By analyzing data obtained from OpenSecrets in August, the Action Fund found that 193 House Members (all Republicans) and 39 Senators should be noted as “Dirty Air Villains” because of their votes against clean air protections. Of those 232 voting against clean air, 73 of them represent citizens living in some of the 25 most polluted metro areas in the U.S. On the flip side, 99 members of the House and 43 in the Senate are “Clean Air Heroes” for their support of clean air issues. Put simply, those members who consistently voted against clean air are designated as villains while those who voted for it are heroes.

As for why certain members of Congress would vote against clean air and other for it, just by looking at where some campaign donations come from it’s not too hard to difficult to deduct the reason.

Analysis of the data from OpenSecrets found that House members who have taken more than $100,000 in career campaign contributions from polluters are nearly twice as likely to vote against clean air laws than those who took less than $100,000. In the Senate, those members who took more than $500,000 in career campaign contributions from polluters were up to three times as likely to vote against clean air laws. And while everyone knows money talks in Washington, it’s good to know just how much influence it can have over something so important to our nation’s health as clean air.

“Our analysis reveals the full extent of Big Polluters’ reach into Congress, where some members, especially in the Tea party-influenced House, do not miss a single opportunity to side with the dirty industry, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves,” said Heather Taylor, director of the NRDC Action Fund.

To see if your representative in Congress is voting in favor of you breathing clean air or not, click on over to the “Who Votes Dirty?” report.

[via Huffington Post and NRDC]

Image Credit: Who Votes Dirty?

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Yet despite these politically correct statements, Ryan’s voting record and economic proposal, the so-called “Roadmap for America’s Future,” make clear that not only is he opposed to any government intervention to protect the environment and slow climate change, when given the opportunity to stimulate economic growth and preserve our natural resources simultaneously, he chooses neither.

As a seven term congressman and the architect of the Romney-endorsed “Roadmap,” Ryan has given voters plenty of insights into what a Romney/Ryan presidency would mean for our environment, energy plan and the Earth’s ever-rising temperature.

Ryan’s Voting Record

A staunch conservative and opponent of government regulation, it’s no surprise Ryan would support legislation like the June 2012 Domestic Energy and Jobs Act. The act makes access to federal lands for oil and gas extraction the default instead of the exception by, for example, automatically approving applications for drilling permits if the Secretary of the Interior hasn’t responded within 60 days, requiring that 25 percent of federal lands always be available for oil and gas leasing, and preventing organizations and individuals from protesting these leases. His votes against the 2009 Cap-and-Trade Bill and a July 2010 measure to impose more regulations on offshore drilling are similarly expected. But several votes during his time in the House show that Ryan does not just want deregulate the use of our natural resources, he is willing to do it at the expense of economic growth.

For example, Ryan voted against a comprehensive energy bill in September 2008 that, in addition to extending tax incentives for renewable energy firms, also lifted a 27-year ban on oil and gas drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf. Doing so would have stimulated the fossil fuel and renewable energy sectors, but most likely Ryan, like other Republicans, was resistant to the measure for not providing sufficient financial incentives for drilling.

He also cast nay votes against a September 2010 bill authorizing loans for homes and farms to update their energy efficiencies, which included a preference for veterans, and a 2008 bill extending energy efficiency tax credits to individuals and businesses. That Ryan would oppose cutting tax incentives for oil companies in order to help those working in renewables shows how his support for Americans and their businesses is reserved only for those exploiting the environment. Despite Mitt Romney’s promise that his government would “not be in the business of steering investment toward politically favored approaches,” this appears to be exactly what Paul Ryan has been doing in his career.

Ryan has also fought against the EPA’s authority to perform some of its most basic regulatory tasks, voting against its right to regulate greenhouse gases through support of the Energy Tax Prevention Act in 2011 as well as its ability to impose water quality standards by opposing the July 2011 Amending Clean Water Laws bill.

Ryan’s Economic Plan

Ryan’s economic proposal, considered by many pundits to be a bold attempt to reshape federal policy similarly, looks to severely limit the government’s role in protecting the environment while making it significantly easier and more profitable for Big Oil to exploit it. Like his voting record, his budget plan would speed up oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and back tax breaks for oil companies – worth as much as $45 billion over ten years – while calling for significantly cutting funding for the EPA. (In June, the Daily Beast pointed to the financial benefits the Ryans stand to gain from implementation of this plan. “The financial disclosure report Ryan filed with Congress last month and made public this week shows he and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan.”)

Despite Romney’s website’s claim that “government has a role to play in innovation in the energy industry,” he has chosen a running mate who advocates against government funding for clean energy research, development and commercialization. Fuming that, “The stimulus alone allocated $80 billion of taxpayers’ dollars specifically for politically favored renewable-energy interests,” Ryan vows to end “corporate-welfare funding directed to the president’s allied industries.” Of course, as the Daily Beast uncovered, Ryan fully supports industries that line his own pockets.

Josh Freed, director of centrist think tank, Third Way’s energy program said the proposal “protects existing regulated markets and guts innovation — particularly applied research and development that are parts of the valley of death for too many companies — while pulling the rug out from under clean energy deployment.”

Paul Ryan may claim that he does not believe environmental protection and economic growth are mutually exclusive, but his voting record and budget proposal tell a different story.  Ryan is not simply looking to boost the economy; he is looking to do it by further enslaving the U.S. to our addiction to oil.  He does not want to build our country’s workforce through innovation, but rather through enshrining our continued dependence on fossil fuels.

Image via Flickr

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The twist: Industry wants the bill to pass, while Chicagoans and clean energy advocates want a veto.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute. Confused? Here’s the explanation for this weird role reversal. The bill, which proposes something cleverly called the “Chicago Clean Energy project” was introduced by Leucadia National Corporation, a New York holding company that, through its subsidiaries, funds coal mining and oil drilling services.

The proposed project is a coal gasification plant to be built on the city’s far southeast side. That’s right, as if coal and natural gas weren’t bad enough on their own, Leucadia has proposed they build a $3 billion plant to burn one in order to make the other, all under the guise of creating clean energy.

The best part: a key element of the bill would allow Leucadia National Corporation to pass along 100 percent of the $3 billion plant construction costs to suburban Chicago and downstate ratepayers. What the bill (and Leucadia) fail to note is that they’ll also be passing on increased pollution to an already heavily contaminated area and helping continue dependence on coal, increasing the environmental effects of coal mining downstate.

Of course, supporters of the plant (most of whom seemed to have been trucked in by Leucadia’s PR company) use the same “jobs and cheap energy” argument that permeates the increasingly outdated fossil fuel industry. It leaves one to wonder: why, if coal and gas are so great, would the company go to such great lengths to brand the project as “clean energy,” a term people associate with solar and wind power? Perhaps it’s because, as The New York Times points out, “there is no assurance the projected savings will materialize, especially since natural gas is abundant nationwide and is currently cheap compared with other energy sources.”

Photo Credit: vxla/Flickr

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Americans for Prosperity (AFP), fueled with money from the Koch Brothers, are up in arms over a kite-flying rally sponsored by the Sierra Club to celebrate “New Jersey’s offshore wind potential” on Global Wind Day. “Bring your family, friends and kites,” they say. Will they stop at nothing? Apparently not, they’re actually offering free kites for radicals that don’t have their own.

Thank God that a stalwart forward-thinking organization like Americans for Prosperity is looking out for all that is good and decent in this country, exposing these windy fanatics for what they are: moms and dads flying kites with their kids. But don’t let that fool you, my friend, behind these scenes of happy families spending time together in the sun is an extremist agenda to harness clean energy and help build a sustainable future for all our children. A future free from the destabilizing effects of a world grappling for the diminishing and harder-to-reach supplies of fossil fuels. And who wants that? Not AFP or the Koch Brothers, that’s for sure. So they’re doing something about it.

AFP chartered six buses from across New Jersey to launch a “counter-protest” (apparently flying a kite to celebrate wind energy is a “protest” otherwise how could there be a counter-protest?) to bravely go “toe-to-toe” with these kite-flying kids in an effort to “combat their radical agenda and tell the truth about the costs of offshore wind.”

Next AFP will hold a rally to tell the truth about the costs of our continued reliance on fossil fuels. The cost in dollars, lives, and the possibility of a livable future for our kids. Not.

Main image credit: OceanCity.ShownbyPhotos.com

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