by Matthew Hay Brown

Congress left Washington last week for the Fourth of July break, but gasoline prices take no holiday - and neither does the campaign by congressional Republican leaders to push for more domestic drilling.

House Republican Leader John A. Boehner is highlighting today's CNN/Opinion Research poll finding that 73 percent of Americans in favor of expanded offshore drilling for oil and natural gas in protected U.S. waters. The survey of 1,000 Americans from June 26 to 29 is the latest to show rising support among beleaguered consumers for increasing access to America's oil reserves.

"For decades, Democrats have locked up our nation's natural energy sources, and with $4.10 per gallon gasoline and $145 per barrel oil, American families and small businesses are literally paying the price. While the Democratic Majority refuses to schedule meaningful legislation to help reduce gasoline prices, the American people are saying 'enough is enough.' "

Democrats say such drilling would harm the environment while doing little to reduce prices at the pump. Forty-nine percent of poll respondents believe environmental protection should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth, while 44 percent said the government should focus on economic growth, even at the expense of the environment.

Carroll Muffett, deputy campaigns director at Greenpeace, called the choice "a false dichotomy."

"In truth, what is truly good for the environment is what is truly good for the economy, because a shift to better energy solutions would create jobs," Muffett told CNN.

By Josh Mitchell and wire reports

The Pentagon and the Environmental Protection Agency are mired in a dispute over the pace of environmental cleanups at Maryland's Fort Meade and Fort Detrick, where contamination from fuels and munitions for years seeped into soil and groundwater.

The Pentagon says that it has spent more than $120 million cleaning up Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County and Fort Detrick in Frederick County and that it plans to spend tens of millions more on the efforts.

But defense officials have refused to sign an EPA order setting a more aggressive timetable and establishing fines for missed deadlines.

Another 10 locations are in dispute at facilities in New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, Florida and Hawaii.

The dispute has intensified in recent days, with the EPA moving to add Fort Detrick to its Superfund list of the nation's most contaminated sites, a list that includes Fort Meade and Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County.

And late yesterday, Maryland Sens. Benjamin L. Cardin and Barbara A. Mikulski called for congressional hearings on the Defense Department's refusal to sign the order.

"DoD is not above the law and is not exempt from EPA regulations," Cardin said in a statement. "This issue affects not only Fort Meade - but the thousands of people living, working, praying and playing on base and in nearby communities."

Pentagon officials said that they are aggressively cleaning up the Maryland military posts and that the EPA's latest order exaggerates the extent of the problem.

"Our cleanup effort has not waned," said Tad Davis, a deputy assistant secretary of the Army, adding that there is no health risk to people on the posts.

"That order is based on the premise that there is an imminent and substantial endangerment to health and human safety, which we believe is completely false. That's the whole purpose of what we've been doing to date, is to make sure that the actions we've taken provide a safe environment to the soldiers, family members and civilians that work on Fort Meade."

Read the full story in the Baltimore Sun.

by Mark Silva

As leaders of the world's major economic powers prepare for a meeting in Japan next month, an adviser to President Bush says they have not reached agreement yet on a long-term plan for emissions of greenhouse gases.

Bush and the leaders of the rest of the Group of Eight nations will meet at Toyaka for their annual G-8 summit after the Fourth of July, and they also will meet with leaders of China, India, Brazil and other economic powers taking part in climate change talks which Bush had held promise of delivering an agreement on national goals by the end of his presidency.

Jim Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, offered a briefing for reporters last night about the status of ministerial-level talks leading up to the G-8 and major economies meetings. He was finishing the fourth round of such talks in South Korea.

"Our goal is to pull together the agenda for a meeting of the leaders of the world's major economies on -- to discuss energy security and climate change,'' he said. "This will be the first time the leaders have come together in that number and in that configuration, to have a candid exchange about some of the most difficult issues related to advancing the agenda on climate change.

"We've been talking about the general direction of the major economies in providing leadership in addressing greenhouse gas emissions, consistent with promotion and sustaining economic growth, and poverty eradication especially in the developing countries,'' he said, unable to divulge details. "These meetings are private, high-level, and we really are able to sort of press on some of the tougher issues that have been eluding the climate negotiators.''

What about any progress on the goal which many have of a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050?

"The long-term goal is a new issue,'' he said. "It was not a subject of discussions among any of the countries until it was put on the table by several countries in conjunction with the G8 meetings last year in Heiligendamm... and it was a pretty big deal for all the countries to agree that they be considering a global vision that they would share and they would try to translate that into a specific shared goal. ...

"There's no agreement on a long-term goal until the end of next year when all the parties come together in agreement,'' Connaughton said. "All I can say at this time is that we have advanced the discussion... The long-term goal is a very complex subject, as you look at the various scenarios for how you get from here to there.''

(Transocean drill ship, Discoverer Enterprise, the world's largest. Photo: Company handout/AFP/Getty Images)

by Frank James

One of most relevant news stories in the last 24 hours was in the New York Times. With all the talk about whether to drill for oil offshore or not, there's just this one not so little sticking point that many people probably didn't realize: There's aren't enough ocean-drilling ships to meet today's demand, let alone any signicant new demand.

As President Bush calls for repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply.

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

Houston-based Transocean is the largest provider of such ships to the oil industry and sees the logjam in orders lasting for years.

Transocean believes the deepwater market will continue to be constrained until at least 2012. Over three-quarters of the drill-ships currently under construction have already been contracted to oil companies eager to benefit from triple-digit oil prices, Mr. Long said.

by Frank James

House Democrats responded to President Bush's proposal to end the moratorium on drilling for oil offshore as well as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by telling the president to drop dead, although they used a lot more words to make the same point.

The Democrats' main argument was that the oil industry is already in possession of 68 million acres of oil leases and that Big Oil should drill away on those before they come around asking the federal government for any more land or ocean floor.

At a Capitol Hill press conference following Bush's White House Rose Garden appearance, Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts ridiculed the president as essentially a mouthpiece for the oil and gas industry.

Then he urged Bush to support legislation that would charge oil companies fees that would increase the longer the companies hold onto the leases without producing oil on them:

And you know, today is an historic day. The president has decided to take out some of the oldest ideas which the oil and gas industry have had for destroying the most pristine wilderness and shoreline that we have in the United States. After eight years, President Bush and Dick Cheney have turned the GOP into the "Gas and Oil Party." That's the legacy that they are going to leave.

And what we're going to do, Mr. (Rahm) Emanuel, Mr. (Nick) Rahall, Mr. (Maurice) Hinchey and the Democratic Party is going to do, is we're going to give them a chance in the White House to put their money where their mouth is. We're going to give them a chance to impose fees on the oil industry on the public lands where they do not drill, where the American people have already given them an opportunity to drill. And we will increase the fees as the years go by, because otherwise, they will have wound up warehousing where the oil is in the United States that the American people, the Democratic Party, everyone wants them to drill, but they're refusing to drill, and at the same time, they're insisting that we should go to places that should be preserved forever.

by Mark Silva

President Bush, attempting to put political pressure on the Democratic-run Congress in an election year plagued by soaring gasoline prices, today called for a lifting of federal bans against off-shore oil drilling and other measures to boost oil production.

"For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than the price of gasoline,'' the president said in a Rose Garden appearance this morning. "Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response.''

The president, who faces opposition in Congress for his proposals to drill off-shore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as well as to the leasing of Western federal lands for extraction of oil from shale, is attempting to leverage the rising price of gas - which has now surpassed $4 a gallon - in a bid to get Congress to budge before Election Day, if not sooner.

"There is no excuse for delay,'' Bush said, acknowledging that it will take years for any of his proposals to pump new oil into the American economy. "It's time to move swiftly.''

If Congress leaves for its July Fourth recess without action, the Republican president suggested, "they will have to explain why $4 a gallon gas is not enough of a reason to act.''

by Frank James

Has the U.S. passed the point where it can enjoy the luxury of restricting drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf and even the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

That is clearly the decision that's been made by Sen. John McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee, who now supports drilling off the U.S. coast, though he's still hanging on, for now, to his opposition to drilling in Alaska. Florida politicians and fellow Republicans like Gov. Charlie Crist and Sen. Mel Martinez have followed suit.

President Bush has long supported drilling in Alaska but is now calling for lifting the federal ban on off-shore drilling.

Democrats, at least to this point, are showing no such change of heart. Indeed, it will be harder for Democrats to make a similar shift because the party has an environmental constituency that would make such a move painful for any Democratic politician who dares suggest that such drilling bans be lifted.

Many Democrats and environmentalists argue the nation can't "drill it's way out of the problem," that any effort to increase the domestic production of oil just continues the nation's addition to that energy source by postponing the needed transition to alternative and renewable fuel sources and increased conservation.

by Mark Silva

Republicans are ready to open the spigots of offshore oil reserves long considered off-limits for environmental reasons, with President Bush planning to call on Congress today to lift its moratorium against drilling in near off-shore waters.

Bush plans to make a public appeal for his plan in the Rose Garden of the White House at 10:35 am EDT.

The call for a lifting of a decades-old federal moratorium - particularly in parts of the Gulf of Mexico close to Florida as well as off the Pacific coast of California -- is likely to face sharp resistance, however, with Democratic leaders in Congress opposing such a move, and environmentalists in both states adamantly against it. The moratorium covers most coastal waters.

The president insists that only by boosting domestic oil drilling and pursuing alternative sources of energy - including exploration in the off-limits Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - can the U.S. grow less reliant on foreign oil and offer any promise of easing gas prices. Critics say it will take too long for any new drilling to have an impact on rising prices, and in some places, such the off-limit Gulf waters near Florida's coastline estimated reserves are too small to have any real impact on supply.

For a quarter century, new drilling for oil and gas off most of the U.S. coastline has been banned in part to protect tourism and to avert the spoiling of beaches with oil spills. But gas prices soaring past $4 per gallon this summer have put new pressure on political leaders - including Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, who moved to ease the moratorium on off-shore drilling a day before Bush's push.

Bush effectively is renewing his own call to open U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas development. He plans to ask Congress today to lift the drilling ban in place since 1981 in more than 80 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf and to let states help to decide where to allow drilling.

"The president believes Congress shouldn't waste any more time," said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. Bush "will explicitly call on Congress to ... pass legislation lifting the congressional ban on safe, environmentally friendly offshore oil drilling."

by Mark Silva

First he was willing to "look" at a windfall oil profits tax.

Now he is against it.

First he was for a federal moratorium on off-shore oil-drilling.

Now he is for easing it.

Sen. John McCain, confronting the politics of rising gasoline prices and attempting to navigate his own way through the channels of Republican tax policy, today bashed Democrat Sen. Barack Obama for supporting a windfall profits tax and proposed that states be allowed to drill off-shore.

What was even more remarkable is how Florida's leading Republicans - in a state where opposition to oil-drilling has long been a litmus test for both parties - also voiced an openness to reconsideration.

"It is an evolving position for him,'' Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) said of his party's presidential candidate's stance on Gulf oil drilling, "as it is for me, as it is, I think, for a lot of Floridians who are now being tremendously upset about the high cost of gas.

Consider this report from CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer:

by Mark Silva

Political conventions are known for a certain conviviality which often spills into the local watering holes when all the floor speeches are finished. But this is taking beer-power to a whole new level:

Our colleagues at The Stew report that the official General Motors vehicles at the Democratic National Convention - the ones shuttling delegates, candidates and the rest from place to place - will not only be running on flex-fuel, but also will get their ethanol from a uniquely Coloradan source: The Molson Coors Brewing Company.

The good brewers at Golden report that "waste beer,'' the byproduct of a big brewery that bottles and cans only the best - now you see why they are so interested in promoting this relationship - can be recycled for use as ethanol. And that's the ethanol that will be running the DNC's officials vehicles in Denver this summer.

The Stew's Christopher Borrelli followed up with the RNC to see what they have planned for their convention fleet in Minneapolis-St. Paul. It turns out the Republicans, too, will use GM-donated hybrid vehicles, also running on flex-fuel. But they won't be consuming beer-anol. And they say so with a certain nose-turned-up.

So leave it to the Democrats to find an environmentally friendly use for "waste beer.'' And thanks to our friends at The Stew.

Wonder what time last call is at the gas station.

by Andrew Zajac

People from Washington go to the beach to get away from the city's hot air, both meteorological and political.

One of the preferred destinations is Ocean City, Maryland, where the mayor, Richard Meehan recently had some fun with the public's increased awareness of global warming.

Meehan filmed a promotional spot inviting tourists to book their vacations "before the ocean evaporates" -- something he says it's expected to do in a billion years.

Check out Meehan's 1950s civil defense-style pitch here and above.

by Frank James

You know those dazzling car rims called "spinners", the ones that spin even though the vehicle is at a dead stop? The U.S. Senate is the legislative version of that.

Wednesday, the Senate was in full spinners mode. The climate-change bill was under consideration but basically nothing got done because of a partisan fight (what else?) over federal judges.

Senate Republicans were outraged because Senate Democrats who control the chamber haven't moved to take up President Bush's judicial appointees with the same speed seen at the end of other presidencies, Republicans said.

So, the Republicans forced the poor Senate clerks to read an amendment to the bill that was the length of a Tolstoy novel.

The truth is, some Republicans don't like the climate-change bill to begin with since they think all the talk about global warming is a bunch of bunk or that it would wind up imposing vast new taxes on Americans. So any reason to slow down the bill was probably all right with them.

Anyway, the stated reason for the Senate Republicans throwing sand in the legislative gears was the fight over 15 judges.

by Mark Silva

With big votes coming up in Congress before the summer break, the Environmental Defense Action Fund isn't interested in giving anyone a break on the Climate Security Act.

"Some in Big Oil and coal would do anything to drive this bill into the ground,'' says the star of this ad running in the district of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and a proponent of action to avert global warming.

The ad is worth the watch.

Polar bear mother and her two cubs in Wapusk National Park on Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, Nov. 6, 2007. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press,Jonathan Hayward)

by Frank James

It's official. Polar bears are a federally designated endangered species.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne made the announcement this very hour that the Bush Administration is declaring the bears endangered because the melting Arctic ice pack, courtesy of global warming, threatens their habitat.

The administration was racing the clock to beat a federal court order which directed the Interior Department to decide by Thursday, as in tomorrow.

There are about 20,000 polar bears roaming the Arctic, living off seals and anything else they can hunt down.

The Bush Administration last year had tried declare the fairly awesome creature merely "threatened" which wouldn't have required any more action on its part. That caused an environmental group to sue, leading to today's decision.

Environmentalists that the decision will force the federal government to be more aggressive in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions since the Endangered Species Act requires affirmative steps to change the conditions that place a species on the list.

But while conceding that the bears are endangered, Kempthorne was clear the administration didn't want environmentalist to try and use the new designation to force the government's hand on greenhouse emissions.

by Frank James

Former Vice President Al Gore will be campaigning but not in the way many people have asked him to--at least not yet.

In an effort that on the surface appears to have little to do with presidential politics, Gore is the force behind a three-year, $300 million public-advocacy campaign to get Americans to become more involved in the fight against global warming.

Gore is supporting the fairly massive advertising campaign by the Alliance for Climate Protection whose first ad is at the top of this post.