Colorado Politics: CU Chair; Environment vs. Jobs; Ozone Pollution; Oil & Gas Poll

It’s interesting that this piece of news didn’t garner much discussion: The University of Colorado is looking to hire an endowed chair in conservative thought and policy.  This is the result of something the Cons have perfected: play the refs and get the bonus.

CU is currently developing a $9 million program which will bring nationally recognized conservative scholars to teach on the Boulder campus. The program will allow CU to create an endowment for a visiting chair in conservative thought.

What exactly is the push for this crazy idea?  It all arises from the Republican penchant for self-victimization.  The whole world is out to get every singe Con-servative, according to them.  The push is coming from entities like the American Enterprise Institute and the Independence Institute who have conducted “studies” demonstrating how crazy liberal every public college in America is.  What doesn’t get related by the corporate media is AEI and II are funded exclusively by conservatives.  Their “studies” are slanted from the start to show what they want them to show.  Because they’re so well funded and organized, they can push things like hiring a “chair of con-servative thought”.  How then, you might ask, could a place like CU in “ultra-liberal” Boulder even consider such a thing?  This is what happens when a partisan like Bruce Benson is hired as University President.  I haven’t read any stories about how CU is suddenly swimming in cash due to Benson’s superior fundraising abilities.  But CU is suddenly getting a chair in conservative thought.  Gee, I wonder how that happened.  Can you imagine the screams from the Cons if CU were to hire a chair in progressive thought?

More topics below.

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Climate Change and Con-servative “Think Tanks”

As we move toward the upcoming Obama presidency, the most important issue to address will be averting catastrophic climate change.  Obama made clear his intentions to approach energy quite differently than the current “administration” has done.  Instead of corporate welfare giveaways to oil, gas and coal corporations, Obama will work to ensure renewables make up an increasing share of our national energy portfolio.

The same interests that pushed drilling and mining so hard during the Bush administration will not cease their efforts just became Obama has been elected President.  The fossil fuel industry has invested millions of dollars in think propaganda tanks.  Those tanks regularly produce position papers on the “shortcomings” of climate change and its effects.  Here are just a few samplings:

The Cato Institute continues to push its nonsensical opinion that the market will solve everything, just in case peak oil ever occurs, and global warming isn’t real.  Those who continue to blindly follow the free-market faith will increasingly find themselves in a world that has passed them by.  There is no market without government.  A melding of the two are necessary in the effort to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions problem.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is producing ads that deliberately seek to confuse people into thinking that reducing greenhouse gas emissions really means restricting energy access.  What?!?!  No one is proposing anything of the sort.  Climate realists are advocating shifting our fossil fuel-based energy to renewable energy.  There is more than enough renewable energy resources to completely make that shift and stop emitting greenhouse gases.  The costs of doing nothing, by the way, far outweigh anything we do to change our behavior.

Recently, American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Kenneth Green showed how lockstep his propaganda tank was with the remainder of the far-right.  How incapable are these folks from talking about the subject?  So removed that they make up their facts.  In this case, Mr. Green claimed global temperatures recently declined to the same value they were at in 1978.  Few things could be so demonstrably false.  Temperature anomalies have risen since the 1970s quite steadily.  In fact, despite the presence of the most recent La Nina, the past few years’ temperatures continue to make it into the top of the list.  Anything AEI or anyone else says after making things up can’t be seriously entertained in an energy policy discussion.

The time left to change our behavior is running out.  Right-wingers will do everything they can, including lie, distort and distract, to alter the course President-elect Obama and most of the rest of the world want to take.  The good news is there are a growing number of activists that recognize this and are ready to provide support for taking that course.  [big h/t to Climate Progress' Romm]