Think Progress:

This afternoon, Nancy Pfotenhauer, senior energy adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and a lobbyist for Koch Industries, lied to MSNBC’s David Schuster, claiming, “We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, and we didn’t spill a drop.” She said:

When Senator McCain opposed lifting the ban in the past, it was because there were concerns about environmental capability. Like, could we do this and still maintain a pristine environmental um uh climate and and area around the drilling? And basically, what we’ve seen is the technology has progressed to the point where we could do that. We withstood Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and didn’t spill a drop.

Watch it:

Pfotenhauer — who spent her career in Washington defending the right-wing polluter Koch Industries before joining the McCain campaign — is repeating a popular right-wing lie. The hurricanes, unsurprisingly, caused 124 offshore spills and hundreds more onshore. Like Sen. McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-CA), Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, Mike Huckabee, George Will, and Bill O’Reilly, Nancy Pfotenhauer is lying.

Seatle Times

The T-shirt has become a must-have for summer wardrobes.

But not just any old tee.

This summer’s hottest top is cozy, made of organic cotton and touts worthy causes across the chest.

From Target to Macy’s, retailers at every price point are reserving a place on their sales floors for T-shirts made of environment-friendly materials, emblazoned with friendly phrases like “preserve Mother Earth” or “Do good.”

Whether you’re a tot or a teen, a male or a female, the eco-friendly tee is the must-have shirt of the moment.

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Celebrity Baby Blog

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably sick of hearing about “going green.” We are inundated with products and info on lessening our carbon footprint and helping to save the planet. I assure you, this is not a bad thing. The problem is in the information that’s presented — there’s just so much of it. And, the internet doesn’t help, there’s just too much information to process and it can be so overwhelming.

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Crooks and Liars

John McCain has flip-flopped on so many subjects that he would feel quite at home in my toddler’s tumbling class. Keith Olbermann recounts McCain’s flip-floppery on Political reform, Immigration, Gay marriage, Abortion, Nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Military actions against rogue states, Negotiating with Kim Jong Il, Negotiating with Castro, Warrantless wiretapping, Torturing Detainees, Indefinitely holding detainees, Iraq War, Tax cuts for the rich, Estate tax, Privatizing Social Security, Balanced budget, Windfall profits tax, Offshore drilling, Bush fundraisers, Jerry Falwell, Pastor John Hagee, MLK Jr. holiday, South Africa divestment, the confederate flag, and alternatives to evolution being taught at school

Negotiating with terrorists (acceptable in 2002 when Powell went to Syria. In 2006, McCain said sooner or later we’ll talk to Hamas, not appropriate now)

Unilateral action against suspected terrorists in Pakistan (Confused leadership with Obama, not with Bush)

Feeling dizzy yet?

LED’s Rock and Reduce Reuse Recycle Rethink

By Greg Palast

Psst! George Bush has a secret.

While you Democrats are pounding each other to a pulp in Pennsylvania, the President has snuck back down to New Orleans for a meeting of the NAFTA Three: the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of Mexico.

You’re not supposed to know that – for two reasons:

First, the summit planned for the N.O. two years back was meant to showcase the rebuilt Big Easy, a monument to can-do Bush-o-nomics. Well, it is a monument to Bush’s leadership: The city still looks like Dresden 1946, with over half the original residents living in toxic trailers or wandering lost and broke in America.

The second reason Bush has kept this major summit a virtual secret is its real agenda. More important, the agenda-makers, the guys who called the meeting, must remain as far out of camera range as possible: The North American Competitiveness Council.

Never heard of The Council? Well, maybe you’ve heard of the counselors: the chief executives of Wal-Mart, Chevron Oil, Lockheed-Martin and 27 other multinational masters of the corporate universe.

And why did the landlords of our continent order our presidents to a three-nation pajama party? Their term is “harmonization.”

Harmonization has nothing to do with singing in fifths like Simon and Garfunkel. Harmonization means making rules and regulations the same in all three countries. Or, more specifically, watering down rules – on health, safety, labor rights, oil drilling, polluting and so on - in other words, any regulations that get between The Council members and their profits.

Take for example, pesticides. Wal-Mart and agri-business don’t want to reduce the legal amount of poison allowed in what you eat. Solution: “harmonize” US and Canadian pesticide standards to Mexico’s.

Can they do that? Can Bush just say, “Eat your peas – even if they’re radioactive?” Under NAFTA, at least the way George Bush reads it (or has it read to him), he can. At any rate, he does.
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Associated Press

A court-appointed expert says Chevron should pay up to $16 billion for allegedly polluting the Ecuadorean Amazon.

A class-action lawsuit by 30,000 jungle settlers and Indians alleges the San Ramon, California-based company failed to clean up billions of gallons of toxic wastewater produced by Texaco Petroleum Co., which Chevron acquired in 2001.

The court in the jungle town of Lago Agrio confirmed the multibillion-dollar damage total to The Associated Press on Wednesday. It was tallied by geological engineer Richard Cabrera, but has yet to be approved by a judge.

Plaintiffs lawyer Pablo Fajardo told the AP that Cabrera recommends Chevron pay at least $8 billion in damages, and possibly another $8 billion representing company savings by operating recklessly.

“This is a significant advance because it gets us closer to the end of the trial,” Fajardo said.

Chevron denies the allegations and says Texaco, which ended its Ecuador operations in 1992 after three decades, followed Ecuadorean environmental laws in a $40 million cleanup, which the government approved in 1998.

The oil company has repeatedly complained that Cabrera is not qualified to make the analysis and has questioned his impartiality.

“This trial is a farce,” said Ricardo Reis Viega, Chevron’s vice president for Latin America.

“We didn’t know anything about this,” he said of the report. “We found out because the press called.”

Think Progress:

Last month, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson denied California a waiver that would have allowed 16 states to implement landmark automobile greenhouse emissions reductions — against the advice of EPA staffers, who told Johnson that “California met every criteria” for the waiver request.

According to documents released by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today, EPA staff members believed Johnson “might have to consider resigning” if he turned down the waiver. A staff memo prepared for the head of EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality to present to Johnson urged:

The eyes of the world are on you. … You have to find a way to get this done. If you cannot, you will face a pretty big personal decision about whether you are able to stay in the job under those circumstances. This is a choice only you can make, but I ask you to think about the history and the future of the agency in making it. If you are asked to deny this waiver, I fear the credibility of the agency that we both love will be irreparably damaged.

In a press conference today, Boxer displayed a document from May 1, 2007, when Johnson was to meet with White House staff to discuss the waiver. Johnson carried papers “in his pocket” urging him to grant the waiver, but he buckled to the White House, Boxer remarked:

A funny thing happened on the way to the White House. … Mr. Johnson goes into the White House with a briefing that tells him to fight for the waiver. And then, the waiver’s not granted.

Staff even thought they made headway with Johnson. “I think Johnson now better appreciates that there are additional conditions in CA that make them vulnerable to climate change,” said a Climate Change division staff on October 31, 2007. Nevertheless, Johnson overrode their advice in the end.

Johnson’s injection of President Bush’s politics into science is notorious. Earlier this year, he censored documents with white duct tape on the EPA’s decision-making process on the California waiver. Asked whether global warming was “a major crisis” facing the world, Johnson replied, “I don’t know what you mean by major crisis.”

Ironically, Boxer said today that the documents revealed an EPA “in crisis.”

Natural Resources Defense Council

Click to Protest!

We’ve got to stop the Bush Administration from rushing through the sale of oil and gas drilling leases in Alaska’s prime polar bear habitat — before it makes a final decision about protecting these imperiled bears under the Endangered Species Act.

Sign the message below and tell your Representative to support the Markey bill (H.R. 5058) that will reverse these new oil and gas lease sales for the sake of polar bear survival.

Polar Bear Protection Delayed. Oil Drilling Okayed. Click to Protest!

Bad news: the Bush Administration has delayed its long-awaited decision about whether or not to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. The deadline for a decision was January 9th.

In the meantime, the administration has given the go-ahead for the sale of oil and gas leases in prime polar bear habitat — the Chukchi Sea off of Alaska — on February 6th.

Coincidence? We don’t think so.

We’re taking the Bush Administration back to court to win polar bear protection. And I’m asking you to make your own voice heard against new oil drilling in polar bear habitat.

Click to Protest!

In Democratic presidential debate last night, CNN once again failed to ask any questions about global warming. Perhaps not surprisingly, last night’s debate was sponsored by the coal front group Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC). Watch an ad for the debate:

ABEC also co-sponsored November’s CNN/YouTube debates in Nevada and Florida, at which no questions about global warming were asked.These debate sponsorships are part of the coal industry’s aggressive “$35 million campaign in primary and caucus states to rally public support for coal-fired electricity and to fuel opposition to legislation that Congress is crafting to slow climate change.” ABEC has spent $1.3 million alone “on billboard, newspaper, television and radio ads in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.”
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