GOP Protest Builds Against EPA Regulating Greenhouse Gases

A storm of Republican protest is erupting over the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases pose a public danger, with the latest wave coming from a state among those most at risk from the effects of climate change.

Republicans are stepping up their efforts to stop climate change legislation. They are also continuing their campaigns of propaganda to create confusion in the public’s mind about global warming.

We really have to keep pushing back at the deniers and climate change skeptics before they do any more harm to public opinion, because they are pulling out all the stops.  Their new campaign is “CO2 is Green”.   This is from Media Matters:

A new group named “CO2 is Green” (really) is contending that “CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 makes Earth green because it supports all plant life. It is Earth’s greatest airborne fertilizer.”  (Astoundingly inaccurate!)

The Washington Post wrote:

The man behind the latest entry to the climate legislation wars is H. Leighton Steward, a veteran oil industry executive, co-author of the “Sugar Busters!” dieting books, and winner of an Environmental Protection Agency award for a report on damage being done to Mississippi wetlands. Now retired, he says he wants to “get the message out there” that carbon dioxide, which the Supreme Court has ruled a pollutant and which most scientists regard as a dangerous greenhouse gas, “is a net benefit for the planet.”

Steward has joined forces with Corbin J. Robertson Jr., chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine in return for royalties. Its revenues were $291 million in 2008.

Not only have Steward and Robertson founded “CO2 is Green” to take misinformation to the airwaves, they’ve also launched “Plants Need CO2″ to educate Americans about the joys of carbon pollution.

They have formed two groups — CO2 Is Green designated for advocacy and Plants Need CO2 for education — with about $1 million. Plants Need CO2 has applied for 501(c)(3) tax status, so that contributions would qualify as charitable donations, said Natural Resource Partners general counsel Wyatt L. Hogan, who also serves on the group’s board.

This has to be fought against.  Some kind of climate legislation has to get  passed this year, preferably a tax and dividend bill.  (See the Larson bill in the House. America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act of 2009).   The cap and trade bill isn’t good enough because it won’t right climate change aggressively enough,  but we can work on making that stronger.

In the meantime, working against us will be this denier cult, which is really driven by money and greed. (Join the CO2 is Green Facebook group here and have some fun setting them straight.)  Wherever people see climate deniers online, my recommendation is to respond to them with as many facts as you can.*   They are using new tactics, straw man arguments, red herrings, blatant lies, you name it, [...]