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 incredibly illustrative, so let's recount a little history.

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:

Don't expect the environment to be in the spotlight in political campaigns this year. The economy will be the star in 2012, with the culture wars singing backup.

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:

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.

A still from an American Energy Alliance ad. (Click to watch.)

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?

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

In a Rolling Stone interview published Wednesday, President Obama broke out of his self-imposed silence on climate change. He made some remarkable statements, including his belief that the millions of dollars pouring into the anti-science disinformation campaign will drive climate change into the presidential campaign.

Earlier this year, the president omitted any discussion of climate change from his State of the Union address. And he (or the White House communications team) edited it out of his Earth Day proclamation.

But in this interview, Obama was actually the first to bring up climate change, noting it was one of many big issues he’s had to deal with and then slamming the GOP for moving so far to the right on the issue.

The big news was that the president expects climate change to be a campaign issue:

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.

Cross-posted from Climate Progress.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has benefited from Big Oil and Big Coal’s backing, which have poured more than $16 million into ads attacking President Barack Obama’s energy policies. As a favor, Romney says he plans to open public lands and water to drilling while undoing safety and environmental protections.

Below, we take a side-by-side look at Obama's and Romney’s policies and their divisions on fossil fuels, clean energy, public health, and pollution. Beneath the chart is a more detailed comparison of the candidates’ energy proposals and rhetoric.

Photo by porchlife.

When the leaders of more than 100 countries meet this June to discuss the small matter of the Future of Life on Earth, President Obama might be there. Then again, maybe he’s got a golf match scheduled that day. He’s not saying.

Yes, it’s true, the guy who just picked up an early endorsement from Big Green groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, the man who announced in his last State of the Union Address that “America remains the one indispensable nation in world affairs,” may be a no-show at the 2012 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

When asked about the president’s plans on Tuesday, U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern told The Washington Post, “I don’t have any understanding that the president has any intention of going.” A White House spokesperson was noncommittal: “I don’t have any scheduling announcements at this time.”

Ouch. What ever happened to “Love Your Mother”?

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: