Hill Heat

Please join us at our upcoming Senate briefing, bringing together four prominent scientists and four leading evangelical Christians to share their concerns about climate change. Rarely have these two groups spoken with one voice, but they are coming together with a shared sense of urgency about the profound implications of climate change for human health and for the natural support systems that sustain all life on Earth, and about the political paralysis in Washington on this issue. 



Speakers

• Dr. Eric Chivian, Director, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School
• Rev. Richard Cizik, President, New Evangelicals
• Dr. Jim McCarthy, Alexander Agassiz Progressor of Biological Oceanography, Harvard University
• Rev. Joel Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland Church, Chairman of the Creation Care Advisory Team, National Association of Evangelicals
• Dr. Nancy Knowlton, Sant Chair for Marine Science, Smithsonian Natural Museum of History
• Rev. Gerald Durley, Senior Pastor, Providence Missionary Baptist Church of Atlanta
• Deborah Fikes, Executive Advisor, World Evangelical Alliance
• Dr. Tom Lovejoy, chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, senior adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation, and president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and lead author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will hold a joint press conference following a meeting on global climate change. They will discuss the steps leading up to December’s international negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark.

CONTACT: Jodi Seth/Whitney Smith, 202-224-4159

West Virginia residents have spent years battling the loss of Coal River Mountain to mountaintop removal mining. At the end of October, Massey Energy began dynamiting at the site. Opponents of the mountain’s destruction say the Environmental Protection Agency has the full authority and legal and moral obligation under the Clean Water Act to preserve the ecosystem and clean waters of the mountain, the last untouched peak in Coal River Valley. When asked for comment by Hill Heat, EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan responded:

EPA is closely examining the company’s compliance with all legal requirements.

As the EPA conducts its legal investigation, the blasting continues.

Active holds are bolded.

White House

• Nancy Sutley, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman – John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
• Cass Sunstein, OIRA director – Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.)
• John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), anonymous

Department of Energy

• Richard Newell, administrator of the Energy Information Administration – John McCain (R-Ariz.)
• Ines Triay, assistant secretary of environmental management – Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)
• Kristina Johnson, undersecretary for energy – Kyl
• Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science – Kyl
• Scott Blake Harris, general counsel – Kyl

Environmental Protection Agency

• Lisa Jackson, administrator – Barrasso
• Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for air and radiation – Barrasso
• Robert Perciasepe, deputy administrator – George Voinovich (R-Ohio)

Interior

• David Hayes, deputy secretary – Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
• Hilary Tompkins, solicitor – Bennett, Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and other anonymous Rs
• Jon Jarvis, National Park Service director – Coburn
• Wilma Lewis, assistant secretary for land and mineral management – McCain
• Robert Abbey, Bureau of Land Management administrator – McCain
• Joseph Pizarchik, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement – anonymous D

State

• Harold Koh, legal adviser to the State Department – Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)
• Susan Burk, Special Representative for Non-Proliferation – DeMint
• Thomas Shannon Jr., ambassador to Brazil – DeMint, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
• Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security – Kyl, released June 25
• Arturo Valenzuela, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs – DeMint

Labor

• Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor – anonymous R
• Craig Becker, National Labor Relations Board – McCain

Commerce

• Jane Lubchenco, director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Menendez, anonymous

Federal Emergency Management Agency

• Craig Fugate, director – David Vitter (R-La.), released May 12

Commodity Futures Trading Commission

• Gary Gensler, chairman – Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), released May 14

Host: Sen. John Kerry

Speakers:

• Rev. Yearwood, Hip Hop Caucus
• Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Green For All

Dial-In Number: 1-866-931-7845
Conference Code: 727028

Contributors to the liberal community blog DailyKos have launched an environment-themed offshoot, DK GreenRoots. The site is led by Timothy Lange, who uses the handle Meteor Blades, Doug Snodgrass (dsnodgrass), and the Daily Kos contributor known as “Patriot Daily.”

Another Daily Kos project, led by contributor RL Miller, is the Adopt-A-Senator campaign on climate change legislation, with community members contributing profiles on the senators and where they stand on climate and energy policy, in particular the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) and the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733).

Hill Heat is tracking the published Adopt-a-Senator diaries at hillheat.com/pages/aas.

Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality resigned Saturday night. Below is the text of his resignation letter, sent to Chair Nancy Sutley:

I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today.

On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.

I have been inundated with calls – from across the political spectrum – urging me to “stay and fight.”

But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

It has been a great honor to serve my country and my President in this capacity. I thank everyone who has offered support and encouragement.

I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to the clean energy future. I will continue to do so, in the months and years ahead.

From the Wonk Room.

The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading the conservative claim that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will “cripple our sluggish economy.” AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus tour pictures workers in hard hats:

The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday, AEA officials participated in a rally with another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.

AEA argues it has “no ties to any political party”:

AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party.

However, AEA is tightly connected to the Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its employees are former House Republican staffers:

From the Wonk Room.

From 1998 to 2005, ExxonMobil directed almost $16 million to a group of 43 lobby groups in an effort to confuse Americans about global warming. After being criticized by the Royal Society in 2006, Exxon promised to end funding to groups questioning climate change. In May 2008, Exxon again issued a public mea culpa and pledged to cut funding to groups that “divert attention” from the need to develop and invest in clean energy. Yet, in 2008, while cutting contributions to the most extreme groups, Exxon still funded the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, all groups which publicly question or deny global warming:

Company records for 2008 show that ExxonMobil gave $75,000 (£45,500) to the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas and $50,000 (£30,551) to the Heritage Foundation in Washington. It also gave $245,000 (£149,702) to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington. The list of donations in the company’s 2008 Worldwide Contributions and Community investments is likely to trigger further anger from environmental activists, who have accused ExxonMobil of giving tens of millions to climate change sceptics in the past decade.

Exxon’s continued duplicity should come as no surprise. Just as ExxonMobil makes public promises to end funding to groups that work to deny climate change, it also has devoted millions to ad campaigns touting clean energy without actually investing significantly in renewable energy. In 2007, Exxon-Mobil spent $100 million on advertising and “green-washing” campaigns in an attempt to exaggerate their commitment to renewable energy, producing ads that focused on global warming, efficiency, and alternative energy. That’s despite the fact that ExxonMobil spent more on CEO Rex Tillerson’s salary than on renewable energy in 2007. While Tillerson took in $21.7 million, Exxon invested only $10 million or so in renewable energy – just a tenth of the amount they spent talking about investing in clean energy.

Exxon is staffed by and supports those who deny the most basic facts of climate change and global warming. In June 2005, White House official Philip Cooney had to resign from Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality after being caught altering documents to hide links between fossil fuels and global warming. ExxonMobil waited only three days to hire him. In fact, ExxonMobil didn’t admit that global warming is occurring until 2007.

This latest evidence of Exxon’s continued opposition to clean energy comes less than a month after the American Petroleum Institute released a report revealing just how little the top Big Oil companies invest in renewable energy.

From the Wonk Room.

The House Natural Resources Committee is holding a field hearing today “to discuss the responsible expansion of solar energy in California and across the nation” at the University of California, Riverside Palm Desert Graduate Center.

The New York Times discusses the Intervale Green complex, a “new, green, low-income housing development” by the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation with 128 units, “a large, glass-windowed lobby, two green roofs and a sculpture-filled courtyard.”

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, and local op-eds in North Carolina and Louisiana repeated the “just wrong” lie that an MIT study found cap and trade is a $3100 tax.