NEWSBYPAUL TULLIS

They're here.

Just as predicted, the Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year in Citizens United has opened U.S. elections to the influence of foreign corporations, according to a report out today.

Climate Action Network Europe has found major European companies that emit large amounts of greenhouse gasses, including BP, are funding major U.S. opponents of legislation related to climate change. The total is greater than the amount given by the Koch Brothers, whose donations have received much more attention.

Among the chief recipients of the dirty money:

You may remember Chevron's "People Do" ad campaign from awhile back, in which the oil giant tried to convince us that environmental concerns were at the top of its agenda—even as it polluted the air, soil and water.

Well, it looks like they're up to their old tricks.

On Monday, the company launched a new ad telling us they "think renewable energy's vital to our planet."

It's part of a series of TV spots intended to "to identify issues that people have with oil companies and find issues where we can have common ground," Chevron spokesman Morgan Crinklaw told Reuters. The slogan for the campaign is "We agree."

"We're investing millions in solar and biofuel technologies," says the ad on renewable energy.

Millions on renewables? Sounds like a lot, until you know what Chevron's profit was for the three months ended June 30: $15.9 billion. In three months.

The release last week of a draft report from the Oil Spill Commission, appointed by President Obama, contained many important findings about what happened in the Gulf. But it also told volumes about the hazards of oil drilling in the Arctic.

Typical of a media and political culture that focuses more on impressions than on actions, most press reports instead discussed apparent disparities between what the administration knew about the magnitude of the spill and what it said, rather than what it had actually done to clean it up. This is a knee-jerk response left over from Watergate and Iran-contra—"What did the president know, and when did he know it?"—that misses the point of the issues at hand.

Working paper no. 5 in the draft report is titled, "The challenges of oil spill response in the Arctic." This matters a teeny bit to the people who live there, so I'm gonna turn it over to Bill White of the Anchorage Daily News, who summarized the reports key findings thusly:

Friday morning I was among the first few dozen green-car geeks in that Babylon of crunchiness known as Santa Monica to test-drive the Nissan LEAF. The much-hyped electric car was on display at the Alt-Car Expo, along with a few other cleaner cars that will soon be brought to market.

Nissan gets the prize for best marketing, as it had organized tours through several modular structures containing displays of the car's battery system, charts showing range and comparing fuel costs, and mini-infomercials on HDTV. Chevrolet's Volt (which you'll be seeing a lot of if you watch the World Series) and the China-built Coda sedan (which has quite the clever ad campaign of its own) just sat there while consumer-driven LEAFs whizzed around a short course of traffic cones set up in the parking lot.

By coincidence, the event was held the same day that the Obama administration announced it would be extending fuel economy standards beyond those formulated in 2009, which had been the first bump in required gas mileage in years. The Sierra Club and others were urging the president to set a standard of 60mpg by 2025, and as the eminent transpo-policy blogger Roland Hwang calculates, the announcement lays the ground for a potential 62mpg by then.

Last week, environmentalists were treated to the glorious news that two of our esteemed Senators had introduced a bill to require that electric utilities produce 15 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2021.

When I learned of this wondrous development, clouds above me parted, I heard hosannas from on high, and little birdies flew down and landed on my shoulder.

Do you detect a note of sarcasm?

This bill is a total capitulation. It’s beyond a compromise and should be defeated.

What? An environmental advocate opposing the renewable electricity standard?

That’s right. And here’s why:

An anti-masturbation crusader is a Senate candidate for a major American party, people are seriously discussing the revocation of the due process clause of the U.S. constitution, and every single Senate candidate from the party that founded the EPA and passed the Clean Air Act is a climate skeptic. Has this country gone mad? Or just blind from all that masturbating?

Wacky right-wingers notwithstanding, one of the most potentially damaging votes taking place November 2 will be on California’s Proposition 23. The measure, backed (to the surprise of absolutely no one) by the dirty energy industry, would put a stop to the state’s powerful global warming law, AB32. It’s the largest public plebiscite on climate policy in U.S. history.

California has a long history [PDF; pp. 13-14] of innovation in environmental policy. More often than not, Washington looks to Sacramento for leadership; just last year, the state’s clean-cars program—which had previously been adopted by 13 other states—was effectively federalized. Since we know that the chance for a global, multi-lateral agreement on greenhouse gas reduction is effectively nil until Washington makes a move on climate, and Washington historically follows California’s lead, it follows that rolling back this important law will be a major step backward for not only the state but also the nation and the world.

AB32 was passed in 2006 and was recognized as a long jump forward for global warming mitigation, using the levers of government to prop up changes which the private sector would implement. The bill reduces greenhouse gasses and positions the state as a leader on clean energy. More than that, since greenhouse gasses are usually correlated with the components of smog, it protects public health.

Prop 23 would “suspend” AB32 until the state maintains 5.5 percent unemployment for a year straight. That’s happened 3 times in 40 years, and AB32 expires in 2020. So despite backers’ disingenuous claims that it’s only temporary, 23 effectively beats 32.

When it comes to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, there's no shortage of whiz-bang technologies to talk about. Often lost in the buzz is an option that's as important as it is boring: energy efficiency. After all, what’s the fun of weatherproofing when there are hydrogen fuel cells to drool over?

That’s too bad, because hydrogen as an energy source is largely hype and will likely remain so for decades, while energy efficiency is the great untapped resource we can get at today. In California over the last few decades, population has doubled and the economy has exploded (even with the current deep recession). During that same time, the state's energy use has remained constant—thanks to energy efficiency (largely government-spurred or mandated, it so happens). In the Pacific Northwest, the interstate agency that directs regional resource issues indicates Washington, Oregon and Idaho can meet 58 percent of new electricity demand through 2015 by improving efficiency alone.

More recently, the buzz around energy efficiency has been growing. Home weatherization is one of the “shovel-ready” projects that received a lot of stimulus money—$327 million in Texas alone [subscription only]. Over at the Environmental Defense Fund, they’re helping companies add millions to their bottom lines through energy efficiency (and conservation) with no corresponding drop in productivity. And RiskMetrics, a New York-based firm that does risk management and financial research, recently issued a report showing how the high-tech industries can find their next big wave of growth in energy efficiency products and services.

But the Big Kahuna of E.E. is automobiles. In the U.S., the transport sector accounts for 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 47 percent of the growth over the last two decades. Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, which are set by Washington, didn’t change for cars during the entire administrations of both Clinton and Bush—a period during which the auto industry revved up production of gas-guzzling SUVs.

One development in my home state of California that caught my eye while I was living in New York for a few years was voters’ approval in 2008 of nearly $10 billion in bonds to build a high-speed rail network. In the face of the worst economic outlook in decades, Californians (52 percent of them anyway) saw that issuing debt for the project was a worthy investment in clean air, reduced emissions, less traffic, and better health outcomes for the state.

Nearly two years later, a new report is out, from the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC-Irvine, detailing some of the new rail network’s attributes. Among the findings were that a train trip will produce twenty percent of the emissions, per passenger, of a car making the same journey, and ten percent compared to commercial aircraft—while creating 320,000 permanent new jobs.

Although the rail authority has been beset by problems resulting from poor management, the report demonstrated clear benefits from the project, which is to be powered 100 percent by renewable energy.

But opponents of investment in clean energy never let the facts get in the way of their argument, and comments from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (the same group that led the gutting public education funding in the state, with predictable results) showed this time would be no exception.