According to the Aspen Times, Peter Havel, executive director of the southwest region for the U.S. Chamber, told a gathering of the Aspen Chamber Resort Association (ACRA) that his organization does not oppose climate change legislation and may wind up supporting the Senate version being crafted by Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.

But the legislation must protect American jobs and the ability of U.S. businesses to compete globally, and it can’t unduly raise taxes, Havel said.

“There are many flavors of climate-change legislation,” Havel reportedly told the membership of the ACRA, which last fall passed a resolution questioning the U.S. Chamber and its president, Thomas Donohue, for calling Waxman-Markey climate change legislation a job killing bill based on junk science.

Aspen Skiing Company Senior Vice President David Perry, an ACRA board, questioned Havel on Donohue’s outspoken ways – which have led to high-profile defections by companies like Apple and Levi Strauss – and his potential conflict of interest as a board member of Union Pacific Railroad, which hauls coal to the nation’s carbon-dioxide-belching power plants.

Havel said he did not know if the U.S. Chamber had a policy on such potential conflicts.

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Creative Commons photo by Mr T in DC via Flickr)

Earlier this month, heavy hitters like Apple, Exelon, Levi Strauss and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. outright quit the nation’s leading business organization. Nike resigned from the Chamber’s board but maintained its membership, and companies like Duke Energy, General Electric, Alcoa and Johnson & Johnson have disavowed the chamber’s positions on global warming.

“It’s our professional opinion that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is out of step with the leading edge of economic recovery,” said Paul Sheldon, senior consultant with Longmont-based Natural Capitalism Solutions, which has provided corporate sustainability consulting to companies representing 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, including Goldman Sachs.

“We have tracked 13 different studies which document that those companies that come into clean sources of energy, sustainability and responsible corporate behavior are outperforming their competitors before, during and after an economic downturn,” he added.

A Scopes monkey trial

In addition to opposing the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that narrowly passed the House in June, the Chamber took heat in August for statements by Vice President William Kovacs that the organization wanted to see a “Scopes monkey trial” on the effects of global warming on public health, referring to the famous creationism versus evolution case in 1925.

“In the past, [Chamber officials have] said such things as, ‘Global warming would benefit Americans because the reduction in wintertime deaths because of cold weather would be several times larger than the increase in summertime heat-stressed-related deaths,’” said Micah Parkin, Colorado organizer of the grass-roots climate change activism group 1Sky. Parkin added that 117 Colorado businesses signed a letter supporting the Senate version of Waxman-Markey.

“That brings home the point of just how many Colorado businesses do not concur with the U.S. Chamber’s position on climate denying, and just how many businesses here actually spoke out,” she said. The letter was addressed to U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet of Colorado. The Senate is currently debating its version, the Boxer-Kerry bill.

Parkin said her group is working to give a voice to businesses and regional Chambers that feel disenfranchised by the position of the U.S. Chamber, which she said spent $26 million lobbying Congress in the first half of 2009 — twice the amount of the next biggest spender, Exxon Mobil.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Chamber President Tom Donohue has backpedaled on Kovacs’ comments, saying the chamber is not interested in arguing the science behind global warming and is essentially being targeted by an “orchestrated pressure campaign” by environmentalists.

On Monday, the chamber was punked by an activist group called the Yes Men, which staged a fake press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., announcing the Chamber was supporting Boxer-Kerry. Some media organizations, including FOX News, ran with the announcement before the real chamber corrected the hoax.

Chamber defections

Notable among the recent Chamber defections was PNM Resources Inc., a New Mexico utility, and Chicago-based Exelon, the nation’s largest power company. Representatives of Colorado renewable energy companies say those forward-looking power companies understand the profits to be realized and the jobs to be created by backing clean energy.

“Those utilities recognize that they are energy companies and not necessarily tied to any specific energy technology, and those companies that embrace renewable energy going forward are going to be the ones that are going to lead the U.S. economy in the future,” said Christopher Koch, owner of Boulder-based Pele Power, which installs geothermal heat pumps.

Among Colorado utilities there are varying levels of support for renewable energy and disbelief in climate-change science. Investor-owned Xcel Energy has been more supportive of funding conservation initiatives and renewable projects than the member-owned utility Tri-State, which supplies power to rural electric co-ops around the state that also diverge widely in terms of backing clean energy.

For instance, the state’s largest co-op, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, tends to debunk global warming and resist putting too much money into renewable sources. The IREA is heavily invested in a new coal-fired power plant near Pueblo, and defends the expenditure based on the lower price of coal-fired electricity despite the possibility it will increase if climate change legislation is passed.

Increasingly, oil and gas companies are battling with the coal industry over carbon caps and emission permits that may be a part of the final Senate bill, with natural gas proponents in particular touting their product for being 50 percent cleaner burning than coal.

“There was an inherent flaw when Congress set off down the road of favoring one fuel source over another,” American Petroleum Institute chairman J. Larry Nichols recently told the New York Times. “You knew there had to be a feeding frenzy among various competing fuels trying to protect themselves.”

Udall and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter have both advocated adding more incentives for natural gas — a plentiful resource in the state — as part of any final climate change bill.

“I believe [Waxman-Markey] gives short shrift to natural gas,” Ritter said in July. “There’s one mention of natural gas if my memory serves me, and it is about a research project for conversion to natural gas [transportation] fleets. There should be far more done with natural gas and incentivizing the production of natural gas because it’s such a cleaner burning carbon fuel.”

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“I have a strong track record of creating green jobs and investing in renewable energy both in Colorado and across the nation. I am very proud of that record,” Salazar said in an e-mail response to the Colorado Independent. “While I strongly agree the issue of climate change must be addressed, this specific bill would have placed a disproportionate financial impact on individual households in Colorado’s Third Congressional District and, for that reason, I could not support it.”

Salazar, a blue-dog Democrat from the largely rural and agrarian Western Slope, is the brother of Interior Secretary and former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar. He has taken a pounding from green groups for being the only Democratic member of the Colorado delegation to vote against the bill, which passed by a scant 7-vote margin of 219-212 in June. The Senate will take it up after the August recess.

“As I said the day I took that difficult vote, it is my hope that as this bill works its way through Congress, we end up with a bill that I will be proud to support,” Salazar added. He did not specify what changes he’d like to see. Colorado Sen. Mark Udall has said he’ll fight for a higher renewable electricity standard and more financial incentives for natural gas exploration and production because it’s cleaner burning than coal.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, also from a largely rural district, voted for the House version of the bill. TV ads are running that are similar to the ones attacking Salazar but instead praise her for her yes vote. They’re sponsored by the Interwest Energy Alliance, a coalition representing renewable energy companies.

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Only two of those cities – Grand Junction and Pueblo – are actually in Salazar’s 3rd Congressional District, but the message of the campaign may resonate better with Front Range city dwellers than in blue-collar Pueblo or the Western Slope gas patches around Grand Junction.

The ad features a ranching neighbor of the blue-dog Democrat, Colin Henderson of La Jara: “You can grow just about anything in Colorado sunshine, and these days all our sun and wind are growing something pretty special.”

Then a voice over: “Clean energy jobs, all across the state, but when John Salazar voted no on the American Clean Energy and Security Act [aka, Waxman-Markey], he voted no on wind, on solar, and on more clean-energy jobs.”

Back to Henderson: “Congressman Salazar, let’s work together to give clean-energy jobs a bright future in Colorado.”

In an LCV release put out late Wednesday, Henderson is quoted on the ag issues that prompted Salazar to vote no a bill the Senate will take up after the August recess:

“As my congressman, I know representative Salazar believes in defending rural values, but he missed an opportunity to use our state’s natural resources to create clean energy jobs.”

Salazar’s office did not provide an immediate response Thursday.

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“I’m not critical of cap-and-trade,” Wirth told Bloomberg. “But it has to be used in a targeted and disciplined way, and what has happened is it’s gotten out of control.”

Wirth, a six-term congressman and one-term senator who now heads up Ted Turner’s U.N. Foundation, got cap-and-trade provisions for emissions passed as part of the Clean Air Act in 1990. He also served in the Clinton State Department as Undersecretary for Global Affairs focusing on climate change and population growth.

He told Bloomberg the climate-change bill needs to scrap the idea of auctioning permits to raise revenues for the federal government and “just focus on the utilities.” To get out of the Senate, he said, the bill needs include more agriculture provisions, a better nuclear power package, a carbon-emissions standard for new utilities and a stronger “natural gas piece.”

More goodies for the cleaner-burning (by about 50 percent versus coal) natural gas industry and a higher renewable electricity standard are two of the things Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall recently told reporters he wants to see in any climate-change bill. Natural gas is also something Gov. Bill Ritter would like to see strengthened in the bill.

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Ritter wrote that he went to sing the praises of wind power and jobs, “but what I discovered in Washington was nothing short of a “partisan whipsaw’ …”

“Extreme political opponents outside Colorado are doing everything in their power to see us fail,” said an e-mail sent Friday under Ritter’s signature. “Please make a contribution so that we can fight back.”

Even before Ritter finished testifying before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on Tuesday, GOP aides — including a young communications staffer who was once arrested, and later acquitted, for shouting at a Democratic Senate candidate in Boulder — circulated a video aimed at embarrassing Ritter by depicting a less than explicit endorsement of the climate bill passed last month by the House.

Here’s the video, including a lengthy introduction by Inhofe:

The video and an accompanying press release provoked angry reactions from progressive bloggers, including one at Colorado Pols who asked, “Is there anything that our Governor stands for anymore?!”

Ritter actually testified he understands the Senate could fix some things in the House version of the Waxman-Markey bill but was unequivocal in his backing for the bill’s intent.

After saying he supported moving toward a national energy policy and federal law aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, Ritter said, “There will be some vehicle that may not look exactly like Waxman-Markey, particularly after the Senate finishes its work. But I very much support climate legislation that is joined with a national energy policy to get us to the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals that are set for 2050.”

Not exactly the “gotcha” portrayed in the GOP release — in fact, Ritter said the next day he’s hoping the Senate will strengthen the climate bill — but the partisan attack at least yielded a damning headline in the next day’s Denver Post: “Gov. Ritter attracts negative energy in D.C. hearing.”

Ritter’s counter-attack to Inhofe’s broadside — likely aimed as much at a governor up for re-election next year as it was at sowing discord among climate-minded Democrats — didn’t pull any punches:

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), a powerful proponent of the status quo who views climate change as the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” demonstrated his particular hostility to adopting Colorado’s New Energy Economy nationwide.

My very presence at the hearing seemed to agitate Sen. Inhofe, as he told me “I’m kind of wondering why you’re here.” It was his polite way of telling me, “Go home, so that we here in Washington can go back to stalling progress and dragging our feet on meaningful energy and climate legislation.”

… The dishonest partisan attacks I faced at this week’s hearing cannot be viewed in isolation. They are part of a larger, coordinated effort to thwart national energy and climate reform legislation by smearing and defeating state-level new energy leaders.

For their part, Ritter’s two leading Republican challengers sided with their GOP friend from Oklahoma, Lynn Bartels reports in the Denver Post:

“Washington, D.C., is too partisan,” [Senate Minority Leader Josh] Penry said. “But it’s easy to understand why the senators would be frustrated by a governor who traveled 2,000 miles only to refuse to take a position on the cap-and-trade bill that was the subject of the hearing.”

And [former congressman Scott] McInnis noted that Ritter’s appearance came at the same time the state Department of Labor is struggling to process all of its unemployment claims, and delaying some payments to the end of August.

Proving Colorado politicians don’t need to venture to our nation’s capital to encounter partisan whipsaws.

Gov. Bill Ritter

Gov. Bill Ritter is calling out Republican members of the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee for what he called a very partisan approach to the debate on climate change legislation and new energy versus traditional energy jobs.

After testifying along with three other governors during a hearing titled “Clean Energy Jobs, Climate-Related Policies and Economic Growth: State and Local Views,” Ritter said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday that the tone of the conversation on Capitol Hill caught him off-guard.

“The Senate committee hearing, and it’s probably something Sen. [Mark] Udall is more used to than I am, but it was a very partisan deal,” Ritter said, referring to the Colorado Democrat who joined him on the conference call. “When the western governors meet to talk about climate and energy, there’s very strong bipartisan support for addressing these two issues together.”

Udall took the opportunity to back up Ritter’s comments and take a dig at his fellow senators on the other side of the aisle. “I take my cues from the western governors and will continue to find bipartisan solutions here, and there are plenty of them frankly,” he said.

Specifically, Ritter responded to U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who questioned the governor’s very presence at the hearing but didn’t give him the chance to answer.

“One of the things [Inhofe] said was, ‘How can you be here when you have such significant oil shale deposits?’” Ritter said. “We very much support the [research and development] projects in the northwest part of the state where there’s vast deposits of oil shale.

“But until somebody can tell me that there’s a technology that protects our groundwater and air… and we know what level of energy is necessary just to produce a material that can be extracted in a conventional fashion, I don’t believe we should be writing the rules for commercial leasing.”

Ritter was referring to Bush administration midnight rulemaking to set royalty rates and oversight regulations for an industry that is very much in its nascent stages of development and could be decades from producing commercially viable amounts of oil. Udall concurred with Ritter on the oil shale issue, adding all forms of energy must be pursued.

“The governor and I both believe that you’ve got to do it all and there’s no silver bullet,” Udall said. “There may well be silver buckshot, but to make a bet, as Sen. Inhofe suggests, just on oil shale is one that right now’s unlikely to pay off in the ways that we need for it to pay off.”

Asked about the American Clean Energy and Security Act, or so-called Waxman-Markey bill named for its key House sponsors, Ritter said it needs to acknowledge the cleaner-burning potential of natural gas. Udall agreed, and added that he’ll work on that aspect of the Senate version of the bill, as well as push for a higher renewable electricity standard than what the House passed.

“I believe [Waxman-Markey] gives short shrift to natural gas,” Ritter said. “There’s one mention of natural gas if my memory serves me, and it is about a research project for conversion to natural gas [transportation] fleets. There should be far more done with natural gas and incentivizing the production of natural gas because it’s such a cleaner burning carbon fuel.”

Ritter has taken some heat lately for going to bat for the state’s natural gas industry, especially on the topic of legislation being pushed by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette that seeks to remove an exemption under the Safe Drinking Water Act for the gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing.

Ritter supports more research on the issue before turning it over to federal oversight.

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Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. (Bridgette Blair, Flickr)

WASHINGTON — Even as Democrats in the U.S. House are celebrating their deal with conservative-leaning colleagues on climate change legislation, the real winners under the compromise have been the coal, electric and auto industries, which are largely the source of the nation’s carbon emissions.

Details of the compromise are still emerging, but already the chief sponsors of the measure — Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — have been forced to lower carbon-reduction targets, cut renewable fuel standards and dole out billions of dollars in benefits to the nation’s largest polluting industries. Many environmentalists say the compromise comes at the too-high cost of undermining the bill’s very purpose, which is to slash emissions dramatically enough to prevent a warming planet from heating further. Some are asking Democrats either to bolster the environmental protections or to scrap the proposal altogether.

“We are not prepared to ‘give away the farm’ just so that we can say that we helped to get legislation passed,” Janet Keating, executive director of the West Virginia-based Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in a statement Friday. “There are some costs that are too high to pay when it comes to the environment, clean air and clean water. We urge Congress to either fix the Waxman-Markey bill or dump it and start over.”

The saga highlights the thorny congressional climate change debate, where partisan politics takes a backseat to regional interests, and the influence of the energy lobby is king. Indeed, the concessions from Waxman and Markey to this point have been made to satisfy Democrats representing regions heavy with coal, oil and automaker interests.

The resulting dynamic is one of multi-layered tension that pits industry against environmentalists, regional interests against national and global interests, and congressional lawmakers against emission reforms that might help the planet, but could also cost jobs in their districts.

“I’m just trying to take care of the principal concerns that would impact my region, in particular my district,” Rep. Charles Gonzales, a Houston-based Democrat who’s pushing for more benefits for oil refineries in the House bill, told Politico Thursday.

In the eyes of many environmentalists, that brand of regional protectionism might yield short-term gains for some areas of the country, but will come at the cost of a deteriorating globe. They’re asking what good is it to protect polluters in a world where you can’t drink the water or breath the air, and the oceans are swallowing the coasts?

Erich Pica, director of domestic policy programs at Friends of the Earth, said the moderate Democrats are “holding hostage” the reforms necessary to tackle the problem in a way that reflects its urgency. “They have every right to protect their constituents,” Pica said. “But as members of Congress they also represent the entire country, and they should know when to sacrifice their regional interests for the sake of the larger common good. All they see is protecting oil or protecting coal. That’s not helpful.”

Indeed, the United Nations issued a report Thursday indicating that the world’s poorest countries, which are expected to suffer the brunt of the floods, draughts and storms associated with climate change, already require as much as $2 billion to adjust to the warming conditions. The UN is asking for donors to raise the funds.

Faced with similar reports, Waxman and Markey introduced a draft climate change bill in March — diluted significantly in the more recent compromise. And from an industry perspective, there’s something in there for nearly everyone.

For the coal and electric utility industries, for example, the compromise bill requires that U.S. emissions be reduced 17 percent by 2020, down from the 20 percent reduction promoted in the initial draft. The new bill also tamps down an earlier provision that states get at least 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, instead dropping that floor to 15 percent.

Additionally, although President Barack Obama had campaigned on a platform of selling 100 percent of so-called pollution permits to industry — a strategy he said would generate $646 billion to fight global warming over the next decade — the House compromise gives all but 15 percent of those permits away for free.

The changes were enough to gather the support of several key members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including Rep. Rick Boucher (Va.), a coal-country Democrat who had threatened to oppose the stronger draft. But the bows to industry also bring into question whether lawmakers resigned to shield their provincial industries are even capable of passing the reforms scientists say would be required to stem America’s contributions to the warming planet.

The changes, said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy and climate program at Public Citizen, “threaten to render this bill ineffective for a long period of time.”

There were other concessions as well. To satisfy Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), another powerful member of the committee, Waxman and Markey have agreed to give 3 percent of pollution permits to the nation’s automakers to fund research for more fuel efficient vehicles.

The compromise also waters down the so-called cash-for-clunkers program*, which ostensibly encourages drivers to turn in their gas guzzlers in exchange for a federal subsidy on more fuel efficient models. Yet under the compromise proposal, the new fuel efficiencies are hardly dramatic. For example, drivers trading in trucks between 6,000 and 8,500 pounds would be eligible for a $3,500 voucher for purchasing the same-sized vehicle that’s more efficient by just 1 mile per gallon.

Daniel Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, said the program does much more to help struggling automakers sell large, unpopular models than it does to reduce greenhouse emissions.

“It’s a $4 billion giveaway to move gas guzzling vehicles that nobody wants off the lots,” Becker said.

Also, to get oil-friendly Democrats like Gonzales on board, the House compromise will give 2 percent of the pollution permits to oil refineries.

And these changes have arrived before the amendment process begins. House Republicans have vowed to dilute the environmental protections even further during debate in the Energy and Commerce Committee or on the House floor. Indeed, Sen. Joe Barton (Tex.), the senior Republican on E&C, has predicted that Republicans will succeed in altering the bill to consider nuclear energy and so-called “clean coal” renewable fuels.

“The president and his allies have decided that man-made carbon dioxide is a witch’s brew that’s killing the planet,” Barton said in a statement, “and they think that just because the cap-and-trade cure stings doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have to swallow it.”

The Energy and Commerce Committee, headed by Waxman, is expected to take up the bill next week, with House Democratic leaders hoping to pass the bill before the August recess.

Influencing the debate, the nation’s largest carbon emitters have contributed enormous sums of money to lobby Congress this year. The oil and gas industries, for example, have already spent $44.6 million and the electric utilities have tallied an additional $34.4 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By contrast, the renewable energy sector has spent only $14.4 million on lobbying over the same span, and environmental groups have tallied just $4.7 million.

It’s not just Waxman and Markey who are struggling against the current of regional protectionism in the fight against climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency last week proposed new renewable fuel standards that, for the first time, would factor things like worldwide deforestation when calculating the environment impacts of biofuel production. The proposal was hailed by environmentalsist who have long argued that production of ethanol, for example, has depleted global food supplies, forcing farmers elsewhere to clear forests — a major source of carbon emissions — to make up the difference.

Yet, after eight years of Bush-era regulators who didn’t believe in regulation and environmental protection officials who didn’t believe in environmental protection, congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are suddenly feeling the sting of an EPA living up to its name.

Indeed, since the EPA unveiled its proposal, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has blasted the proposal as “very detrimental to ethanol.” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) charged that the changes “would effectively kill renewable fuels in South Dakota and across the country because of environmental extremism within the EPA.” And Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who heads the House Agriculture Committee, has already introduced legislation to prevent the so-called “indirect land use” provision from ever taking hold.

The message is clear: If climate change reforms are ever to clear Congress, they can’t confront industry too severely — even if those industries are responsible for same carbon emissions creating the problem.

Some lawmakers appear to recognize that probable reality. Next week the Senate environmental panel will host a hearing entitled “Business Opportunities and Climate Policy.”

*Cash for clunkers was not in the original proposal, but attached during committee debate a few days later.