“I’m not going to go out and say the sky is falling and that climate change is happening, but I’m very concerned about the risk of climate change,” Gov. John Hickenlooper told a coalition of 22 southeastern Colorado counties at a public meeting last week, as reported by the Pueblo Chieftain.

The governor’s comments echo some of the same language he used at the Colorado Environmental Coalition’s “Rebel With A Cause” gala in May 2009, except then his views were a lot more clear.

“I’m not saying that the sky is falling. I’m saying that clearly the climate is changing, clearly mankind’s activities are causing it,” Hickenlooper said back then.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in Yuma.

Now, Hickenlooper clarifies that he is concerned about the risk of climate change but he deliberately stops short of acknowledging climate change is actually happening.

Even before he ascended to the governor’s office, there were questions as to whether Hickenlooper wears flip flops to the planet’s climate change debates.

In February 2010, at the National Western Mining Conference & Exhibition in Denver, Hickenlooper raised eyebrows when he said, “I don’t think that the scientific community has decided with certainty that climate change is as catastrophic as so many people think.”

It was a surprising remark that caught many people off guard, including Beth Conover, the author of “How the West Was Warmed.” Conover tweeted: “What the … ?” Hickenlooper wrote the forward for her 2009 book in which he called climate change “one of the greatest challenges of our time.”

Whether the governor now doubts how much the West has warmed is unclear. But rising sea levels, warmer temperatures and below-average snowpack are unmistakable to most scientists. And while he no longer comes out and says it is happening, Hickenlooper is preparing for climate change.

In an effort to conserve water, Colorado’s governor said Americans need to get rid of nonnative Kentucky bluegrass from their yards and that industry needs to develop more water-efficient toilet flushing. As mayor of Denver, he swapped out energy-guzzling bulbs in traffic lights with more efficient ones. He introduced biodiesel into city fleets, successfully lobbied for mass transportation solutions, implemented an ambitious recycling program at Denver International Airport and praised urban infill. In his speech last week in Pueblo, Hickenlooper reportedly mentioned he has been in discussions with the CEO of Kum & Go about possibly facilitating a low-interest government loan so that the convenience stores could offer compressed natural gas as an alternative to gasoline.

When it comes to climate change, Hickenlooper may walk the walk. But he no longer talks the talk.

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Last week, the Johnstown-based group (which operates over a large swath of the northern Front Range but lists Johnstown south-east of Ft. Collins as its postal address) sent out an email blast littered with exclamation points announcing Paul’s brief visit to Denver. It also pointed caucus goers to the group’s “no rhetoric, all facts” GOP Presidential Voter Guide, a deadpan exercise in candidate demolition that leaves no doubt where the group stands.

The authors of the guide skewered Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as unreliably conservative in both fiscal matters and in checking government overreach.

The guide’s list of facts on Romney, for example, opens on “Romneycare” and underlines that the Massachusetts healthcare plan steered into law by Romney was the blueprint for tea party-detested “Obamacare.” The list then moves onto Romney’s support for the big government-style anti-free-market TARP bailouts, gun right restrictions and climate change “cap and trade” proposals. The list wraps by calling Romney a “flip flopper” on amnesty for undocumented residents.

By contrast, not a single unqualified negative comment falls into the Ron Paul list. Paul’s record on government spending is described as “stellar.” Even Paul positions typically controversial on the right, such as his anti-interventionist foreign policy and commitment to ending “War on Terror” policies and programs, are described in an unabashed positive light.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Romney:

• Passed “Romneycare” into Massachusetts law, which eventually became the blueprint for Obamacare
• Supported TARP
• Opposed Obama’s stimulus plan and urged Republicans to vote against it
• Supported Cap & Trade legislation in Massachusetts
• Has also supported his fair share of anti-gun legislation and has refused to return the National Association of Gun Rights survey
• Has a horrible record on taxes, er, should I say fees…although he opposed tax hikes as governor, he imposed a mountain of “fees” to help balance the budget
• Has a mixed record on spending.  He did successfully cut government spending during the first part of his first term, but loosened the purse strings during the later years.  During his time as governor, he did save the state millions by cutting out waste within the system, eliminating meaningless government jobs, and going after local earmarks instead of dipping into the states rainy day fund.
• Supports ethanol subsidies
• Supports “Right to Work” legislation and states
• Mitt is a flip-flopper on amnesty and ultimately supports a plan similar to Newt’s, granting amnesty for “some”.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Paul:

• Voted against TARP
• Voted against Obamacare
• Voted against Obama’s stimulus
• Voted against auto bailouts and Cash for Clunkers
• Voted against Cap & Trade
• Supports Right to Work legislation
• Has never voted to raise the debt ceiling
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Tenth amendment and states rights
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Constitution and limited government
• Strongly supports auditing the Federal Reserve
• Has an excellent record on gun control, recently being crowned the “Defender of the Second Amendment” by Gun Owners of America.  He is the only candidate remaining to have returned the National Association of Gun Rights survey with a 100% score.
• He has an excellent record on taxes, never voting for a tax increase and always supporting tax cuts across the board.  He has voted to cut taxes by $80 billion in the past 5 years, voicing his opinion that cutting taxes is the only way to stimulate the economy
• He has an excellent record on spending voting against nearly every big spending bill and was 1 of  41 congressman to vote against No Child Left Behind.
• His stellar spending record aside though, he has become a strong supporter of earmarks giving him an undesirable 29% on the Club for Growth’s rePORK card (although earlier in his career he never used earmarks).  He believes that earmarks are held to much higher accountability and that if the federal government is taking funds from his state constituents, it is his responsibility to bring the funds back to them.  He typically votes no on the same bills he is inserting his earmarks in.
• Believes we need to end the billions of dollars we spend annually in foreign aid, especially to the countries we are at war with.
• Supports securing our borders and coastlines, supports enforcing visa rules by tracking and deporting anyone who overstays their visa, opposes amnesty, and supports ending birthright citizenship.
• Believes we should bring our troops home and readdress our approach regarding the War on Terror and military spending along with the waste, fraud and corruption that may go along with it.

It’s hard to say how much influence the Northern Colorado Tea Party leaders will exert on caucus activity today, but the group’s large presence in the state’s fourth congressional district and strong support for CD4 candidate Cory Gardner in 2010 likely played a large role in Gardner’s easy victory over Democratic incumbent Betsy Markey. The group also lead the state-wide tea party support that boosted Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s U.S. Senate bid that same year, propelling him to primary victory over establishment candidate Jane Norton.

Messages to the Northern Colorado Tea Party went unanswered this week, so its loose membership in the thousands or even perhaps tens of thousands couldn’t be confirmed. Estimates, however, put state-wide tea party membership in 2010 at something like 220,000. If those numbers have been even moderately sustained, tea partiers will have a significant impact at the GOP caucuses.

There are roughly 1.08 million registered Republicans in Colorado and only roughly 10 percent of those will turn up to caucus tonight. Politically engaged tea partiers will make up a disproportionate number of attendees.

Although tea party support for Paul will certainly thin Romney support, it bodes particularly ill for rival runner-up candidates Santorum and Gingrich.

Santorum at least is likely to do well among the state’s large Colorado Springs-based evangelical voting bloc.

“I ask you to reset this race,” Santorum told voters here this past weekend. “Create an opportunity for someone who can speak to Americans about what America is all about.”

Yesterday in Golden, just miles from the country’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, the former Pennsylvania senator let loose a stemwinder at an energy forum in which he attacked international climate scientists as partners in a conspiracy to willfully create panic that would open up the country to totalitarian-like government control of the economy. He laced his talk with tent-revival-style reference to god’s will and man’s dominion over the natural world.

Yet it may be Gingrich who seems to be hoping most for a miracle in Colorado. He still has minimal campaign presence in the state and has spent almost no time here. His three wives and outrageous Tiffany tab won’t help him win the Focus on the Family-Tim Tebow vote and his term as House Speaker and then as Beltway-influence peddler are sure to undercut his attraction to anti-government tea partiers.

Romney, however, despite tea party and evangelical resistance, may pull off a key victory in the Centennial State. He has gained momentum from a series of recent primary victories and will be boosted here as he was this weekend in Nevada by the Mormon vote. Mormons make up roughly 5 percent of all religious adherents in Colorado, or something like a community of 140,000 believers who generally vote Republican.

Romney enjoyed 60 percent support among Colorado Republicans in 2008, burying John McCain in that year’s caucuses.

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“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told an audience at the Colorado School of Mines where he was a guest speaker Monday at the Colorado Energy Summit.

“We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through the course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create,” Santorum said to applause from the conservative crowd.

The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania argued that science has been hijacked by politicians on the left, and that climate change is “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life,” Santorum said.

Rick Santorum speaking in Golden. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Gingrich, speaking an hour before Santorum at the Colorado Energy Summit, said he regretted a TV commercial he shot with Democrat Nancy Pelosi that addressed climate change. He called it “the dumbest single thing I’ve done in five or six years. … It was stupid.” He said part of his Pelosi hangover is tied to his diminishing confidence in climate science. Asked by a man in the audience whether he believes human activities can cause climate change, Gingrich pleaded ignorance.

“I believe we don’t know. I am an amateur paleontologist. The planet has changed its temperature a number of times,” Gingrich rambled. “… If you look at the Antarctic today, you’ll figure it [must've been] a lot warmer when the dinosaurs were there. So what I’ve said in the past is I’m happy to take prudent measures that aren’t very expensive. So if we can find relatively inexpensive, safe nuclear power, I’m for it. The fact that Iowa produces 20 percent of its electricity from wind is fine. There’s a lot of things you can do with the margin. What I would not do is I would not turn the power over to bureaucracy to run the entire country. I have always opposed cap and trade …”

Newt Gingrich at the Colorado School of Mines on Monday. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Oil and gas, he said, is “so central” to the nation’s future energy portfolio.

“Environmentalists,” Gingrich added, “have been infiltrated over the last 40 years by people on the left who are against business and against local control and they use the environment as an excuse.”

Santorum, meanwhile, claimed “there is a war on fossil fuels in this country by [the Obama] administration.” Like Gingrich, the native Pennsylvanian vowed to open up more public lands to oil and gas drilling. Don’t worry, he promised, Yellowstone would be left alone. But there is a lot of Bureau of Land Management and other federal land that Santorum said would be better served by the oil and gas industry, ranching or other human uses. He cringed every time he mentioned the Endangered Species Act and blamed it for hurting business. Santorum told the story of how the Endangered Species Act is preventing the harvesting of a forest with profitable wood in his home state.

“We have the Endangered Species Act, which has prevented us from timbering all sorts of acreage there,” he said. “It’s bankrupted the school district and the like because of the government’s inability to allow for us to care for our resources. A forest in my opinion is like a garden and you’ve got to care for it. If you don’t care for it, you leave it to nature and nature will do what it does: boom and bust.”

Stressing the importance for the country to provide cheap energy to its citizens, Santorum blamed the recession not on sub-prime mortgages or the derivatives market but on spiking fuel prices.

“We went into a recession in 2008. People forget why. They thought it was a housing bubble. The housing bubble was caused because of a dramatic spike in energy prices that caused the housing bubble to burst,” Santorum told the audience. “People had to pay so much money to air condition and heat their homes or pay for gasoline that they couldn’t pay their mortgage.”

The nation’s energy policy is a key talking point this election season.

“This is the most anti-American energy administration we have ever had,” Gingrich said. “… You have the highest cost of gasoline in American history. And I think that if you’re an editorial writer at the New York Times and you live in a high-rise in Manhattan and you ride the subway to work, it may not occur to you that for most Americans a high price of gasoline is a real problem.”

Gingrich called Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan “very dangerous and very destructive.” He claimed the need for the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act underscores the EPA’s overreach.

GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney was also in Colorado on Monday, giving speeches in Grand Junction and Centennial. He is scheduled to speak in Loveland on Tuesday morning. Romney, also a proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, looks primed for a big win in Colorado. He leads Republican voters in the state with 40 percent to 26 percent for Rick Santorum, 18 percent for Newt Gingrich, and 12 percent for Ron Paul, according to Public Policy Polling. Paul was in Colorado last week.

Check out this video shot at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden on Monday of Rick Santorum discussing his views on public lands, domestic energy and his problems with public education:

Here, Newt Gingrich discusses U.S. energy policy in Golden where he says, “If you want to measure what our goal is, it is to ensure that no American president ever again bows to a Saudi king …”

Biodilloversity

“The school brought in this company to push liberalism and radical environmentalism,” wrote Paul Gallagher, a Gypsum resident whose niece attends Eagle Valley High School. “My sister and I sat through this almost one-hour of garbage and heard the presentation about ‘climate change,’ a lack of snow in Colorado due to global warming, ‘glaciers melting,’ ‘polar bears’ disappearing, how cow ‘flatulence’ contributes to the problem, how we all should ‘walk or bike somewhere if less than five miles away,’ buy ‘local farmers markets’ produce, the importance of ‘recycling,’ ‘doomsday’ is approaching without taking action, etc. It was very concerning.”

The presentation by Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) aims to increase awareness of global climate change – sometimes using Winter X Games athletes such as Gretchen Bleiler and Seth Wescott.

A record December drought in Colorado’s high country underscored evidence of increasing warming in the Rocky Mountain West – a situation that has led to a widespread mountain pine bark beetle epidemic and mounting susceptibility to massive wildfires. It also took a toll on the state’s ski industry earlier this season.

“Climate science denial has been a really hot topic recently and we’ve faced our fair share of skeptics when trying to book presentations and during their delivery,” acknowledged Kara Muraki, program manager for Alliance for Climate Education. “The science behind our presentation is based entirely on the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, and we believe that if students have the opportunity to learn the conclusions of 98 percent of the world’s leading climate scientists – no matter what else they hear — it will help to reverse the recent increase in public skepticism about global warming.”

Based on his email, Gallagher won’t be helping to reverse the trend any time soon:

“At the end of the assembly, kids were asked to come onstage if they had an interest in starting a ‘climate change’ group at their school,” he wrote. “I would say two-thirds of the kids went onstage. Not good. I would say brainwashing, scare tactics, lies and peer pressure made them feel obligated to get involved onstage.”

Even the U.S. Department of Defense is preparing for significant military interventions resulting from climate change, including “violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics.”

The massive Hayman Fire near Denver in 2002 (Forest Service).

Vail saw eight inches of new snow on Saturday, but it still wasn’t enough to open the vast majority of the mountain. Ski industry woes aside, state water watchers and firefighters are nervously eyeing the miniscule mountain snowpack, which supplies so much of the water used by Front Range cities. As of Dec. 30, snowpack in the Colorado River basin was 44 percent of last year’s record level and just 63 percent of the annual average.

“[The drought] will make the beetle epidemic even more severe,” said state Sen. Gail Schwartz, a Snowmass Democrat who’s introducing a bill in the legislative session starting Wednesday that’s aimed at reducing the fire danger from a mountain pine bark beetle epidemic that has killed millions of acres of Colorado lodgepole pines. “What doesn’t burn down will blow down.”

But just as it lacked scientific validity to point to Vail’s record 525 inches of snowfall last season as proof that climate change is a hoax (which many conservatives gleefully did), ski industry experts say it’s wrong to totally blame the current drought (just 88 inches so far at Vail) on human-caused heating of the planet.

“You can’t take weather, which is what we’re experiencing, and make deductions about climate, which is the long-term trend,” said Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Company, which is suffering through an equally dry season. “But you don’t need to, really. All you need to do is look up the GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) NASA global temperature anomaly maps of the world and look at December. It’s insane, and each decade gets hotter.”

Still, it’s turned into the kind of summer-like ski season in the Rocky Mountain West that the new Mitt Romney – the front-running GOP presidential nominee Romney – should love. Not the 2002 version who turned a profit with the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and as recently as June said, “I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.”

Despite snowfall Saturday, this chairlift into Vail's Back Bowls hasn't run all season (David O. Williams).

But as far as the current conditions, Aspen’s Schendler again emphasizes climate change should not be blamed for the current drought but instead is behind longer term trends like a generally drier American West – one that is more susceptible to water shortages and wildfire.

“It’s key to remember that warming might actually bring bigger storms to the Rockies due to there being more moisture in the air,” Schendler said. “At the same time, because the atmosphere can hold more water, it can suck the land dry of more water than before.”

Schendler says the biggest impact of climate change for the ski industry may be significantly shorter ski seasons.

“The thing to look at — and we’re seeing this trend — is when runoff happens,” he said. “When spring comes, both are happening much earlier, because Colorado has warmed, and warmed disproportionately to the rest of the U.S.”

The last time Colorado’s high country was even close to this dry in mid-winter was during the 2001-02 ski season, which was followed by the worst wildfire season in the state’s history. June of 2002 saw the massive Hayman Fire scorch nearly 138,000 acres of land in the mountains southwest of Denver, darkening Front Range skies and loading key water storage facilities with debris from subsequent erosion.

NASA’s James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climatologists, recently issued a report tying last summer’s massive wildfires in Texas and the 2010 wildfires in Russia to global warming.

“Hansen argues that climate ‘loads the dice,’” Schendler said. “So in an average year you might have a one in six chance of extraordinarily hot weather or a super-violent storm. But in the climate-changed world in which we live, the odds change to something new — perhaps two in six.”

Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, announced the second annual Climate B.S. of the Year Awards on Huffington Post and Forbes blogs Thursday to make examples of bad climate science that was produced, cited, or used in 2011 to try to influence or confuse the public.

Scores of conservative lawmakers and Fox News personalities amplified their pro-greenhouse-gas mantra last year, even as extreme weather, record-breaking temperatures and billion-dollar catastrophes dominated the planet.

Charles and David Koch

First place went to all of the Republican candidates running for president, none of whom sided with the science accepted by 97-98 percent of all climate scientists and every national academy of sciences in the world. Second place went to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation “because of its regular misrepresentation of climate science and anti-climate science reporting among the different Murdoch outlets in the UK, the U.S., and Australia,” the Pacific Institute announced.

Third place went to Roy Spencer and William Braswell “for a debunked research paper on climate sensitivity, and John Christy, for an astounding piece of misleading testimony at a Congressional climate change hearing,” Gleick wrote.

Billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who own Colorado property and bankroll lawmakers like Cory Gardner and Scott Tipton, slide into the fourth spot of the bad-science list. The Pacific Institute makes note of the Koch brothers’ well-funded network of anti-climate science groups and highlights a quote from the president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-supported super-PAC.

“If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political. We’ve made great headway,” Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips “brags outright,” Pacific Institute reports.

For a detailed report on how the Koch brothers influence environmental politics, click here.

Colorado’s conservative congressional delegation is championing the Kochs’ cause. Gardner, Tipton, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman all have taken the No Climate Tax Pledge and repeatedly voted to weaken protections for land, air and water. Calling out Gardner specifically, a recent report found Congress averaged more than one anti-environment vote every day it was in session.

Fifth place went to anti-climate-science blogger Anthony Watts, “who said he would accept the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature … even if it proved him wrong.” The Koch brothers actually funded the study but it backfired and, like many studies before it, confirmed the Earth’s surface is warming and doing so at an accelerating rate. In the end, Watts attacked the study.

The Pacific Institute’s runners-up for its 2011 Climate B.S. of the Year Awards were Harrison Schmitt and the Heartland Institute “for ‘Arcticgate’ (documented errors in denying disappearance of Arctic sea ice); Rush Limbaugh for his consistent falsehoods about climate science; and Steve McIntyre for his smear of climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University.”

The report, commissioned by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Howard Berman, D-Calif., notes that, as of Dec. 15, the Republican-led 112th Congress voted a record 191 times on legislation that would undermine environmental protections.

The House averaged more than one anti-environmental vote for every day Congress was in session during 2011, which equates to more than one out of every five of all roll call votes, the report found.

Rep. Cory Gardner

Gardner was one of at least a dozen Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee who made public statements indicating that they question or reject the scientific consensus that climate change is predominantly human caused.

“Rep. Cory Gardner admitted that the climate is changing but said that he does not ‘believe humans are causing that change to the extent that’s been in the news,’” according to the report (pdf), which notes that House Republicans also voted to block the EPA from regulating carbon pollution from power plants and oil refineries, and they voted to prevent the EPA from working with the Department of Transportation and the automobile industry to develop fuel economy standards for vehicles.

The report also calls out Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., who introduced the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, which seeks to overturn the EPA’s finding that climate change endangers human welfare and to upend the Supreme Court’s decision that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The bill also prohibits the EPA from enforcing existing greenhouse gas reporting requirements to collect emissions information.

“During the floor debate about the Upton bill, the House Republicans voted against several Democratic amendments to restore [the] EPA’s authority to address climate change. Only one Republican supported an amendment offered by Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., to allow the EPA Administrator to suspend the bill’s prohibitions if impacts from climate change affect public health.”

The attacks on climate science aren’t exactly a surprise.

In 2010, Gardner and fellow Colorado Republican U.S. Reps. Scott Tipton, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman signed a “No Climate Tax Pledge” in which they promised to oppose “any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.”

That same year, Native Alaskans and environmental groups successfully appealed to the Environmental Appeals Board to overturn a permit the EPA issued to Shell Oil Co. for exploratory drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off the coast of Alaska. During an appropriations debate, the House obstructed the Appeals Board from using government funds to invalidate the permit.

“Rep. Cory Gardner then introduced H.R. 2021, the Jobs and Energy Permitting Act, which makes significant revisions to Clean Air Act provisions relating to [Outer Continental Shelf] activities,” the Waxman, Markey and Berman report states. “The bill limits EPA review of a permit application to six months; it eliminates any appeal to the Board, forcing all appeals to be brought in federal court in Washington, D.C.; it blocks EPA from requiring pollution reductions from support vessels, which often comprise the bulk of emissions from a drilling operation; and it provides that the impact of emissions from [Outer Continental Shelf] sources must be measured at the shoreline, where the emissions are diluted, rather than at the source, as current law provides.”

At the time, House Republicans said the purpose of H.R. 2021 was to accelerate the permitting process in the Arctic Ocean. But the bill was drafted so that it also applied to both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts despite objections from officials in California, Delaware and other states.

“This bill will create tens of thousands of jobs, increase energy security, and lessen our dependence on foreign oil,” Gardner said in a press release at the time. “It will add billions of dollars in salary to Alaska and other states over the next several decades, bringing good paying jobs to our country.”

The EPA isn’t the only agency in the GOP’s crosshairs. The House targeted the Department of the Interior with 35 votes meant to weaken its authority and the Department of Energy with 31 of them.

The report goes on to detail how the House proposed to slash funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service, cut clean-energy programs, curtail reviews of the Keystone XL pipeline, allow unsafe disposal of toxic coal ash, transfer public lands to a mining company, remove protections for forests and wetlands, repeal water quality standards, and promote loopholes for polluters.

On Dec. 7, the House passed the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act, or H.R. 10, which requires approval from both houses of Congress before federal agencies can implement any significant rule, including those to protect the environment and public health. “In effect, this bill would force Congress to re-legislate provisions in the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other laws that require the agencies to conduct significant rulemakings. If Congress fails to act on a rule, the new rule would not go into effect, delaying important safeguards and wasting years of scientific inquiry, stakeholder comment, and agency staff resources,” the report contends.

Among the 191 votes highlighted in the report, 94 percent of Republican members voted for the anti-environment position, while 86 percent of Democrats voted for the pro-environment position.

Rachel Boxer, the spokeswoman for Gardner, and Joanna Burgos, spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, did not return messages seeking comment for this story.

Participants lamented Canada’s new status as a “laggard country” when that nation’s conservative government announced its plan to quit the Kyoto Protocol, which it called a thing of the past. And, to almost no one’s surprise, people inside the conference halls and out on the streets joined together in labeling the United States “enemy number one” for the way it is wielding its vast global influence in the service of intransigence, backpedaling and obfuscation. A top South African religious leader Tuesday called the high-profile climate-change skepticism of many U.S. leaders “immoral.”

At a well-attended briefing Tuesday morning held by NGO umbrella organization Climate Action Network, Bishop Geoff Davies, executive director of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute, highlighted what he saw as the contradiction inherent in the fact that the people of the United States are deeply religious but also alienated from the responsibility faith demands to address suffering tied to climate-altering pollution.

“The US is a nation of great faith, of Christian commitment. We find it extraordinary that they are behaving like this. We find it immoral,” he said when a Turkish journalist asked what additional pressure could be brought to bear on the world’s lone superpower. “Environmental destruction is a sin against God. We say to faith groups in the U.S.: You’ve got to recognize your responsibilities to combat climate change.”

Live conference video by OneClimate.

At a press conference on Monday, Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said the U.S. government was criminally confusing the interests of corporate polluters with the interests of its people.

“The US delegation is not only betraying the people of the world but they are betraying the American People,” he said, calling on President Obama to “Get here and get with the program or move aside.”

The future of the Kyoto Protocol is the main question of the negotiations because major developing nations are demanding the treaty continue if they are to participate in any future climate-change agreements.

The protocol, signed in 1997 and meant to take effect in 2005, set up tiers of countries that were supposed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by specifically tailored rates. The plan was supposed to cut annual emissions to a rate 5.2 percent below 1990 emissions levels by 2012. The treaty failed spectacularly to meet that goal, with CO2 emissions alone now up to a reported 30 billion metric tons, or a third more than were emitted in 1990.

The United States is leading efforts to delay any new legally binding agreement until 2020. So far, the countries of Europe as represented by the European Union, are the only developed nations willing to sign on to extend the Kyoto Protocol, but they’ll do so only if the United States and other big polluters like China and India agree to a new pact that would take effect by 2020.
 
Jim Leape, director general of World Wildlife Fund, called the negotiations “a huge failure of ambition on the part of governments.” He said that a delay in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol would be “binding ourselves to a 4-degree world.”

Scientists say that, at today’s warming-emissions rate, the global planet temperature is on course to rise by 4 degrees Celsius and they say that temperature would bring dramatic challenges to the way we presently live, causing the desertification of much farmland, widespread crop failure and major glacier loss.

Leape felt the need to point out to North Americans that climate change is not just some exotic problem for faraway lands but a domestic problem as well, whether or not politicians and corporate leaders care to admit it. He reminded reporters that 47 of the 50 U.S. states declared weather-related emergencies last year. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists warn that extreme weather conditions will only increase in frequency and intensity as the planet warms.

Some analysts say that, given the political and business realities of the contemporary world, the annual meetings– known as the COP conferences (the meeting in Durban is COP17)– with their focus on emissions reduction, detract from other more realizable goals. Paul Danish, writing in the Boulder Weekly, offered a typical example this week, arguing that, at this point, focusing so much attention on cutting emissions is a fool’s errand. “Global warming is a done deal,” he wrote. “[T]he conference should really be focused on learning to live with global warming and finding ways to adapt to it.”

Photos of the Global Day of Action in Durban by Adrienne Russell and Matt Tegelberg.

Reporters often ride along on police vehicles outside the conference.

South Durban is the toxic hub of South Africa and citizens there are demanding industry clean up the region and make efforts to limit waste.

Protesters here are strongly tying the right to secure freedom of information to the issue of climate change. Without access to data, corporate and industry interests can avoid accountability, they say. In South Africa, freedom of information has been threatened recently by a bill that attaches stiff prison sentences to unauthorized possession of classified information.

Reporting from Durban by Adrienne Russell, associate professor of communication at the University of Denver. Her most recent book, Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition was published by Polity Press this year.

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So she is taking him on in 2012.

Even though Casida announced her candidacy at the Historic Federal Building in Pueblo on May 13, there’s a good chance you still haven’t heard of her. Political observers in the 3rd Congressional District all know the name of the other congressional candidate in the area, Sal Pace, a Democrat. But as an unaffiliated candidate, Casida doesn’t get the same attention. Her campaign is organic and in its infancy, much like her business, That’s Natural!, which promotes sustainable agriculture. Casida also has a real estate license and she publishes The Good American Post.

Despite the obstacles, Casida is getting noticed. Last month the Liberty Candidates endorsed her campaign. Former Libertarian presidential nominee and constitutional scholar Michael Badnarik recently joined her team of about ten. Several of her staffers campaigned for Ron Paul in the past.

She is not married but was once. “I was married at one time to a young man in the military and after he came back from Iraq, it was apparent that his emotional state would not allow for us to continue a meaningful relationship,” she explained. “It was devastating, and that has of course impacted my love for our troops as well as a desire to have them fighting only Constitutional wars.”

She has never run for office before. She grew up on a farm in Vineland, Colo., — she was baptized in the Arkansas River — and she says she simply wants to “represent the people who live here.”

In a recent e-mail interview with The Colorado Independent, Casida explained herself and her views.

Q. As a conservative, how is Scott Tipton failing to meet the expectations you have for the position?
A. As a representative, I expect Scott Tipton to unequivocally stand against intrusions into the American people’s rights and pocketbooks. I believe he is doing a good job of walking the party line and voting what some would call “conservative,” however he is not:
1. Speaking out against the Federal Reserve System and its effects on the nation’s currency
2. Speaking out against the Patriot Act
3. Speaking out against the National Defense Authorization Act

Q. Would you work to weaken the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency as other conservatives in Congress are doing?
A. Yes. I do not believe the EPA is doing a good job of protecting the environment – most of what they are doing is causing problems for businesses. The concept of environmental protection must be taken to a state and local level in order for such an agency to remain true to its mission and work with the people who are impacted by rules and regulations.

Q. Do you support local decision-making on all issues?
A. Yes, making decisions at a local level allows for people closer to the issues to be more involved in the processes. Making environmental decisions closer to home also allow for representatives and officials to remain transparent and accountable. It is easier to go to Denver to talk to someone than it is to go to Washington, D.C. I am not going to make a blanket statement about all federal standards – I am sure some are good and some make no sense – the fact is that people closer to Colorado, including environmentalists and leadership in Colorado – are more capable of making decisions for environmental standards for Colorado. As a matter of fact, holding decision-making and implementation closer to Colorado will likely be good for our local economies. Instead of sending money to Washington, D.C., we can keep it closer to home.

Q. What about the war on drugs? Do you support the ability of states to legalize medical marijuana?
A. The drug war is a complete fallacy and is doing nothing to stop drug use. If people are apt to use drugs, no legislation or war will stop them. You cannot legislate morality or behavior. I absolutely support the ability of states to legalize medical marijuana. As a matter of fact, it is incredibly beneficial to local economies. Constitutionally speaking, marijuana growth and use is not a federal issue at all. There is nothing stopping people from growing or using a substance, which is in effect, a plant. 

Q. Given your interest in sustainable agriculture and organic foods, do you have an opinion on the raw milk raids occurring across the country?
A. I believe that organic and raw foods are products that have existed on the planet for thousands of years (maybe more) and there is no reason that federal agents should be accosting people for their choices to consume these foods. Government cannot protect us from ourselves. After being exposed to pesticides as a child and becoming ill, I went on an organic diet, that I continue to this day, in an effort to de-toxify my system. I am also a consumer of raw milk, and believe that it has many health benefits. My grandmother drank “raw milk” as a child – they called it “milk.” People have the right to consume foods and nutritional supplements that they feel are beneficial to them. Every action of a human being involves some risk, there is no way to regulate every action that may be dangerous to our own well-being. That is where free will and personal responsibility come in to play.

Q. How concerned are you about fracking?
A. It depends on the situation. I can understand both sides of this issue, and I think that it is dependent upon the area, the people, the company, and the practices – each of these variables plays a part – in some cases I believe it can be performed responsibly. In other cases, I am sure that these practices are abused. I am most concerned about the transparency of the methods and practices used, especially in instances where the public is a part of the stakeholders.

Q. Should drillers be required to reveal what is in their fracking fluids or should that be proprietary?
A. Absolutely, I believe that they should be required to reveal what is in the fluids because these fluids are becoming a part of the ecosystem.

Q. Do you support the Keystone XL Pipeline?
A. Yes. Pipelines run through the entire U.S. Although there are periodic problems with these pipelines, they have an incredible safety track record. This project would provide jobs, growth, and energy independence. From an ecological standpoint, don’t you think it is safer and less intrusive on the environment to pump oil from Canada versus loading it in tankers and trucking it across the ocean?

Q. Do you believe humans cause climate change?
A. No, I believe the climate change we are seeing is from changes in the earth itself; however, there are many pollutants other than CO2 that are incredibly dangerous to the environment and people’s health that should be mitigated – these chemicals should be the focus. People and the private sector need to step up to the task, because the federal government is doing a terrible job at it. We should also never act in fear – to my sadness, it is a tactic too often used from both “the right” and “the left” to push the American people into making decisions that intrude upon our individual liberties. Regulating CO2 is dangerous – making a fair marketplace where renewable energy can compete on the same playing ground as other types of energy is smart.

Q. Where do you stand on abortion?
A. As a female I cherish the ability to give life and find the current statistics concerning abortion horrifying. Nonetheless, the federal government can never tell a woman what to do with her body. We cannot legislate morality – instead of picketing at places like Planned Parenthood, we should get involved in our communities and help these young women so that such a horrible choice would never have to be made in the first place. Our country has a moral problem when it comes to this issue – the government can’t fix it, but we can.

Q. Which current presidential candidate best reflects your views?
A. Ron Paul – he is consistent, he is fiscally conservative and arguably more socially liberal, and he loves the people of this country. He is a statesman, a representative, someone who does not take the American people’s money and abuse it. He is humble, reflective, and a good person with integrity. We need people in D.C. who are representatives and not politicians; he best reflects that in my mind.

Q. Are you a Liberty candidate or an Independent? Do you really think you have a chance of beating the big party candidates?
A. That is up for whoever wants to define either of those – I am Tisha Casida, and people are free to label me based on their world views and frameworks – it differs for everyone. I absolutely have a chance – that is the only reason I am running – to win. People’s anger and resentment at the parties, and politicians in general, will make 2012 a unique election year. Colorado has an equal number of “Independent” voters to the two parties, and we have more and more people thinking that way every day.

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The Sunset Trail roadless area.

The Forest Service fired back: “We spend about 80% of our time implementing policy and maintaining the balancing act which is the Forest Service’s multiple use management goals and minerals management policy (this includes both desk time and field time). The other 20% is spent sitting at our desks responding to snarky rhetorical questions and comments from environmental and special interest groups.”

A draft version of the consent to lease approval for a 1,721-acre expansion of the West Elk coal mine was posted prematurely on a USFS website on Nov. 8, providing a rare glimpse at the exasperation of at least one group of federal land managers caught in the tug of war between conservation groups and mining conglomerates.

An edited version was posted (pdf) after environmental groups pointed out the lack of civility from normally staid federal officials. For example, the second sentence was dropped from the previous reply in the edited version.

But Jeremy Nichols of the environmental group WildEarth Guardians blogged that, “You can agree or disagree with a person who commented, but for this kind of flippant response to come from a federal agency charged with managing public resources is a bit out of line.”

Lee Ann Loupe, external affairs and PIS staff officer for the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forest, said the edited version isn’t nearly as “snarky” and the original version in no way reflects official disdain for those opposed to leasing federal lands for mining.

“We take public comment seriously,” Loupe said. “Obviously, we’d prefer that the public be professional and constructive in theirs, and vice versa, the public should expect the same from us. But errors happen, and we take public comment very seriously.”

Loupe also added that the consent to lease decision does not permit Arch Coal or any other company to mine the BLM-managed coal beneath the Forest Service land in the Sunset Trail Roadless Area 10 miles east of Paonia. There would be a separate federal and state approval process once the lease is purchased and the mine expansion is proposed.

Nichols and others have blasted the consent decision in the wake of a recent 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding the 2001 National Roadless Rule. More than six miles of roads would be needed to service methane wells that would vent the gas from the expanded underground coal mine.

A coal mine venting methane gas along the North Fork of the Gunnison (WildEarth Guardians photo).

“Fall big game hunting season opportunities don‘t exactly scream of protecting deer or elk habitat as they are being chased out of it. We also believe that if you‘ve hunted this area, you‘ve probably accessed it using roads or trails associated with coal exploration or mining.”

Loupe said the official replies were regrettable but not illegal: “We all have good days and bad days, so to speak, that we wish we could take some things back. There’s nothing illegal, inappropriate or unethical in there, but it’s not necessarily the most professional response.”

The main complaint against coal mine expansion in Colorado is that it requires the venting of methane, which the EPA says is 20 times more potent as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. WildEarth Guardians and other groups have sued to compel the Forest Service and BLM to require coal companies to capture or at least flare off the methane.

Coal companies have told the Colorado Independent that capture and use of the valuable gas is impractical and that flaring could spark wildfires. Other companies, however, are engaged in developing and implementing technology to capture coal-mine methane in Colorado.

One commenter on the recent consent to lease, apparently from another state with nuclear power plants, wrote that approval would “thoughtlessly damage a pristine area just so King Coal can make another buck, at a time when man-made climate change due to burning such filthy fossil fuel is patently obvious and should be avoided at all cost.”

The Forest Service shot back that she should cut her power consumption by 49.61 percent – the EPA estimated amount of power generated by burning coal in the United States.

“After all, these efforts begin at home,” USFS officials replied. “We’ll worry about the thousands of years of radioactive waste from your home state’s nuclear power generation and mining activities on federal lands required to support it in your next modified form-letter comment.”

BLM officials have previously told the Colorado Independent that federal laws dating back nearly 100 years compel the agency to lease coal reserves beneath federal lands. Nichols argues that does not mean federal land managers should ignore climate-change consequences, especially when the head of the Forest Service is so concerned about the issue.

“Broad scientific consensus confirms that global climate change is real and that the impacts are altering forests and grasslands, increasing the frequency of disturbance events and diminishing the ecosystem services they provide,” USFS chief Tom Tidwell told Congress last year.

“Some of the most urgent forest and grassland management problems of the past 20 years — wildfires, changing water regimes, and expanding forest insect infestations — have been driven, in part, by a changing climate. Future impacts are likely to be even more severe.”

Some experts have linked Colorado’s ongoing mountain pine bark beetle epidemic to climate change, predicting catastrophic wildfires that federal and state officials hope to mitigate by allowing more road building to log forests around mountain towns.

Deforestation came up in the coal mine consent to lease approval, with one commenter saying, “We are destroying more oxygen-making forests to produce carbon-dioxide making coal.”

Forest Service officials replied: “Might be true if the aspen in the lease area weren’t dead or dying anyway.”