Jay Mandle analyzes the strange-bedfellows partnership between oilman T. Boone Pickens and environmentalists on the topic of promoting wind power to reduce our dependence on oil.  As Mandle points out, these two camps won't just need each other to push through substantive clean energy reforms -- they'll also likely need to overcome the power of wealthy special interests like Big Oil.Again, it points to comprehensive reform like public financing as a first step to solving other, major problems.

Since taking office the Bush administration has made clear its distaste for regulating air and water pollution, even in the face of global warming.  What is now coming out is how they took their political beliefs and forced them upon important government agencies charged with developing scientific analyses of these dangerous problems.

Today, the Inspector General reports that political appointees in the NASA press office altered the agency's findings on global warming.  Yes, at the press office.

The world's most powerful country -- and its biggest polluter -- has some of the most talented and respected scientists anywhere, and yet

The arm of the White House under this overreaching executive can apparently extend into any agency, on any subject, and bend it to their political will.  The reason we have career staff at government agencies is to handle such issues without political interference -- the exact opposite of what's happening now, as this story shows.

(h/t TPM)

The news on global climate change keeps getting worse, yet it has not become major topic for presidential candidates.

Climate scientist Jim Hansen (of the Goddard/NASA Institute for Space Studies) and other climatoligists are telling the world that we have already exceeded the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that could be considered safe:

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.

The scientists say that we need to take very serious measures very soon:

Present policies, with continued construction of coal-fired power plants without CO2 capture, suggest that decision-makers do not appreciate the gravity of the situation. We must begin to move now toward the era beyond fossil fuels. Continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions, for just another decade, practically eliminates the possibility of near-term return of atmospheric composition beneath the tipping level for catastrophic effects.

While Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain all talk about the need to do something to reduce emissions, none of the proposals they support (such as reducing emissions by 85% by 2050) come close to what Jim Hansen and other scientists are now telling us will be necessary. Even Al Gore didn't spend much time talking about global warming when he was running for president.

The Live Earth concerts this weekend showed an amazing outpouring of concern and ideas for stopping global warming.  Watching, I found myself enraged and embarrassed that my country could be the world's worst offender in omitting greenhouse gases and my government could remain so resistant to taking even relatively small steps to address the climate crisis.

Even if Congress were to pass strong measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions this year--which is no guarantee, with folks like John Dingell (D-Auto Industry) writing initial bill language--I worry that we'll still be too slow to prevent major economic and ecological tremors.  And I know that most Americans, for several years, have wanted action from Congress on global warming.  It hasn't happened.

So the question is, how can we get a Congress that will act on global warming?

I believe we need to fight global warming.  You, if you're like 75% or more of the American population, believe we need to fight global warming.  We recognize that this problem transcends political parties and class and race because it threatens to throw all of us into an environment of severe and unpredictable weather, economic trauma, and ecological catastrophe.

Except we're not fighting global warming.  We're fighting the carbon lobby.

We shouldn't still be fighting with a small band of holdouts who insist on belching greenhouse gases into the air and blocking all efforts to make cars more fuel efficient.

But we have to fight them, instead of the real enemy--global warming--because they have the money and the political clout to block even the most common sense reforms.

The New York Times has new poll numbers in:

You don't see polling that strong for an issue very often, outside of a poll in Boston asking, "How do you feel about the New York Yankees?"

Yet our federal government, both Congress and the White House, has failed to act. As is often the case, this comes down not merely to science--the consensus on global warming was established years ago--but to money. Political money, that is.

I've covered this before, but it's worth repeating: when the fossil fuel industry, especially oil and gas companies, outspend their opposition by at least 27 to 1 in campaign contributions, it's no wonder that the lawmakers receiving that cash are hesitant to pass strong, restrictive policy on global warming emissions.

It's why we need public financing, so our lawmakers are free to represent us--the 80% of us who want action on global warming now. And on any number of other vital issues that impact a lot of us, whether or not we can write a fat campaign check.

Today Sen. Dick Durbin introduces a landmark bill to bring Maine- and Arizona-style public financing reform to the U.S. Congress. His Fair Elections Now Act, which is often known as "Clean Elections" reform, is a bipartisan bill that would fundamentally change the way elections are run. That's a noble goal: to allow qualifying candidates to run using public funds, forgoing the private money chase that has defined recent campaigns. But it does a whole lot more. One issue that's near and dear to me--indeed, one of the main reasons I came to work on public financing reforms--is global warming.

It's no secret that the oil, coal, and natural gas industries want to minimize global warming-related regulations. Exxon resolutely refuses to acknowledge or even use the phrase "global warming." For decades, these multibillion dollar companies have lobbied against any restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, or pushed to make such measures voluntary. Even as the public has come around to overwhelmingly supporting much tougher measures to curb global warming pollution, we've seen no move from Congress.