Here’s some excellent news:

TARKIO, Mo. — A national survey of wind energy says Missouri added the third-highest amount of wind farm capacity in the nation during the second quarter of the year.

The American Wind Energy Association said Tuesday that the completion of the Farmers City wind farm near Tarkio in northwest Missouri added 146 megawatts of wind energy capacity. That brings the state’s total capacity to 306 megawatts.

The 90 percent increase in capacity was the largest jump among [sic] any state the nation, the association said.

And here’s how to put that news to good use. Repower America has a phone line set up where you can leave a message for Senator McCaskill. Just call 1-877-9REPOWER (737-6937). The automated voice will ask you for your zip code, offer some generic advice on properly identifying yourself in your message, and then let say what you have to say to her. Every day, the messages for that day are delivered to Claire.

We need to keep the pressure on Claire because she’s a weak link as far as keeping ACES (clean energy legislation) from being watered down. In late June, she tweeted: “I hope we can fix cap and trade so it doesn’t unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri.”

She was wrong to believe that the legislation unfairly punishes coal dependent states, and perhaps you’d want to stress that to her. She can’t hear it too many times.

Listen, the flat earthers will shout their fears at her, and they’ve got the money for a megaphone the size of Kansas. That’s another fact you might see fit to mention to our junior senator, namely that the opposition is funded by big oil. Mark Twain said, “Tell me where a man gets his corn pone, and I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.” Well, the opposition is getting its corn pone from Saudi Arabia. The rest of us think we ought to get it from Missouri wind mills.

( – promoted by Clark)

Americans for Prosperity (aka teabaggers, aka Carl Bearden) is convening a town hall in St. Louis this coming Monday night, the 27th, to talk about why they’re opposed to the clean energy bill. Claire McCaskill’s district staff will attend and represent her views.

One can only speculate about whether the atmosphere will be staid, window-rattling, or something in between. I figure to hear at least one participant claim that “cap and tax” will cost every American family $3100 a year. As if. And someone is likely to cite info from the Wall Street Journal’s answer to the CBO assertion that it will cost more like $175 per family.

But what I really hope I hear is some sane questions and observations by people from our side of the equation who attend and speak their minds: who debunk the $3100 claim, who point out that national security demands we turn to a green economy, and, finally, who mention that it might be nice to save the planet. (Come prepared with stats to refute silly claims that the planet is actually cooling.)

I’ll be there to film it. If they let me in. I hope some of you will show up as well. MO Votes Conservation is urging people on its e-mail list to do so, and Claire’s staff would appreciate the support, especially if this turns out to be a wild ride.

Here are the details:

When:

Monday, July 27, 2009, 7-8pm

Where:

St. Louis Community College – Forest Park Campus

Highlander Lounge

5600 Oakland Ave.

St. Louis, MO 63110

Here is a map of the campus.  The meeting is in the Student Center.  For more information or to RSVP contact Vanessa at vcrawford@movotesconservation.org.

Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, was in St. Louis for a conference on Friday and met with a few bloggers to talk about the energy bill that the Senate is about to consider. He’s been lobbying on environmental issues for thirty years, and he says that though the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill is not perfect, it is absolutely essential that Congress pass it.

And what is the outlook for getting it through the Senate? Karpinski says that about 45 Democratic senators are definitely on board, with the predictable two Republicans, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, both of Maine, likely also to vote in favor. Another 25 Democrats are squishy. We’ll need 13-15 of them for cloture. (Karpinski noted that there are actually two cloture votes. The first is a vote just to bring the bill up for discussion. That’ll be an easy hurdle. The second, once it’s been amended and discussed, is the tough one, the vote on whether to vote on the bill.) And, of course, once we have the second cloture, all we need is 51 yea votes.

As far as bringing enough of the 25 squishies around to achieve cloture, the strategy is to do lots of educating them, and to give those who’d like to vote in favor of the bill but who worry about political consequences some cover. Russ Carnahan can testify that the Republicans will be applying all the heat they can, and you can be sure that McCaskill knows about what’s been happening to him. That may explain her ill-advised tweet. She took a ton of heat on Twitter about her silly notion that ACES offers no help offsetting the cost of cap and trade to a coal using state like Missouri. Call that back chat part of her education.

But we can and should also offer her political cover.

It can come in the form of smart framing. Karpinski stresses that, in this bad economy, we should talk first about what investing in green energy will do to brace our economy and to create jobs. Then we should push the idea that getting away from oil dependence is a national security issue. Only last should we focus on the most important issue: slowing climate change. In short, many voters pay more attention to their own pocketbooks than to anybody preaching about tree hugging.

The other part of political cover is to debunk the lies Republicans keep repeating. No, “cap and tax” won’t cost families $3100 a year. They are misrepresenting an MIT study when they say so, and they ignore even the author of the study, when he says that they should stop citing that figure. The Congressional Budget Office has more accurate data. CBO puts the cost of cap and trade at about $170 a year per family, and that’s before the savings that will come with more energy efficiency.

Instead of letting voters figure that it would be nice to save the planet except that it would cost too much, we need to show them that saving the planet will, literally, pay off.  

A couple of days ago, I expressed disappointment at Senator McCaskill’s remarks about the clean energy bill that just passed the House at the end of June. As Michael posted earlier, Matt Corley at Think Progress had a longer take on the same conservative radio interview. To review, McCaskill tweeted a couple of days ago and reiterated on right wing radio that she wanted to make sure cap and trade doesn’t punish coal-dependent states like Missouri.

Well, as Matt points out, regional concerns such as greater reliance on coal have been addressed in crafting this bill.  Congress Matters has a handy summary of the American Clean Energy and Security Act which points out that 32% of the allowances through 2025 will be given to regulated utilities to keep electricity rates low for consumers. The legislation also provides trade-exposed industries like steel and paper to get 15% of the allowances at the onset of the cap in 2012.

So what does this mean in plain English? In cap and trade, total carbon emissions are capped for the whole country, and then the total is divvied up into credits or “allowances” and assigned to carbon emitting companies like utility companies. If your company has trouble coming in under the cap (which starts out very high and is only reduced over time,) you can purchase allowances from another company that managed to cut carbon emissions and come in under the cap. Given that the allowances are estimated to be worth $50 to $70 billion in 2012, and 32% are allocated for utilities, that amounts to a $16 billion per year subsidy for the first year of cap and trade alone. Not to mention billions of dollars in federal assistance for carbon sequestration for coal fired power plants.

Is there something else Senator McCaskill would like to do to weaken the bill by giving the coal industry further breaks? If so, I’d like to hear her say what it is, rather than have her continue to make vague generalizations that the bill doesn’t take “coal dependent states” into account. Clearly it does.

A final thought. Giving the coal industry further breaks will reduce the effectiveness of the bill in curbing global warming. McCaskill claimed in her interview with Mike Ferguson to believe in the science that says we urgently need to do something about climate change. If McCaskill truly believes that, she should act to make the bill stronger, not weaker.

Brad Johnson at Think Progress has a good post regarding Claire McCaskill’s tweet on the climate bill that I mentioned yesterday. While McCaskill claimed that cap and trade needed more work to defend Missouri families and businesses from extra costs imposed on coal dependent states, Brad points out that courtesy of congressmen in coal-dependent districts, like Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), the House bill already includes billions to make sure coal is protected for decades. I wonder what changes McCaskill would like to make to the bill in order to make ACES even more friendly to Big Coal.

Missouri currently gets a lot of of its electricity from coal-fired power plants (85%), but we get practically none of that coal from our own state. Over 90% of our coal is transported via rail from Wyoming. It’s not like tons of jobs in Missouri depend on coal mining. And it’s not like electricity is magically getting cheaper with coal – the PSC has approved rate hikes for Ameren in 2007 and again in 2008, for example.

According to a study from the NRDC, when you take in to account the incentives and resources provided for energy efficiency (which the CBO largely did not), in 2020 even coal dependent states like Missouri will have a lower average electric bill ($6.32 less per month per household) and lower transportation costs ($13.93 per month per household) than if we had done nothing but continue with the status quo of relying on coal.

So instead of relying on the status quo, why not invest in making sure that Missourians have the job-generating clean energy economy that we voted for in overwhelming numbers over the entire state last November?

Blunt voted against the American Clean Energy and Security Act in committee today, after trying to gut it with a horrible amendment yesterday.