As a drippy day dawns in Washington, Team Obama is suiting up for a full-court press on climate change. Three cabinet secretaries — from Energy, Transportation and Interior departments — the head of the EPA and the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Five — are headed for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the first of three full days of hearings.

As those hearings go forward, President Barack Obama is announcing a $3.4 billion program to build a “smart” electric grid, which would among other things carry solar and wind power, which are free of carbon emissions.

It’s all meant to convince international climate negotiators that Washington is serious about tackling climate change. A global gathering set for Copenhagen in December aims to set up a system to curb climate-warming carbon emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. For months, environmental activists have looked to the Copenhagen meeting as a deadline for action. But now, the deadline is looking a bit blurry.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appeared to acknowledge this when he told business leaders in Seattle on Monday, “We will do our best and try to have a substantive agreement (in Copenhagen) … After Copenhagen we may not expect … to agree on all elements. But we should have a broad agreement.”

Ban’s climate adviser made clear the secretary-general was planning for “post-Copenhagen” talks.

The international environmental community has said repeatedly that the United States needs to take the lead in forging a global climate agreement. But what would show U.S. leadership? Does a climate change bill have to come to a vote in the Senate? Does it just have to get out to committee? Does it need to land on the president’s desk before the Copenhagen meeting? Is it enough that legislation seems to be moving forward?

And an even more basic question: do you agree that the United States needs to lead on this? If so, would it make a difference if Obama attends the Copenhagen meeting? (He’s going to be in the neighborhood anyway to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize.)

Let us know what you think.

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Jason Reed (President Barack Obama looks at a model of a wind turbine at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 23, 2009)

REUTERS/Ray Stubblebine (University of Pittsburgh Panthers guard Antonio Graves fights a full-court press by Louisville Cardinals guard Andre McGee in Big East Tournament game in New York’s Madison Square Garden, March 8, 2006)

OK, so President Barack Obama’s lightning jaunt to Copenhagen last week was less than successful. Even with Oprah along, the Cheerleader-in-Chief couldn’t clinch the deal for Chicago to host the 2016 Olympics. It happens.

But now that he knows the way to Denmark, might the American president consider arguing the U.S. case at international climate meetings in Copenhagen in December? The White House said he might, if other heads of state showed up.

“Right now you’ve got a meeting that’s set up for a level not at the head of state level,” presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One last week. “If it got switched, we would certainly look at coming.”

Those climate talks might need a bit of a boost from the United States. White House climate czarina Carol Browner has said it’s unlikely Obama will be able to sign any U.S. legislation to curb climate change before the December meeting. And that sets up a familiar Catch-22: if there’s no U.S. law in place before Copenhagen climate talks, can the United States commit to anything? And if there IS a U.S. law in place, does the United States have the flexibility to maneuver in these international negotiations?

Climate negotiators already know the answer to the first part of that conundrum; they agreed to the Kyoto Protocol without backing from the U.S. Congress and came home to find no support for this 1997 carbon-capping deal. The United States is still the only industrialized nation not to ratify it.

After the Olympic disappointment — Chicago was the first city of the final four to be cut from the running; Rio won — is Obama’s presence something that U.S. climate negotiators actually want? The global environmental community cheered his election last year after eight years of the George W. Bush administration, but he may not be the rock star on climate that he was then.

And let’s just face it: arriving at climate change talks aboard a fuel hog like Air Force One could send a mixed message — unless the White House commits to offsetting the big plane’s emissions by investing in windmills or tree-planting in a friendly developing country.

So today’s question: would an Obama visit to the Copenhagen climate talks help or hurt the chances for a global deal? Let us know what you think.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom (demonstration against Barack Obama and other world leaders outside UN climate change talks in Bangkok, Oct 5, 2009)

REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton (Obama shakes U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon after addressing a U.N. summit on climate change, Sept 22, 2009)

A half-dozen fake letters, signed by people who don't seem to exist and who work at made-up jobs, are causing a bit of buzz in the environmental world -- mostly because the letters urged a Virginia congressman to vote against a cap-and-trade system to curb climate change.

The Sierra Club calls it "dirty tricks." The Union of Concerned Scientists points out that the PR firm said to be behind the fake-letter lobbying effort has a history of working against climate legislation. Rep. Ed Markey, who chairs a House committee on energy independence and global warming, said the committee will investigate. The Daily Progress newspaper in Charlottesville published a detailed story.

The congressman, Tom Perriello, voted for the cap-and-trade bill anyway. It passed by a slim margin and the Senate is expected to take up this matter in September.

The alleged forgeries came in letters made to look as if they were sent from two civil rights organizations: the local branch of the NAACP and Creciendo Juntos, a network for Charlottesville's Hispanic community -- neither of which oppose cap-and-trade. The Daily Progress tracked the letters to a Washington lobbying firm, Bonner & Associates. A partner at the Bonner firm apologized to Creciendo Juntos, but that probably won't be the end of the matter.

Jack Bonner, the president of Bonner & Associates, responded to a call for comment by e-mail: "We take our business very seriously. A temporary employee—lied to us—and contrary to our policies sent these letters. We—no one else—we on our own found this out. We immediately fired the person. We then, called those effected, explained what happened and apologized. In the case of the group in the story—we did it in person and by letter. This should not have happened—we had a bad employee—but through our internal checks, we found the problem, and on our own initiative took the step to notify the affected group."

Interesting thing about the Bonner firm: its acknowledged specialty is "grassroots" lobbying -- even though grassroots politics used to mean efforts that come from the ground up, from the rank-and-file members of a group. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which strongly favors the legislation that Bonner's clients presumably oppose, pointed reporters to a now-defunct Web site Bonner put up for the Western Fuels Association to oppose the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol back in the 1990s.

The association said the site generated 20,000 e-mails in opposition, including one from a mythical "George Jetson." The cartoon character complained that he would have to pay an extra $24,239,987.52 a year if Congress ratified the Kyoto pact. They didn't, and the United States is now the only industrialized country that hasn't joined the protocol.

Carl Pope, Sierra Club's executive director, praised Perriello for voting for the bill and for looking into the efforts of "the dirty, old business-as-usual players who tried to sway his vote." Pope also noted that other members of Congress may have received the same kind of forged letters, urging them to vote against the bill: "It is disturbing, to say the least, to think that some congresspeople may have, in good faith, voted thinking they were representing their communities when in fact they were not."

So the question is: did this lobbying effort, and others, sway the vote on the climate bill in the House? Will the same efforts come into play in September in the Senate? And is this an outrage, or just the way Washington works?

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol dome, February 24, 2009)

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)

WASHINGTON — Republican candidate John McCain touts his independence from President George W. Bush and his plan to fight global warming in a new TV ad.

Two liberal groups, meanwhile, are slamming McCain’s support for the Iraq war in an ad of their own.

McCain’s ad, highlighting an issue important to many independent voters, will run on local TV in 11 battleground states, as well as national cable channels like Fox News and CNN. An aide said the ad buy would be “substantial,” but declined to provide a figure.

“John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming,” the ad’s narrator says.

It’s the second national TV ad for McCain.

Some of those same viewers might see this ad by MoveOn.org and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. An actress portraying a mother holds up her child and asks McCain: “When you said you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”

The two groups say they plan to spend $540,000 to air the ad in three battleground states — Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin — and nationally on cable.

What about Obama? His campaign isn’t buying any national TV ads yet, though they were sitting on a much larger pile of cash at the end of April ($47 million vs. McCain’s $22 million, according to the latest FEC filings).