Today’s New York Times includes a fine column by Thomas Friedman, in which he explores the exploding solar panel industry. He finds to his dismay that it’s all overseas. He concludes, “So, if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love importing solar panels from China.”

We’ve been saying this for years, and it’s still true: The best way to create clean energy jobs right here in the U.S. is to cap global warming pollution. Here’s more on how a cap will create jobs.

Everyone’s talking about the latest poll from the Washington Post, which shows Americans support reforming U.S. energy policy and capping greenhouse gas pollution.

• NRDC points out that support for energy policy is slightly higher than it was in June… after a summer’s worth of industry attacks.
• NWF reminds us that it wasn’t just this summer — Americans have been “hit from all sides” by industry-funded campaigns for a year and a half.
• And Climate Progress has this key takeaway: “A lot of people understand energy prices are going up if we do nothing.”

The new poll has a lot of juicy data for clean energy supporters. Here are some of our favorite tidbits:

• 57 percent support the proposed changes to U.S. energy policy being developed by Congress and the administration, and even better –
• When asked if they would support a cap and trade program that lowered greenhouse gases but raised electric bills by $10 month, Americans supported the move by 58 percent to 40 percent.  ($10 is the total cost to households estimated by the Congressional Budget Office)
• The Post says “GOP criticism of the House energy and climate bill appears to have primarily influenced Republicans themselves.” Support for cap-and-trade dropped among Republicans, but rose among independents.
• 36 percent think changes to U.S. energy policy would add more jobs in their state. Only 15 percent think it would cause job losses.
• An amazing 9 out of 10 people support further development of solar and wind power, while 8 out of 10 support development of electric cars.

All this support is wonderful, but our work is far from done. The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital reminds us that opponents are in the minority, but they are adamant.

Your Senators need to know that these aren’t just poll numbers — they are real voters who care about clean energy. Please call today!

Most Americans can get behind the goal of importing less oil (though we don’t always agree on how to get there). One of the great strengths of the climate bill is that it’s the most effective and responsible way to make real cuts in imported oil. Two releases this week shed light on how:

• We just posted a quick summary of how the climate bill will reduce oil imports. Short version: No matter how much we drill, the U.S. burns more oil than we have in our borders, so we import it. The climate bill will cut use of ALL oil, so we can get away with importing less.
• The Center for American Progress just released a report on reducing oil dependence [PDF]. It has nice graphs outlining recent trends, discusses specific measures to reduce oil use, and notes how the climate bill encourages those measures.

It’s no surprise that Big Oil has put its resources to work against this bill. Climate Progress takes a look at the history and recent political activity of the oil industry.

The Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital notes that other buyers can keep the oil-producing states in business without us. But in any case, we can be more secure if we reduce our own dependence on imported oil. The climate bill gives us a strong start.

Fred Krupp, EDF’s president, is the newest star of the Washington Post’s power-broker video series “On Leadership.”

In it, Fred talks about what it will take to get a clean energy bill passed in Congress, the need for Presidential involvement, and “putting together the recipe that wins.” He says:

• “What we’re working on is the biggest most awesome threat to the future of humanity, maybe save nuclear weapons, that I know of.”
• “I think a lot of far-sighted business people …see a future where we’re going to have to do things in a new way.”
• “The leaders who are resistant [to change] are usually the ones who don’t see it coming. They can’t see over the horizon.”
• “If we work hard enough … we can get 60 votes for doing something that’s in everybody’s interest and is truly transformational.”

People are using the word “astroturfing” a lot lately, but this video makes it clear that the people working for the lobbyists trying to block cap and trade legislation stooped to a level even lower than that.

Angry? Share the video with your friends!

A coalition of national security and veterans organizations launched a new web site today about the dangers of climate change.

It’s a great way to show people what’s at stake for our troops and our country in the climate change debate.  It’s called Operation Free.

Thanks to Vote Vets, Vet PAC, The Truman National Security Project, and NSI for putting this together.

The latest Smithsonian magazine has an in-depth piece that tells the story of “How an unlikely mix of environmentalists and free-market conservatives hammered out the strategy known as cap-and-trade.”

The story is powerful — it starts with a hike,  leads to fury within the Bush White House and ends with results:

Almost 20 years since the signing of the Clean Air Act of 1990, the cap-and-trade system continues to let polluters figure out the least expensive way to reduce their acid rain emissions. As a result, the law costs utilities just $3 billion annually, not $25 billion, according to a recent study in the Journal of Environmental Management; by cutting acid rain in half, it also generates an estimated $122 billion a year in benefits from avoided death and illness, healthier lakes and forests, and improved visibility on the Eastern Seaboard. (Better relations with Canada? Priceless.)

…

Cap-and-trade — a term that first appeared in print that year — quickly went “from being a pariah among policy makers,” as an MIT analysis put it, “to being a star — everybody’s favorite way to deal with pollution problems.”

You have to give Sarah Palin credit for getting attention — her op-ed in the Washington Post on climate change legislation triggered an avalanche of blog posts and opinion columns. Here’s a round-up:

The facts, please!

• Sen. John Kerry is among the many to point out that Palin completely ignored the looming specter of climate change. Others included Treehugger, Politics Daily and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson.
• Bill Chameides, formerly EDF’s chief scientist and now the head of Duke University’s school of the environment, adds that Alaska has a lot of hurt coming its way if we don’t act.
• On Daily Kos, wah’s take-down starts with a good summary of how we got here.
• PolitiFact focuses on her claims about job losses.
• In other comprehensive fact checks, Media Matters gives a rundown of her false statements, and Russ Walker debunks Palin’s points using nothing but recycled Grist posts.
• If you want your fact-checking laced with outrage, check out Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic, who writes that her ignorance is “so profound it’s almost gutsy.” And Think Progress unearths a video clip in which she seems to take the opposite view.

Why is she doing this?

• Josh at Talking Points Memo thinks it’s all about rebranding Palin as a policy wonk. So does the Political Animal at Washington Monthly (who also notes that her running mate long supported cap and trade).
• Jean Williams of the Seattle Examiner thinks Palin wants to pave the way to drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
• Treehugger thinks that either she doesn’t understand the bill or she wanted to talk up her natural gas pipeline.

Really, everyone is piling on!

It wasn’t just the usual environmental crowd who were taken aback by Palin’s claims. People taking issue with her stance popped up in unexpected places:

• Alaska Dispatch’s Palin Watch says “Palin is wrong on cap and trade.”
• A Kansas City Star columnist lists a few things she scored on, but a lot more misses.
• The Christian Science Monitor also says Palin missed the mark with her cap-and-trade critique

Brad Plumer over at TNR has a good post about how allowances are allocated in the climate bill in front of the House. He goes into detail about how savings will be passed through to consumers, including some insight from our own Nat Keohane.

Indiana Representative Mike Pence famously called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 an example of the East and West Coasts “declaring economic war on the Midwest.”

So you’d think that now that the bill has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Americans in the heartland would be up in arms. But…not so much.

In fact, some of the largest and most respected media outlets in the Midwest and other traditional coal and oil states are accepting of the bill, even happy with it. Here are a few  highlights from the last week:

“Gov. Mitch Daniels and U.S. Reps. Mike Pence and Steve Buyer have some significant non-allies in their vehement opposition to the carbon reduction legislation now moving through Congress. Among them are most of the Midwest’s governors, who already have signed a regional cap-and-trade agreement; and Indiana’s largest electric utility, whose boss accepts the need for congressional action and insists it will benefit rather than punish this coal-dependent region – if the region’s leadership pulls up to the table.”
– Indianapolis Star editorial, May 28, 2009

“Each generation is asked to generate new ideas that will make our nation a world leader. Clean energy could be our next big discovery…Our nation can stick with the status quo and continue to fall prey to $4-a-gallon gas – the straw that broke the economy’s back – and environmental disasters such as the Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant spill, or change directions and move toward cleaner energy.”
– Daily News Journal (Murfreesboro, Tenn.) editorial, May 28, 2009

“Climate change imposes very real costs on all of us, on our children and on our grandchildren. We are subsidizing current energy prices at the expense of our progeny. The longer we defer payment, the higher those costs will be … It’s as if we are financing our lifestyle with an interest-only mortgage. There’s a big balloon payment looming in our future, but we’ve refused to set anything aside to pay it … the cap-and-trade bill represents an important advance because it has a realistic chance of being approved. If we do not start reducing our global warming liabilities now, we will be overwhelmed with the debt later.”
– St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial, May 28, 2009

“The American Clean Energy and Security Act unveiled this week is not perfect, but it’s a smart step toward reducing carbon emissions without destroying American industry and jobs … The Waxman-Markey bill is a plan the Congress should accept.”
– Bristol (Tenn.) Herald-Courier editorial, May 22, 2009

“While the do-nothing crowd stews on the sidelines, those committed to doing something about climate change are fully engaged … it’s not just tree-hugging environmentalists. It’s not just Democrats. It’s not just climatologists. It’s leaders of many stripes answering the call on the biggest issue facing our planet … Texas being the nation’s petrochemical capital, it can’t sit on the sidelines when guidelines are written.”
– Waco Tribune-Herald editorial, May 22, 2009

“If done properly, cap and trade would be a responsible compromise as the federal government attacks the problem of global warming. Obama and the Democratic leadership must stand firm during debate on the cap and trade policy. The final bill ought to contain strict, fair rules on who should pay to reduce greenhouse gases and how much it could cost.”
– Kansas City Star editorial, May 20, 2009