Okay, so it’s August in Washington. It’s hot. Congress has gone home. Even the summer interns are packing up and getting out of town. So it’s not surprising that top members of the Obama administration might be ready for a road trip.

That’s basically what the White House announced in a statement headlined: “Obama Administration Officials Travel America, Talk Clean Energy Economy.” President Obama went to Indiana to announce $2.4 billion in funding for advanced battery and electric drive projects; Energy Secretary Steven Chu headed for Minnesota to look at renewable energy projects and North Carolina to announce a big grant to a lithium battery firm, finishing up the week in Massachusetts to talk about clean energy jobs at Harvard; Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went to a solar panel company in Colorado; EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was in Florida and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke traveled to Missouri.

Probably only a crank would wonder just how much greenhouse gas all this official travel spewed into the atmosphere. There’s no hybrid Air Force One, after all. But it does seem like an exquisite irony that, with the best of environmental intentions, the Obama team may have stomped all over the United States with a heavy-duty carbon footprint.

Is it fair to ask that when they talk the talk, they walk the walk — or offset emissions by funding windmills or other projects that supply renewable energy? Let us know what you think.

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Photo credits: REUTERS/Jason Reed (President Obama speaks in Wakarusa, Indiana, August 5, 2009); REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (Windmill turbines on Backbone Mountain in West Virginia, August 28, 2006)

Following the launch of his Facebook and Youtube accounts, Energy Secretary Steven Chu made another attempt to reach the young, hip, in-crowd Tuesday night by appearing on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

Chu,  a Nobel Prize winning scientist and self-described nerd, began his appearance by  offering a t-shirt to the show’s host comedian Jon Stewart, proclaiming him an honorary member of the “Nerds of America Society.”

“You know I have been an unofficial member for years,” Stewart quipped in response.

The rest of the chat mostly dealt with the climate change legislation before Congress. 

Earlier in the show, Stewart jokingly fell asleep into a cream pie as he described the cap-and- trade system that Democrats hope to put in place to limit carbon dioxide emissions. He also suggested the bill has been watered down by the political process.

When asked whether the bill that recently passed the House of Representatives went far enough to address global warming, Chu said “if you go to the left or the right, people are not happy with it. But the  bottom line is it puts a cap on carbon emissions.”

Stewart pointed out that Chu has to deal with lawmakers who believe global warming is a hoax and argue that carbon occurs in nature so it can’t be bad for the planet.

“That is true, but on the other hand, water is generally very good. Water in great deluges is not good,” Chu responded.

Stewart gave Chu the ultimate compliment.

“Can I tell you something? You are the first Cabinet member I’ve met from the Obama administration that seems alive. You are the first one,” Stewart said.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Chu during Reutes Energy Summit June 1)

Al Gore — who sometimes jokes that he “used to be the next president of the United States” — heads for Capitol Hill to testify about the fight against climate change. The former vice president and star of the Oscar-winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” is slated to go before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he’ll discuss the latest legislation to curb the greenhouse gases that spur global warming.

Gore shares the spotlight with former Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican who pushed a bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions in 2008, his last year in Congress.

It’s been an environmentally-friendly week in Washington, with Earth Day on Wednesday prompting almost every U.S. agency to go green, starting with the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson headed for the Hill to urge passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the climate bill working its way through the House of Representatives. A similar bill failed last year, but that was then. Supporters hope that with a new administration which has been clear on its commitment to curb climate warming emissions, this kind of law has a better chance.

The green spree continues next week, when 17 of the countries that emit the most greenhouse gases — including the United States — gather at the State Department on Monday and Tuesday. But whatever happens in Foggy Bottom, there will still be plenty of attention focused on Congress. Todd Stern, the top U.S. climate diplomat, says domestic legislation is the key to successfully negotiating a global climate pact.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing (Al Gore before his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, January 28, 2009)

Republicans in the U.S. Congress say they know how much it is going to cost to save the world from the predicted ravages of climate change. But others say their math is way off.
 
“It would cost every family as much as $3,100 a year in additional energy costs and will drive millions of good-paying American jobs overseas,” warned House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner in response to House Democrats unveiling their climate-change bill on Tuesday.
 
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell offered the same figure. “According to some estimates, this tax could cost every American household up to $3,100 a year just for doing the same things people have always done, like turning on the lights and doing laundry.”
 
There’s a problem, though. 
 
The Republicans cite a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study as the basis for their cost estimate. But a lead author of that study complained in a letter to Boehner on Wednesday that the calculation is way off.
 
John Reilly, an economist at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, said the average annual cost to U.S. families for controlling emissions of carbon and other harmful greenhouse gases is actually $340.
 
In a telephone interview with Reuters, Reilly said updates to his 2007 study that take into account some higher costs could nudge the figure up to around $440 per household per year.
 
Republicans say they simply took a $366 billion revenue estimate from a climate change bill that sputtered in Congress last year and divided by the number of U.S. households to come up with $3,100. The thinking is that the revenues would be collected in pollution permits to industries, a cost that likely could be passed on to consumers.
 
“Taking that number and saying that is the cost is just wrong,” Reilly said, adding that many other calculations, including government rebates to consumers, have to be factored in.
 
Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said there are no assurances yet that consumers would get rebates, which the MIT study assumed, and thus the $3,100 figure is accurate and possibly even higher.
 
“If they (Democrats) change their bill to give money back to consumers, the numbers on cost would change (downward),” Stewart said.
 
Eben Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for Representative Edward Markey, one of Congress’ leading advocates of climate control legislation, saw other possibilities.
    
If a range of energy initiatives in coming legislation is factored in — electric vehicles, improved transmission and other alternative energy steps — he said that would “significantly cut down the costs and some say would save people money on energy bills.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Demonstrators for clean energy hold a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 2) 

Was that a dig at outgoing President George W. Bush? President-elect Barack Obama introduced his new environmental team and insisted his administration would focus on "the facts" as it put together policy.

"We understand the facts demand bold action," he said.

In case listeners didn't get the point that the new administration thinks it's different from that of outgoing President Bush, Veep-to-be Joe Biden gave it a try.

"There is no doubt about the challenges in front of us, but there is no putting our heads in the sand, either, as in my view we have done for some time. Particularly when it comes to science -- welcome doctor," he said, looking at Energy Department Chief-to-be Dr. Steven Chu.

PHOTO: Reuters

For Detroit’s struggling automakers, the wait continues.

There will be no word on the fate of the struggling industry’s financial bailout at least until President George W. Bush is safely home later on Monday after ducking shoes in Iraq and visiting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the White House says.
.

Most analysts and observers are expecting White House action soon to help the carmakers after the Senate’s failure last week to approve a $14 billion bailout that could avert catastrophic failures and millions of job losses in a recession-wracked economy.

But White House spokesman Dana Perino said there was no timetable for a decision.

The future of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich also hangs in the balance. He remains in office but largely out of sight nearly a week after being charged with putting President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat up for sale.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Sunday she heard there was a possibility he would step aside on Monday, but Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero said there would be no resignation.

One thing is certain: Obama will hold a news conference at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) to name members of his energy and environmental team, and he will face more questions about who on his staff might have talked to Blagojevich about the U.S. Senate seat.

Obama is expected to name Nobel physics laureate Steven Chu as energy secretary and former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner to head a new council to coordinate White House energy, climate and environment policies.

Obama is also expected to name Lisa Jackson, chief of staff for New Jersey’s governor, to run the EPA, and Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as head of the White House Council on environmental quality.

Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, who once practiced as an environmental lawyer, is a leading contender for secretary of the interior.

Meanwhile, Reuters and Politico, the Washington political newspaper, have done a deal to distribute each other’s political, government and business news to subscribers in the United States and worldwide

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Photo credit: Reuters/Ali Jarekji (Saudi men read about shoe attack on Bush in Iraq)

The vice presidential contenders Joe Biden and Sarah Palin offered their share of zingers and even a couple gaffes during their one and only debate on Thursday in St. Louis.

Biden tried to link the health care plan offered by Palin and presidential hopeful John McCain to Palin’s past support of a now-famous congressional earmark to fund a bridge to a small island that was labeled the “Bridge to Nowhere.”  

“So you’re going to have to place — replace a $12,000 plan with a $5,000 check you just give to the insurance company.  I call that the ‘Ultimate Bridge to Nowhere,’” Biden said.
 
Meanwhile, Palin corrected her rival about the offshore drilling for energy resources when Biden said “drill, drill drill.” 

“The chant is ‘drill, baby, drill.’ And that’s what we hear all across this country in our rallies because people are so hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into,” she said.

Biden, who is known for his verbal miscues, managed to only have one major gaffe, apparently erroneously referring to Hezbollah instead of Syria when he talked about the United States and France coming to the aid of Lebanon.

“When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said, and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there.  Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it,’” Biden said.

Meanwhile, Palin had a couple mistakes herself, calling the U.S. commander in Afghanistan Commander McClellan when his name is David McKiernan.

She also got her words mixed up when talking about the financial crisis, which has been criticized as a bailout for bankers on Wall Street and doing little to help Main Street Americans.

“It’s a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that’s affecting Wall Street,” Palin said. 

She also referred to her opponent as “O’Biden” at one point, combining her opponents’ names.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Palin winks during the vice presidential debate), Carlos Barria (Biden laughs at the debate)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said on Wednesday she would be ready to deal with foreign policy if she and John McCain win the White House and offered to play “stump the candidate” to test herself on specific policy issues.

In their first joint “town hall meeting” with Palin taking questions from voters, an audience member asked Palin to dispel concerns that she lacked foreign policy experience. She responded by saying she expected critics to look for things to attack. “I think because I’m a Washington outsider that opponents are going to be looking for a whole lot of things that they can criticize,” she said.

“As for foreign policy, you know, I think that I am prepared and I know that on Jan. 20, if we are so blessed as to be sworn into office as your president and vice president, certainly we’ll be ready,” Palin said.

“I’ll be ready, I have that confidence,” she said. “If you want specifics with specific policy or countries, go ahead and you can ask me, you can even play ’stump the candidate’ if you want to, but we are ready to serve.”

The crowd applauded and McCain stepped in to highlight Palin’s experience dealing with energy issues in Alaska, command of the Alaska National Guard, and her son’s deployment to Iraq.

“I think she understands national security challenges and we’ve had many conversations, and I … am convinced she understands the challenges this nation faces,” McCain said. 

About an hour had passed at that point — roughly the time allotted for the campaign event — and McCain opted not to take any more questions. Neither did Palin, who made closing remarks after the Arizona senator had concluded.

“Stump the candidate” would have to wait for another time.

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Aaron Josefczyk

SEDONA, Arizona - Taking a few days off from the presidential race, Sen. John McCain nonetheless keeps the media on its toes with a daily, early morning trip for coffee.

The Republican presidential candidate, who is staying at his comfortable home in the hills near Sedona, has been driven with staff, Secret Service, reporters, photographer and a television crew in tow to a Starbucks.

There, he quickly gets a cup to go and returns home.

On Friday, the six-vehicle motorcade — four SUVS and two vans– drove him 19 miles roundtrip to a Starbucks in Sedona.

On Thursday, the entourage of nine vehicles made a similar trip to a Starbucks in Cottonwood and back.

Members of the media are kept well away, confined inside the two vans, where they occupy themselves determining what McCain ordered, whether Cindy McCain’s shorts were white or khaki, how much fuel the trips consumed or why the candidate doesn’t just send an aide out for the coffee instead. 

For the record, on Thursday McCain had a cappuccino. Mrs. McCain’s shorts were khaki on Friday. The questions of fuel consumption and why an aide doesn’t fetch the coffee remained unanswered.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mark Avery (Make-up artist tends to McCain at forum in California)

ASPEN, Colo. - Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain said on Thursday the recent sharp fall in the price of oil had been helped by the end of the U.S. federal offshore drilling moratorium.

“I think several factors have contributed to the recent drop in the price of a barrel of oil. I think the practice of conservation and the reduction in our demand has probably been a major factor,” he told the Aspen Institute.

“I also don’t think it was entirely accidental that the day that the president announced lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling, the price of a barrel of oil dropped.”

Despite the decline in oil prices from record highs above $140 a barrel in July to around $115, gasoline prices remain a crucial issue in the election campaign, pinching Americans as they cope with falling house prices.

McCain’s call for offshore drilling to boost domestic oil supplies, which he says will provide a bridge to a time when new, greener, energy technology is in place, has been slammed by critics who say it would be a disaster for the environment and not make any difference to oil prices.

The Arizona senator rejects this view, and on Thursday he reiterated his position that it could help straight away.

“I met with a group of independent petroleum producers in Bakersfield, California. They said, using existing facilities, you could have an immediate impact on our supply of oil. With exploration of known areas … within a year or two, they could increase our oil supply,” McCain said.

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