Last night, Senator Murkowski was treated to a fundraiser by lobbyists for the Nuclear Energy Institute, Duke Energy and Peabody Coal. Political Party Time has the details:

Host Alex Flint lobbies for the Nuclear Energy Institute, whose PAC has given her $5,000 since 2008. Beverly K. Marshall lobbies for Duke Energy, which is based in North Carolina, and has given the senator $24,050 over the course of her career. David Russell represents a number of clients for Bryan Cave LLP, including Peabody Energy, a coal company based in St. Louis,  Mo. Peabody’s PAC has given her $3,000 since 2008.

Here is a screenshot of the invitation, which was distributed by the NRSC:

Political Party Time also made some interesting general observations about Senator Murkowski’s fundraising habits:

Murkowski gets more campaign cash from the energy and natural resources sector than any other–more than $1 million over the course of her career. Seventy-three percent of her campaign cash comes from sources out of state.

Senator Murkowski was met outside the fundraiser by a group of student protesters. Rather than taking the time to engage with the concerned youth, she quickly brushed past them into the building. Watch here:

Just 19 hours later, today at 2:00, Senator Murkowski will do the bidding of those who funneled money to her campaign last night. On a conference call with Chamber of Commerce members Senator Murkowski will give an overview of the EPA’s plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and her efforts to stop those plans. Here is how the Chamber of Commerce describes the call:

The U.S. Chamber is pleased to announce that we will hold a special member conference call with United States Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and we want you to be a part of this timely discussion about climate change and legislation in Congress to deal with EPA’s actions to regulate greenhouse gases on the afternoon of Thursday, February 25. Join in this worthwhile opportunity to hear an overview of the EPA’s move toward regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, its burdensome affects on business, and Congress’ response to the move. Register now to receive the dial-in number.

Senator Murkowski has introduced bipartisan legislation to allow time for Congress to address the climate change issue and prevent EPA from moving forward with a regulatory scheme to regulate greenhouse gases under the ill-suited framework of the Clean Air Act. On January 14, the first major step of that process–an EPA final rule concluding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare–took effect, and with it the obligation to move forward with what could easily become the most expensive and intrusive set of regulations in history. The implementation of these rules will have a significant impact on the economy and small businesses.

This is one of those all-too-often instances in Washington where a direct connection can be drawn between a candidate’s fundraising and their anti-progressive legislative agenda. Polluting corporations don’t funnel millions of dollars to candidates out of the goodness of their hearts. They do so with an expectation that they’ll get something in return, and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski never disappoints on that front.

Indeed, Senator Murkowski’s extremely close ties to oil, gas and coal industry lobbyists have caused some to speculate that she is romantically involved with some of them:

When I moved from Alaska to Washington, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find someone who was right for me. The first couple of years were tough — I met a lot of potential matches but couldn’t find the perfect one. My dad had lived in DC for years and had a lot of success with PolluterHarmony, so I decided to try it.

When I saw Jeff’s profile, I couldn’t believe I found a lobbyist with so much money to contribute to my re-election campaigns and so many big coal and utility industry clients. Arch Coal, Southern Company, Edison Electric… I thought “He’s just what I’m looking for!” We instantly clicked — in our first phone conversation, he told me he could bundle $10,000 by our first date. We met in person a week later, and he had the check in hand.

In order to make sure Washington lobbyists know that Senator Murkowski’s votes and legislative efforts are up for sale to the highest bidder, PolluterWatch.com is now running ads on Politico:

And to be fair to Alaska residents who may also be interested to know about the unscrupulous behavior of their senior Senator, ads are also running on the websites of Alaska TV stations:

Despite intimations to the contrary, Senator Murkowski is far too beholden to corporate interests to take the true interests of her state seriously. While Alaska is literally melting, Murkowski’s spokesman is busy attacking bloggers for asking hard questions. While her state’s infrastructure suffers from the impacts of climate change, Murkowski lets corporate lobbyists write legislation for her. And while a bipartisan group of Senators works to find consensus on climate legislation, Senator Murkowski does everything in her power to keep her funders happy by thwarting progress at every turn.

Visit NoDirtyAirAct.com for the latest on Senator Murkowski’s efforts to the bidding of her energy industry lobbying pals by severely weakening the Clean Air Act.

By way of this Steven Pearlstein article, Ezra Klein wonders why natural gas doesn’t get as much attention as nuclear energy as a bridge fuel toward the clean energy economy:

My understanding is that natural gas is a really promising candidate as a bridge fuel (a cleaner energy source between the coal/oil economy and whatever comes next), for all the reasons Steve Pearlstein lays out here. But nuclear energy attracts all the political attention. Why is that? Is it just because nuclear energy has traditionally been opposed by liberals and so it’s become an article of faith among conservatives? Does nuclear energy have a more-organized or better-funded industry backing it?

I’ll look at a few factors that may play a role in this below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brad Ellsworth is officially in the race for Indiana’s now-open Senate seat. Environmentalists who would consider supporting him should keep in mind his vote against the American Clean Energy and Security Act last June.

Following the vote, here is what he had to say:

In a statement released after the Friday vote, Ellsworth said that while he believes climate change “poses a threat to the planet,” he could not support a bill with the potential to have such a drastic economic impact.

“I am deeply concerned about the unintended consequences this bill may have on consumers and businesses in Indiana,” Ellsworth said. “We don’t know how these policies will ultimately impact utility bills, job prospects and the strength of our economy down the road.”

…

“The bill would place undue burdens on Indiana families and businesses, and particularly in these tough economic times, I could not support it,” Ellsworth said.

He also was worried about the potential effect of the bill on miners’ livelihoods. Most of Indiana’s coal mines are in the southwestern portion of the state.

Ellsworth made his final decision after deliberating with “a broad cross-section of groups and industries,” according to Elizabeth Farrar, his press secretary.

Ellsworth’s official website doesn’t say much about environmental issues, although his page on energy strongly emphasizes biofuels without even mentioning wind or solar.

Meanwhile, the DSCC continues its steady march to irrelevance by touting the fact that various media outlets are describing Ellsworth as ‘conservative’ ‘moderate,’ and ‘centrist.’ As far as I can tell, the DSCC is policy-agnostic, concerned exclusively with electing Democrats. Going further than just not caring whether or not the candidates they um, you know, support the Democratic agenda, they actually seem to prefer that they oppose it. May their influence continue to wane.

IT World:

Google has received federal approval to buy and sell energy on the open market, giving it more options for the way it powers its data centers and opening the door to a potential move into the energy-trading business.

Google applied for the authorization last December through a wholly owned subsidiary called Google Energy. The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved its application Thursday, granting Google “market-based rate authorization,” or the authority to buy and sell energy on a wholesale basis.

“We made this filing so we can have more flexibility in procuring power for Google’s own operations, including our data centers,” Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said via e-mail.

Here is FERC’s order granting Google the authorization:

E-18 –

More on this from David Roberts and Michael Graham Richard.

Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President on for energy and climate change, published the following letter to the editor in today’s L.A. Times:

Re “Backing off on climate change,” Editorial, Feb. 5

As The Times pointed out, climate change and its effects are real — and the longer we wait to act, the greater the costs will become. The most significant risk lies in maintaining business as usual.

Your assertion that President Obama has backed off on his call for comprehensive energy and climate legislation is false. The president supports legislation that would put a price on carbon pollution and incentivize clean energy. He made this clear in the State of the Union address, and backed it with strong funding in his budget. These actions are designed not only to tackle climate change but to encourage businesses to unleash the American competitive spirit to lead the global economy and create millions of jobs.

President Obama is encouraged by progress in Congress and is committed to getting a bill as soon as possible to protect our environment, our economy and our security.

Climate Progress points us to Farm Policy, which has audio of an interview (MP3) White House advisor David Axelrod gave to Gerald Seib of The Wall Street Journal on C-Span on Sunday. In the interview, Seiber asked if cap and trade legislation was a ‘essentially a non-starter,’ to which Axelrod sounded a cautious note and urged the Senate to find a bipartisan consensus.

Here is a rushed transcript:

Sieber: Another item on your agenda right now has been global warming, cap and trade.  There’s a sense on capitol hill that the exhaustion at the moment with the economic crisis and the health care debate makes that essentially a non-starter.  Is it a non-starter to you, or do you think that is still an item on the active agenda for 2010?

Axelrod: Well let’s first talk about the issue of energy, Jerry.  Because I think that can’t be a non-starter for the United States of America.  Right now what you see is China, just full throttle, full speed ahead in trying to command the clean energy economy of the future.  India is moving in that direction.  And this is going to be an important part of the economic mix in the future.  We have to compete for those jobs and that future.  And so we can’t just walk off the field when it comes to energy.  And the President spoke about in his state of the union.

In terms of cap and trade, there are efforts ongoing in the United States Senate between Republicans and Democrats to come up with an overall energy bill that would help drive this clean energy investment, this clean energy economy.  If a consensus can be reached, we want to support that.  But this is clearly an issue that Republicans and Democrats are going to have to do together.  It’s not something that one party of the other can do.

I’m glad to see folks letting the Senate know that an energy bill without a cap on emissions and a price on carbon is not acceptable.

BGA Letter to Senate FINAL –

Via Yglesias, via Free Exchange, Paul Kedrosky has this useful chart:

R.A. at Free Exchange makes an interesting point about this:

[W]hat should stand out is that most of the world’s population is squished into that broad bottom tier, which includes emerging markets and undeveloped countries. Really, something like 85% of the people living on this planet consume below the world’s average energy use. Either those people need to quit aspiring to developed nation lifestyles, or the world needs to make output far less energy-intensive, or we should all prepare ourselves for a nasty time of things, in geopolitical and environmental terms, as emerging markets continue to develop economically.

The other day I mentioned that the correlation between energy use and GDP is a myth. There are significant gains to be made in terms of energy efficiency, and I agree completely with the assessment that ‘the world needs to make output far less energy-intensive.’ Much of this will take place naturally once a meaningful price is placed on carbon throughout most of the planet. Smart firms will find innovative ways to decrease energy-intensity and will profit by doing so.

There is also huge potential for developing nations to ‘leapfrog’ outdated technologies and move directly to more efficient ones. For example, in India there is not yet a national power grid. Perhaps as they develop the national grid they’ll use smart grid technologies, which will lead to significant gains in energy efficiency.

Such leapfrogging of technologies, and the decreasing energy intensity of developing economies that goes with it, is our only hope for stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions while improving global standards of living at the same time. If developing countries don’t learn from the mistakes made by western economies, our energy and environmental crises will be entirely unmanageable in the decades to come.

Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones:

As I reported yesterday, some Senate Democrats are calling for leadership to abandon a cap on carbon dioxide pollution and instead move forward with a bill that focuses only on energy provisions. And President Barack Obama yesterday also acknowledged that this may well be what happens in the Senate. In remarks to Senate Democrats today, however, Obama called on his party not to take “the easy way out” by dropping a cap on emissions.

Here is the relevant part of the transcript:

But — and this is just the point that I wanted to make because it came up in New Hampshire yesterday — we still — one of the best ways to be on the forefront in energy is to incentivize clean energy, and discourage the old sources or methods that aren’t going to work in the future.

And so the fact that Joe Lieberman is working with Lindsey Graham, John Kerry has been all over this — the three of them are coming together to try to find a workable, bipartisan structure so that we are incentivizing and rewarding the future — and understanding that there’s a transition, so that we’ve got to make sure that the disruptions are minimized as we move into this new energy future — that’s going to be vital.

So don’t give up on that. I don’t want us to just say the easy way out is for us to just give a bunch of tax credits to clean energy companies. The market works best when it responds to price. And if they start seeing that, you know what, dirty energy is a little pricier, clean energy is a little cheaper, they will innovate, and they will think things through in all kinds of innovative ways.

So I want to congratulate specifically John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham, who it probably doesn’t help him for me to compliment him — (laughter) — but has been very thoughtful in terms of how they’re approaching this issue.

Also of interest, Senator Graham denounced the prospect of splitting energy from cap and trade this morning:

Graham on Wednesday also rejected moving the Senate energy bill alone. “If the approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill, and say that moves the ball down the road, forget it with me,” the South Carolina Republican told business leaders from the renewable energy industry on Wednesday.