It's time to hold corporate polluters responsible. It's the job of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect our health and well-being by reducing global warming pollution.  Unfortunately, some industry-backed members of Congress are attempting to block the EPA from cutting these emissions.

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Last week, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy CEO Dick Kelly asked Congress to raise his taxes - specifically, his carbon taxes. In a statement that may sound the Paul Revere-like alarm for climate and energy policy, Kelly thinks the U.S. Senate chickened out of a climate bill. They backed off and "started calling it ‘cap and tax,'" Kelly told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Kelly is head of a multistate utility that has increasingly moved away from coal power and spent millions to retrofit some of its plants to cleaner-burning natural gas.  Kelly is joined in his attitude by Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers. Rogers has also stated that the "growing consensus in the electric utility industry" is to "act now." Rogers points to private capital that's waiting for a predictable regulatory landscape to set the stage for investment into clean energy.

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A report recently released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration concludes that carbon emissions from fossil fuels in the United States are expected to increase, highlighting the urgency for passing federal comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation this year that will limit and lower carbon pollution and put America on a path toward a clean energy economy. An excerpt from the report:

"Estimated U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels, which declined by 7.0 percent in 2009, are expected to increase by 3.2 percent and 1.6 percent in 2010 and 2011, respectively, as economic growth spurs higher energy consumption."

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A new Wall Street Journal-NBC Poll reveals overwhelming support for comprehensive clean energy legislation that includes carbon pollution reductions, even if that means increases in the price of energy.

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Using trees and other organic matter for energy is smart, right? It absorbs carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions as it grows, offsetting the gases emitted when burned--producing a net neutral impact on the environment plus electricity as a bonus. What's not to love? Turns out it's not that simple. A recent analysis by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences reveals just how complicated the answer really is. Tom Zeller Jr. posted a fairly comprehensible Q and A blog post with Manomet staff about the report in the New York Times.

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The National Research Council recently released three new reports that provide strong evidence for an immediate need for action to reduce emissions and begin adapting to impacts. The reports are part of a Congressionally-requested suite of five studies known as America's Climate Choices and are considered the organization's most comprehensive study of climate change to date. Two other reports will be released later this year.

"Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for - and in many cases is already affecting - a broad range of human and natural systems," says Advancing the Science of Climate Change, one of the new reports.

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 The American Power Act now under discussion in the U.S. Senate would establish--for the very first time--effective U.S. national limits on global warming pollution. While the reductions are not deep enough to protect our climate future, they would put our country on the right path to driving investments in clean energy jobs and ending our dependence on oil.

The emissions limits would start in 2013, with targets of 17 percent reductions below 2005 levels by 2020, and get tighter every year, reaching 83 percent reductions by 2050. Fresh Energy will be blogging regularly to comment on the provisions needed to ensure that we meet these limits.

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National discount retailer Target Corporation, headquartered in Minneapolis, and Richfield, MN-based Best Buy Corporation recently joined Business for Innovative Energy and Climate Policy (BICEP), a coalition of major American businesses pushing hard for the U.S. to enact comprehensive energy independence and climate legislation.

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Wondering how decision makers are doing on creating rules for a low carbon economy? In 2007, the Minnesota legislature passed the Next Generation Energy Act, including setting science-based goals for global warming pollution reductions in Minnesota. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the economy by at least 30 percent by 2025, and 80 percent by 2050. The state's Climate Change Advisory Group recommended actions needed to meet those reduction targets; in November, citizens will elect a new legislature and governor that will be responsible for enacting - or not enacting - the policy actions needed to unleash Minnesota's clean energy jobs potential. At the federal level, in 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an economy-wide limit on carbon pollution. Now in spring 2010, the U.S. Senate may be ready to act on a comprehensive energy and climate bill to address this urgent economic and environmental issue.

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President Obama has voiced that "climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time." In his State of the Union, he expressed the importance of passing a comprehensive clean energy bill in order to meet this challenge and help recover the American economy. In the recently released 2010 Economic Report of the President, it was reported that "a clean energy transformation is essential."

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