Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Brad Johnson, and Zaid Jilani | The Progress Report

Even as pressure builds for the U.S. Senate to take action on global warming, polluters have intensified their campaigns to block clean energy reform. With only 74 days until the world’s nations are to meet in Copenhagen, Denmark to negotiate the successor to the Kyoto climate treaty, President Obama has reaffirmed his commitment to tackle climate change, end fossil fuel subsidies, and build a clean-energy economy. “The security and stability of each nation and all peoples — our prosperity, our health, our safety — are in jeopardy,” Obama told the U.N. Climate Summit in New York City yesterday. “And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out. And yet, we can reverse it.” However, “the U.S. has been dragging its feet for eight years,” Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told reporters yesterday. Critics are right to blame the Senate for inaction, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) explained, because “polluting industries see the Senate as a place where they can hold 40 votes.” Members of the Senate who resist moving forward — and their corporate allies — argue that capping global warming pollution threatens an already weak economy. However, “solving global warming means investment,” Center for American Progress president John Podesta writes in a new report. “Moving beyond pollution from fossil fuels will involve exciting work, new opportunities, new products and innovation, and stronger communities. Our current national discussion about constraints, limits, and the costs of transition misses the real excitement in this proposition.”

‘FLAT OUT WRONG’: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Energy Information Administration, and the Congressional Budget Office have each separately analyzed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act, finding that this clean energy legislation would cut electricity bills, reduce global warming pollution, and cut oil dependence at a cost of about a postage stamp a day. However, based on Treasury Department documents acquired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Declan McCullagh, a libertarian blogger for CBS, claimed that “a cap and trade law” to establish global warming standards “would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.” Even though the Treasury Department has called McCullagh’s tale of a $1,761 tax “flat out wrong” — in part because “the revenue raised from emission permits would be returned to consumers under both administration and legislative proposals” — conservatives and polluters have repeated McCullagh’s false analysis. The American Petroleum Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and at least 12 Republican officials — from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — promoted the lie. Radical Fox News host Glenn Beck — a keynote speaker for the Chamber of Commerce who is praised by Republicans as a truth-teller — used the false story to accuse Obama of “outright lies.”

CORPORATE UNREST: Corporations concerned by climate change are turning away from the unethical fearmongering by industry trade groups against a clean-energy economy. Yesterday, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), California’s primary electricity provider, announced it was leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of “irreconcilable differences” with the Chamber’s reactionary stance on global warming, which includes calling for a “Scopes monkey trial” on climate science. PG&E Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Darbee wrote that company employees “find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored.” Nike, which is still a member of the Chamber, rebuked the organization: “It is not a time for debate but instead a time for action.” Similarly, Duke Energy, which wants to “get to work on a climate bill,” left the National Association of Manufacturers for calling the ACES Act “anti-jobs, anti-growth” legislation. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — the lobbying juggernaut caught forging letters to Congress opposing energy reform — has lost several members in recent months, including Duke Energy, Alcoa, and Alstom Power.

SENATE OBSTRUCTION: Not only has the Senate let action on clean energy legislation slide, some of its members are attempting to block the Obama administration from moving forward. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who denies the human influence on global warming, has submitted an amendment to the Interior appropriations bill (H.R. 2996) to block funding for centers that study and prepare for the impacts of climate change. Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) has “filed two amendments that would restrict U.S. EPA’s ability to impose new carbon dioxide regulations.” And Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) “wants to take away U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries, coal-burning power plants and other smokestack industries.” Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) attacked EPA action as well, saying that “the alphabet agencies are not the fourth branch of government, and they ought to take judicial notice of what’s happening and what’s not happening in the Senate.” Many senators seem to believe that the 12 years of inaction since they rejected the Kyoto treaty in 1997 are not enough. However, as the European Union’s ambassador to the U.S., John Bruton, has expressed, “The world cannot wait on the Senate’s timetable.”