WOW.
What a bad day for the drill, drill, drill crowd.

COLLAPSE #1 FOR THE REPUBLICAN DRILL, DRILL, DRILL PLAN

The party of John McCain and Exxon released the perfect status-quo, oil-company-designed Energy Plan today.

While despoiling the steps of the Capitol Republicans revealed their laughable Big Oil Giveaway today.
AND THE REPUBLICANS WERE MET WITH A LARGE COUNTER - PROTEST.

UPDATE: NEW HEADLINES

Embarassing turnout for Republicans at House GOP drilling event

Protesters Overrun GOP Event

In an auspicious presentation at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Friedman spells out in no uncertain terms the challenges mankind faces in the Energy Climate Era now underway in the 21st century.

1. Energy and resource supply and demand.

2. Petro-dictatorship.

3. Biodiversity loss.

4. Climate change.

5. Energy poverty.

These five trends, which have met or passed their 'tipping points', will define humanity going forward. It was a tour-de-force clarion call.

"We are the first generation of human beings that are going to have to think like Noah," he said. "We are the first generation of humans who are going to have to think about saving the last two pairs."

Watch the videos of Friedman's speech.

Friedman throws down the challenge.

Al Gore 's speech (video) points to a solution.

The world is changing fast around us, and will not give us a second chance. We had better get started now.

National Review's Lawrence Kudlow is reporting that McCain has dropped his cap and trade proposal to control global warming pollution.

Kudlow is waxing poetic - for him it is MISSION ACCOMPLISHED -  he says McCain has erased the last distinction between the McCain plan and  the Bush/Cheney oil company profit bonanzaof the last eight years.

Kudlow says he has assurance of this capitulation on "deep background".

So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn't missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac's two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely - even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.

New coal-fired power plants present the greatest near-term danger to our climate future - and the greatest opportunity to make a difference.

New coal - fired power plants in the U. S. are being defeated one-by-one, and the effort to get all of them stopped must succeed - our climate depends on it.

AND IT WAS TAKEN TO THE BARRICADES THIS WEEK!

Climate heroes scaled the headquarters of Dominion Virginia Power after the company was granted an air permit for a new coal plant.

And Civil Disobedience toward coal is spreading.

GET UP AND STOP A COAL PLANT!

Do you remember last week's press that the White House would not open emails from the EPA? They reported that the EPA was trying to publish a report on how  greenhouse gases could be regulated, and that if they weren't then citizens would be "endangered"? But the White House would not open the EPA's emails!!

Monday's Wall Street Journalhas received a copy of the squelched report and it concludes:

REGULATIONS ARE FEASIBLE

HARM WILL FLOW TO US CITIZENS IF THEY ARE NOT ENACTED

THE SAVINGS TO CITIZENS FROM THE REGULATIONS WILL BE UP TO $2 TRILLION

Over the course of the campaign, John McCain has slowly but steadily transformed from McCain v2000 to McCain v2008.

That is, his energy policy has flipped and then flopped - from a right-of-center "let's evaluate the options" to a doctrinaire Republican "drill, drill, drill...." playbook mantra.

But McCain's v2008 energy plan, like the  Bush/Cheney years, will fail at solving our energy problems.  More dependence on oil and no relief from pump prices is a sure bet.

Now comes the logical next step of the McCain descent to a continuation of the failed Bush/Cheny energy policy,

BRING DICK CHENEY ON BOARD?

It would be Dick Cheney's next logical step:

HALIBURTON CEO > BUSH VICE-PRESIDENT > MCCAIN SECRETARY OF ENERGY ?

John McCain has consistently undermined his undeserved "maverick" label in issue after issue over the past 6 months.  Countless diaries have documented this on DailyKos.  Even the MSM is starting to touch it - in their ever-so-pleasant 'balanced' approach.

BUT TODAY'S SHOCKER ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING IS BEYOND THE PALE.

In a speech that panders to nearly every oil and gas donor in the Republican party, and flip-flops on one environmental position after another(including turning the coast of Florida over to ExxonMobil), McCain completely throws his global warming policy overboard with his own words in making this comparison to Barack Obama:

He doesn’t support more traditional use of coal, either.

Yesterday, McCain completely reversed his position on the leading global warming bill in Congress - the Boxer-Leiberman-Warner bill due for a vote in June.

In a press conference late Wednesday afternoon, McCain said he did not support the bill sponsored by two of his closest allies, Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) because it doesn't offer enough aid to the nuclear industry, and he would not come to the floor to vote on it.

WOW!!!

McCain has changed positions on global warming so many times that he cannot be believed at all.

In a cynical act of administrative jujitsu yesterday, Bush and Cheney rewrote the

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT.

The Act is now known as the

ENDANGERING SPECIES ACT.

In a performance of unmatched chutzpah, the Administration yesterday both declared the Polar Bear a threatened species, and explicitly ruled that actions that threaten the polar bear can continue, AND AUTHORIZES ACTIONS THAT INCREASE THE THREAT THROUGHOUT THEIR ARCTIC HABITAT..

Maybe an American corporation could come up with a plan that would:

1.  Increase dependence on foreign oil

2.  Support the flow of funds to governments that support terrorist organizations

3.  Increase emissions of global warming pollution

4.  Encourage  greater imbalances in America's balance of trade

5.  Increase demand for oil, and even higher prices at the pump

Here's the Plan:

CHRYSLER TO SUBSIDIZE INCREASED OIL CONSUMPTION

Read aboutChrysler's latest plan to relive the 20th century, and to reinforce the same forces that have struck the nation so hard over the past decade.

Wow. HRC took all her momentum from Pennsylvania and...

Are they with us or against us when it comes to taking on the oil companies?"

Not only has Clinton parroted John McCain, and offered an ineffectual gas tax moratorium proposal that she herself ridiculed in 2000, and Bill Clinton slammed in 1996 ,  she also tried to sell it by triangulating between herself, Obama, and ExxonMobil.

But such a clumsy attempt at triangulation now puts her at odds with all of those Superdelegates that have taken notice.  Many Superdelegates know better. It is still an open question for how many superdelegates this kind of judgment puts in doubt her fitness to run against McCain, let alone be President....but it is a long 4 days til North Carolina and Indiana.

It is hard to believe, but there was a President Clinton at one time that actually believed in policy over politics.  

And this reasonableness even extended to the gas tax.

Come back with me, over the fold, and let's revisit the days of Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign..............

As the Earth careens through space, our species stops at nothing to extract fuel from its thin crust.
We all know that.

Our energy recklessness is creating a growing threat to our physical well-being, perhaps our survivabilility.
We all sense that.

But some words can speak to the hollowness in our hearts. The passage below the fold is the powerful opening from the motion filed by Appalachian Voices and the Canary Coalition to stop coal plants now in line to be subsidized by some sad Act passed by Congress in 2005.    

Read it - and weep.

In a bombshell  diary Friday night, Dengre exposed McCain's machinations in his rise to be the presumptive nominee of the Republican party.  By using his Chairmanship on Senate Indian Affairs Committee to gather evidence on the Abramoff/Norquist/Reed axis infiltration of the Republican Congress and White House, McCain had amassed the ability to expose the deepest wrongdoings of the Republican Administration and the Republican Congress.

But McCain chose to drip out only 3% of the 750,000 Abramoff-related documents delivered to the Committee - enough to send a scare up and down Pennsylvania Ave. - but not enough to damage Republican electoral opportunities. The remaining documents are still sequestered, and have avoided the scope of Congressional investigation.

And did McCain know he was obstructing the rest of the Republican corruption story by withholding those other 720,000 Abramoff-related documents?  Did he willingly withhold release of this evidence? Was it his intent to protect his Republican colleagues?

YES, YES, and YES.

Read McCain's own words from March 2, 2005 below the fold.....

As Iowans prepare for Thursday night, every participant in the Democratic caucuses should know that Barack Obama is the ONLY Democratic candidate that does not support a ban on new traditional pulverized coal-fired power plants.

In his own current words:

Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology: Obama will significantly increase the resources devoted to the commercialization and deployment of low-carbon coal technologies. Obama will consider whatever policy tools are necessary, including standards that ban new traditional coal facilities, to ensure that we move quickly to commercialize and deploy low carbon coal technology.

Obama has the potential to make a great President, perhaps. But he is missing the boat here.  One shouldn't go into the most important energy/environment issue of this country's history with one of the main levers stuck in the wrong position.

UPDATE:  The point of this diary is to provide the information that Obama is the only Democratic candidate to NOT support a moratorium on pulverized coal plants. I do not have any horse in this race.

Be afraid of these 41 people. Very afraid. Perhaps more than any other individuals on Earth, the following 41 people acted in concert in 2007 to move the Earth's climate closer to catastrophe by stripping the Energy Bill of two of its most critical climate components - The Renewable Energy Standard and The Tax Title for Renewables and Energy Efficiency (including renewal of the Production Tax Credit for Wind). But more importantly, these 41 individuals comprise the strongest POWER BLOC that is preventing the world from moving toward a more just and stable climate.

The 41 Most Dangerous People of 2007

below the fold

Until this week, I had thought impeachment would hamper Democrats' ability to move legislation through Congress and hurt their reelection chances.

But after the past session of Congress, and especially this past month's setbacks, the Democrats' ability to deal with the Republican Obstruction Machine has been shown to not exist.

Because of their misuse of most of the tools of the Executive branch, Bush-Cheney will only be held to account if Cheney is impeached.

It's official as of Monday morning in Australia.

The United States now stands isolated, alone, and disgraced among the world community.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's new Labor government signed documents to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Monday within hours of being sworn into power, ending Australia's long-held opposition to the global climate pact.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who will attend the United Nations climate talks in Bali next week, said the move was the first official act of his new government, which won power after 11 years of conservative rule on November 24.