiency standards, protect inefficient light bulbs, withdraw from all international negotiations or efforts on climate, and stop the military from using less oil.

Which brings me to the piece that drives me crazy, from National Journal‘s customarily excellent Amy Harder: “Campaign Energy Messages Differ; Policies Not So Much.”

Seriously?

No … seriously?

I know journalists don’t headline their own pieces. But the piece itself isn’t much better. Take this bit:

Whether the data is inflated or not, the message that may be coming across most to voters is that there really isn’t much difference between Obama’s policies and those likely to be pursued in a Romney administration.

Ah, so the problem is not that Obama and Romney would have similar energy policies. That’s just the message “coming across to most voters.”

Now, if you’re a journalist, and you determine that voters are receiving a wildly incorrect message, what do you do? Do you write a story about their receipt of the incorrect message? Or do you correct the message?

The fact is, Romney would not pursue the same energy policies that Obama is pursuing. At all. Not even a little bit. It’s interesting, I suppose, that Romney used to run a state (and a state party) where moderate energy policy was demanded by voters. But what matters now is that Mitt Romney serves the present-day Republican Party, which has gone crazy.

The notion that Mitt Romney will rediscover some hidden internal moderate and buck the party on this stuff is just a VSP fantasy. Ever since he started running for president (this time around, anyway), he’s been frantically trying to please the right-wing base. Friedman says Romney’s “biggest challenge in attracting independent swing voters will be overcoming a well-earned reputation for saying whatever the Republican base wants to hear.” But self-styled centrists like Friedman have been saying this kind of thing forever and there remains very little indication that any Republican politician faces a tangible cost for pandering to the right.

Romney will not be elected to follow his heart. He’ll be elected to ratify the GOP agenda. Grover Norquist, a man with as much claim to leadership of the GOP as anyone, made his feelings on the matter extremely clear at CPAC:

All we have to do is replace Obama. … We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

…

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared. [my emphasis]

Mitt Romney is well-aware — and if he wasn’t before, the primary taught him — that his job is to “sign the legislation that has already been prepared.” The leadership of the party is in Congress. It has declared skepticism of climate science the de facto party position. It has declared open war on clean energy, efficiency, and environmental protections. It has made clear that it will support fossil-fuel companies at every juncture.

That’s conservatives and climate for you. It’s interesting, intellectually, that there’s a history of green moderation in the party; that there’s a conceptual space where titular conservative principles overlap with climate protection; that many self-identified Republicans aren’t as crazy as their leaders; and that Romney used to pander in a different direction. But what’s relevant to voters who value climate and environmental protection is that they won’t get any under a GOP administration or a GOP Congress.

A version of this post originally appeared on Climate Progress.

Last month, the White House edited climate change from Obama’s Earth Day 2012 proclamation. That was after the president omitted any discussion of climate change from his State of the Union address.

But then, in a Rolling Stone interview, Obama unexpectedly broke out of his self-imposed silence on climate change, saying he thought climate change would be a campaign issue.

Of course, it would be hard for climate to be a campaign issue if the president doesn’t actually talk about it in public. After all, his challenger Mitt Romney seems unlikely to bring it up, having Etch-a-Sketched his position on that subject many times. And Lord knows that media isn’t itching to talk about climate.

So it was disappointing again once again that on Thursday the president reverted to form in his big speech on energy at TPI Composites, a wind-blade manufacturing plant in Newton, Iowa.

The speech never mentions “climate change” or “global warming” or even “greenhouse gases” or “carbon” or even “pollution”!

It’s a fairly long speech, over half of which is focused on energy, to argue for extending “tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year for clean-energy companies like TPI.” Those credits are certainly worth fighting for since 37,000 wind jobs are at stake — as is leadership in a global industry that will be one of the largest job creators in the coming decades when the world finally starts taking serious action on climate.

But as Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the ranking minority member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said last year:

If you are a science denier, there is no reason for government to invest in clean energy.

Now it may be that in the current political climate, no argument would win. But both climate action and federal clean energy investment are classic wedge issues that have broad support with the American public, including independents and moderate Republicans, those not aligned with the Tea Party.

Here are the president’s remarks on energy in Iowa:

The fifth item on my “To-Do” list — I’m calling on Congress to extend tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year for clean-energy companies like TPI. (Applause.) Let’s not wait. Let’s do it now. (Applause.)

Many of you know the story of what’s happening here better than I do, but I just want to remind you how far we’ve come. Shortly after I took office, I came to Newton — some of you remember — and we unveiled an all-of-the-above energy strategy for America. We said let’s produce more oil and gas, but let’s also produce more biofuels; let’s produce more fuel-efficient cars; let’s produce more solar and wind power and other sources of clean, renewable energy. And I came to Newton because Newton is helping to lead the way when it comes to building wind turbines.

And since then, our dependence on foreign oil has gone down every single year that I’ve been in office — every single year. (Applause.) America is now producing more domestic oil than any time in the last eight years. But we’re also producing more natural gas, and we’re producing more biofuels than any time in our history. And that’s good for the Iowa economy. (Applause.) We’re laying the foundation for some of our nation’s first offshore wind farms. And since I became President, America has nearly doubled the use of renewable energy, like solar power and wind power — we’ve nearly doubled it. (Applause.)

So this country is on the path towards more energy independence. And that’s good for everybody. It’s good for people’s pocketbooks; it’s good for the environment; it’s good for our national security. We don’t want our economy dependent on something that happens on the other side of the world. We don’t want every time there’s a scare about war or some regime change in the Middle East that suddenly everybody here is getting socked and the whole economy is going down.

And the best thing is, in the process, we’re also putting thousands of Americans back to work — because the more we rely on American-made energy, the less oil we buy from other countries, the more jobs we create here at home, the more jobs we create here in Iowa.

So let’s look at the wind industry. It’s so important to Iowa. This industry, thanks in large part to some very important tax credits, has now taken off. The state of Iowa now gets nearly 20 percent of all your electricity from wind — 20 percent. Overall, America now has enough wind capacity to power 10 million homes. So this is an industry on the rise. And as you know, it’s an industry that’s putting people to work. You know this firsthand. There are more wind power jobs in Iowa than any other state. That’s a big deal. (Applause.)

And one of these modern windmills has more than 8,000 different parts — everything from the towers and the blades to the gears, to the electrical switches. And it used to be that almost all these parts were imported. Today, more and more of these parts are being made here in America — right here. (Applause.) We used to have just a few dozen manufacturing facilities attached to the wind industry. Today we have nearly 500 facilities in 43 states employing tens of thousands of American workers — tens of thousands.

So we’re making progress. And you know it better than anybody. I mean, when I was talking to Quinten and Mark and a whole bunch of the other folks who are working here, they reminded me of the experience of working at Maytag and putting your heart and soul into a company and making a great product, and then, suddenly having that company leave, and how hard that was for families and how hard it was for the community. But folks made the transition.

And now, when you look at what’s happening here — 700 to 800 jobs, over $30 million being put back into the community — this gives folks hope. It gives people opportunity. I met some folks who have been in manufacturing for 30 years, but I also met a couple of young folks who were just getting started. And that’s what we’re looking for. Nobody wants a handout. Nobody wants to get something for nothing. But if we’ve got a chance to create energy and create value and put people back to work, why wouldn’t we do that?

So I’m here today because, as much progress as we’ve made, that progress is in jeopardy. If Congress doesn’t act, those tax credits that I mentioned — the ones that helped build up the wind industry, the ones that helped to bring all these jobs to Newton — those tax credits will expire at the end of the year if Congress doesn’t do anything.

If Congress doesn’t act, companies like this one will take a hit. Jobs will be lost. That’s not a guess, that’s a fact. We can’t let that happen. And keep in mind that — and this is something Congress needs to understand — Dave Loebsack understands it, but I want every member of Congress to understand it. These companies that are putting in orders for these amazing blades, they’re making plans now. They’re making decisions now. So if they’re cutting back on their orders, if they’re not confident that the industry is going to be moving at a fast clip and they start reducing orders here, that affects you. You can’t wait for six months. You can’t wait for eight months. You can’t wait for a year to get this done. It’s got to be done now. (Applause.)

So this is a simple thing on Congress’s “To-Do” list — extend these tax credits. Do it now. Every day they don’t act business grows more concerned that they will not be renewed. They’re worried demand for their products is going down, so they start thinking twice about expanding, more cautious about making new investments. They start looking overseas. I was talking to your CEO. We got an opportunity to branch out, but we want to branch out by making the stuff here and then sending it there. We don’t want to branch out by sending the jobs and the investments over there, and then shipping it back to America. That doesn’t make sense. (Applause.) One company that had plans to invest $100 million to build a wind manufacturing plant in Arkansas — and create hundreds of jobs — put those plans on hold.

And by the way, this should not be a partisan issue. There are several Republican governors — including the governor of this state — who are calling on Congress to act. There are members of Congress in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle — including your two senators — who support these tax credits. And that doesn’t happen much in Washington where Democrats and Republicans say they agree on something. So if you agree, why haven’t we gotten it done yet?

This is not just an issue, by the way, for the wind industry. Some of America’s most prominent companies — from Starbucks to Campbell’s Soup — they’re calling on Congress to act because they use renewable energy.

Well, actually many of those companies are calling on Congress to act because they are concerned about global warming, for which renewable energy is a core solution — see “Starbucks: Global Warming Is Hurting Coffee.”

How lame is it that a high-end coffeehouse chain is more comfortable talking about the gravest threat to the nation’s health and well-being than the president of the United States?

Photo by Eric Tastad.

On Thursday, President Obama will visit TPI Composites, a wind manufacturer in Newton, Iowa (population, 15,254). There, he will reiterate his support for the Production Tax Credit (PTC), a federal support program that has helped drive wind’s rapid expansion in the U.S. The PTC is now in peril, as Congress appears unlikely to renew it when it expires at the end of this year. The loss of the PTC would put tens of thousands of current jobs — and almost 100,000 future jobs [PDF] — at risk.

Newton’s experience is illustrative, so let’s recount a little history.

Vulture capitalism

Newton used to be the “washing machine capital of the world,” with five washing machine manufacturers. One by one they closed, until there was only Maytag, which at its height employed around 4,000 Newtonians. Then, in 2006, Maytag was the subject of a bidding war. On one side was Chinese manufacturer Haier Group, in partnership with none other than former Romney employer Bain Capital (Romney was gone by then). On the other was Whirlpool.

Whirlpool won, but it would have been vulture capitalism either way. The Maytag plant was summarily shuttered and the jobs sent out of state.

Manufacturing jobs return on the wind, with bipartisan support

Since then, Newton has turned itself around, in no small part by attracting several wind-turbine manufacturers, including Trinity Structural Towers and TPI Composites.

It’s not an unusual story in Iowa, which is a leading wind-power state. Almost 19 percent of the state’s power came from wind in 2011 and the industry employs some 6,000-7,000 Iowans. According to wind industry estimates, since the state passed a renewable energy standard in 1983, some $5 billion in wind investment has flooded the state.

Unsurprisingly, these developments have left wind power with broad bipartisan support in Iowa. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad has defended the wind industry and the PTC against attacks from the right. Even Iowa Rep. Steve King (R), one of the most notoriously bigoted right-wing nutbags in all of Congress, has said, “Now is the time for stability in the wind industry, and the PTC offers just that.” When they were in the state, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Thaddeus McCotter (remember him?) all posed next to a wind-turbine blade made by none other than TPI Composites, to show their support for the industry.

(Side bar: A new analysis [PDF] shows that “adding more wind power to the electric grid could reduce wholesale market prices by more than 25 percent in the Midwest region by 2020.”)

But Romney hates wind

Despite support from Iowa Republicans for wind (and despite that turbine photo-op), Mitt Romney has expressed only contempt for the industry. He would end federal support for solar and wind alike, technologies that, he has said, “make little sense for the consuming public but great sense only for the companies reaping profits from taxpayer subsidies.” (Y’know, like Iowa’s own TPI Composites, the 700 people it employs, and the town it saved.)

And here he is in Colorado, smirking about the wind industry losing 10,000 jobs since 2009. That’s true, of course — it’s gone from a high of 85,000 to around 75,000 now — but mainly because the industry is nervous about the future of the PTC. Which Romney wants to kill for good. Thus insuring far greater job losses.

The fact is, if Republicans win Congress and Romney becomes president, all federal support for clean energy will dry up and Newton, along with other Midwestern towns that have been revitalized by wind, will suffer yet another devastating blow. I wonder if Iowa voters — sitting in one of 2012′s most important swing states — were thinking about that when Romney came to the state recently to lecture about the deficit.

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.

We’ve been saying for a while that expensive gas is good news — not just because the expense of filling a tank could drive people into the arms of bikes and subways, but because affordable gas is a sign of a weak economy. But Fox News has continued to cling to the conviction that lower gas prices are best — probably because Obama was president and gas prices were on the rise.

Well, now gas prices are dipping a bit, but Obama is still president, so it’s time for their views to “evolve.” Media Matters caught various Foxers claiming that lower gas prices are now a sign of Obama ruining the economy.

Of course, Fox is only giving Obama credit for lower gas costs as a harbinger of a ruined economy. When it comes to the fact that gas, you know, costs less, he should by no means get credit, according to Fox host Stuart Varney:

[H]e has had nothing to do with bringing the gas price down the last few days. He’s had everything to do with pushing the gas price up over the last three years.

So, to sum up: High gas prices are a sign of economic recovery, and Obama is to blame for the gas prices, but should not get credit for the recovery, which does not exist, because Obama is president. Low gas prices are a sign of a flagging economy, which is Obama’s fault, but the low gas prices have nothing to do with him. Sounds legit.

Here’s an astonishing statistic, brought to us by Bloomberg:

In April, 16,991 negative ads aired in various parts of the country and 13,748 of them — or 81 percent — focused on energy, according to data provided by New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, which tracks advertising.

Energy? Really?

The details of the story make clear that the vast bulk of these negative energy ads are attack ads directed at Obama, purchased by big PACs — Americans for Prosperity, American Energy Alliance, Let Freedom Ring, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies — awash in Big Oil money.

What the hell is going on? Why is energy dominating the right’s campaign against Obama?

Is this a response to public opinion? Doesn’t seem like it:

According to an April 13-17 CBS News/New York Times poll, 48 percent of Americans say the economy and jobs are the most important problem facing the country today. Fuel costs, which were chosen by 3 percent, fell behind health care and the budget deficit and national debt.

Most polls show something similar — the economy towers over every other issue.

Is it just that Big Oil has more money than … well, anyone else? It’s not like they’re the only wealthy industry that hates Obama — see, for instance, the financial sector. But then, Big Oil contains some of the most profitable corporations in the history of corporations, so maybe there are just lots of oil kajillionaires floating around with nothing better to do.

Is it just that Republicans have no other decent line of attack? The obvious way to go is the economy, but unfortunately for the GOP, the economy seems to be recovering, albeit slowly and fitfully, which is why Romney is being forced into such contortions. It’s not as though the U.S. public is demanding more crackdowns on contraception. Reactionary anti-immigrant and anti-gay policies work for the base, but not so much for the masses. Similarly, beating the war drums against Iran fires up neocons and chest-beaters, but the public at large isn’t eager for more conflict. And to the great confusion and frustration of the Tea Party, Americans generally like Obama on a personal level.

So what does the GOP have to offer? There’s just not much in the cupboard. Energy is one of the only remaining issues where the right thinks it has a clear advantage, an ability to tie Obama to the far left and turn Independents against him. (I think they’re wrong about this, and given Obama’s concerted pushback — a sharp break from the typical Democratic “Frantic Retreat” strategy on energy — it sounds like his campaign does too.) It may be that attacks are focused on energy because they simply can’t think of anything else.

I don’t feel like I have a great explanation for this. What accounts for the overwhelming dominance of Big Oil and energy in the right’s campaign against Obama? What do y’all think?