Author: Sean Pool

Weeks after BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Politico reported that during the last 20 years, the company and its employees gave more money to President Obama than any other federal political candidate.

On Fox News Sunday, Sarah Palin tried to make it into a wider narrative. “I don’t know why the question isn’t asked by the mainstream media and by others if there’s any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration,” she said.  Think Progress has the story on this inane charge in this repost (which is followed by a Media Matters excerpt).

Palin wondered if there is “any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to … grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico.”  Mainstream media outlet the Wall Street Journal did ask and it appears the answer doesn’t give cover to Palin’s charges:

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Republicans receive far more campaign money from the oil and gas industry than do Democrats.

So far in 2010, the oil and gas industries have contributed $12.8 million to all candidates, with 71% of that money going to Republicans. During the 2008 election cycle, 77% of the industry’s $35.6 million in contributions went to Republicans, and in the 2008 presidential contest, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain received more than twice as much money from the oil and gas industries as Obama: McCain collected $2.4 million; Obama, $898,000.

Moreover, as Time’s Michael Scherer noted, the Politico article on BP’s donations “fails to provide the context readers need” considering Obama ran for president, and the numbers aren’t adjusted for “campaign inflation.” Even right-wing blogger Ed Morrissey warned the GOP not to “overpay their hand on this issue.”

This was a Think Progress repost.  Media Matters further notes:

Like clockwork, media outlets seized on Palin’s accusation and cited Center for Responsive Politics’ calculation that Obama had received $71,051 in BP-linked contributions for his presidential campaign. Only problem is, contrary to Palin’s and the media’s suggestions, all of that money came from BP employees, not BP the company. A spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics confirmed Monday that “the $71,051 that Obama received during the 2008 election cycle was entirely from BP employees.” The CRP spokesman also stated that “Obama did not accept contributions from political action committees, so none of this money is from BP’s PAC. And corporations themselves are prohibited from donating directly to candidates from their corporate treasuries.”

Why is this an important distinction? Because Obama raised far more money than any other candidate ever has, therefore, it is completely unsurprising that Obama also received the most amount of money from BP employees. Moreover, BP-linked contributions to Obama’s campaign are a drop in the bucket when compared to Obama’s total campaign haul. In addition to the $71,051 Obama received from BP-linked contributors in 2008, Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign raised $6,000 from BP-linked sources, bringing Obama’s total BP-related campaign contributions to 77,051. This represents less than .01 percent of the nearly $800 million that Obama raised for his campaigns.

Related Post:

• Gingrich says Sarah “Four Pinocchios” Palin is a conservative leader on energy issues
• Palin urges America to stay addicted to oil

CAP’s Andrew Light and Sean Pool have put together a simple update on the status of the Copenhagen Accord, and how close it brings us to stabilizing global temperature rise at 2 degrees Celsius.  Click the map above to go to their interactive tool. I repost their comments here.

The agreement that emerged from December’s U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen continues to attract support from a growing number of nations despite naysayers who still insist that the meeting ended in failure. A recent Reuters article shows that there are now 110 countries on board, including the world’s major carbon emitters, representing more than 80 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

These countries’ collective commitments will not yet achieve the accord’s stated goal of holding temperature rise over pre-industrial levels at 2 degrees Celsius, but achieving these commitments could hold us to a 3-degree increase rather than the 4.8 degree rise we would see by 2100 under a business as usual scenario. These commitments also represent a vital first step toward achieving the 2-degree goal.

These results are consistent with CAP’s previously published analysis following the first deadline for submissions to the accord on January 31. Modeling from Project Catalyst showed at that point that the largest emitters had increased their ambitions for reducing carbon pollution from the period prior to the December Copenhagen climate summit to their January submissions to the Copenhagen Accord. Developed countries increased their reductions from 3.6 to 4.9 gigatons annually by 2020 and developing countries boosted theirs from 8.7 to 8.9 gigatons by 2020. More recent numbers from Project Catalyst project these commitments to the accord at 5.0 and 9.2 gigatons respectively for developed and developing countries.

These commitments bring us a bit less than 5 gigatons shy of the reductions needed to stabilize temperature increase at 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels assuming that countries succeed in meeting the high end of the goals they have set for themselves and also that commitments tied to other countries’ comparable efforts go forward.

So how do we achieve the remaining reductions needed to achieve climate safety? The first step in this process is to make the Copenhagen accord binding in order to lock in the reduction commitments, and the second is to increase the ambition of those parties that have signed onto the accord.

On the first issue, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon previously pledged to shift the Copenhagen Accord from a political agreement to a legally binding agreement by the next U.N. climate summit in Cancun, Mexico this December. U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern has agreed that we should be moving toward a legal agreement this year. Most participants in the process believe that the 2010 meeting in Cancun should at least include a discussion of how to make the accord legally binding by the 2011 meeting in South Africa if it cannot be made legally binding before then.

On the second issue, the easiest way to increase the ambitions of countries signing onto the accord is to fix one of the biggest holes in the agreement: the lack of any emission reduction targets for those parties signing on. This gap is in sharp contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, which did include such targets. Reduction targets for developed and developing countries, starting with the 17 to 20 largest emitters responsible for almost 80 percent of emissions globally, should be the first priority. This would bring us closer to the overall temperature goal of the accord than simply increasing the number of parties signing onto it since the countries that have not yet made commitments collectively represent a tiny fraction of global emissions.

Any emission reduction targets added to the Copenhagen Accord will have to conform to the 2 degree Celsius temperature target that is part of the accord. As such, additional emission targets would need to aim to close the 5-gigaton gap from the current Copenhagen pledges if this figure does, in fact, represent the reductions needed to achieve the 2 degree Celsius target for climate safety. If it turns out that we need to achieve greater additional reductions than 5 gigatons, then we should do so.

The United States can make the needed reductions, but it would be a big help if Congress were to pass legislation like the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which would achieve overall emissions reductions greater than the current U.S. pledge of 17 percent cuts below 2005 levels by 2020. The direct set aside in ACES for international forestry programs—which is separate from the allowable forestry offsets in the bill—could alone achieve 750 megatons of reductions annually by 2020. But if emissions reduction programs like this are eliminated in a Senate bill, then these additional reductions would be difficult to achieve, even if the bill is ultimately successful. Those interested in a global agreement on achieving climate safety will therefore have to work hard to make sure that Senate legislation is structured so that it generates revenue to pay for such programs.

One good outcome of Copenhagen is that the accord is still a work in progress. Our calculations of what can be achieved by current pledges under the accord are not final. They can still be improved. It doesn’t make sense to worry that the commitments made so far put us on a disastrous pathway to a world 3, 4, or more degrees warmer. That would only be a legitimate worry if the Copenhagen Accord had been finalized last December as a legally binding document at the current level of commitments. Instead, we still have time to use the accord to get us to a safer world.

Andrew Light is a Senior Fellow and Sean Pool is a Special Assistant for the Energy Policy Team at the Center for American Progress.

Related Post:

• Pile on the Copenhagen Accord! 110 countries now committed to contributing to 2°C target