A climate bill cannot include drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). 

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) doesn’t seem to be sweating the criticism she's gotten from green groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters over her opposition to climate legislation.

Her first television ad since Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter announced he would challenge Lincoln in the primary promotes her opposition to cap and trade legislation, among other Democratic initiatives. The cap and trade bill would have raised energy costs on Arkansans, Lincoln says in the ad.

Our sister blog Ballot Box has posted it here.

Environmental advocates are pushing back against efforts by Sen. Jay Rockefeller and others to keep EPA from regulating greenhouse gases for two years.

Joe Mendelson, director of Global Policy at the National Wildlife Federation, says the West Virginia Democrat “has taken a wrong turn by introducing this attack on the Clean Air Act, one of our nation's most effective and proven laws in protecting our air quality and public health.”

“The senator’s bill would handcuff our lead environmental agency’s ability to tackle our biggest environmental problem and allow unlimited growth in global warming pollution,” Mendelson said in a statement.

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The House Appropriations Committee today voted to install Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) as the new chairman of the subcommittee that controls Interior Department and EPA spending.

Moran replaces Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) at the helm of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

The committee approved Dicks as chairman of the Defense Subcommittee to replace the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who passed away last month. The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and the full Democratic caucus must still approve the new chairmen.

The change will put Moran in an interesting spot as an easterner overseeing Interior’s budget, as we noted here.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Thursday threw her support behind Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-W.Va.) bill to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from industrial facilities for two years – a plan that’s less sweeping than a proposal Murkowski is pushing.

Rockefeller introduced his legislation today after confirming Tuesday that it was en route this week. It could present a tough political challenge to the White House if it picks up support from substantial numbers of Democrats from coal states and regions with heavy manufacturing bases, such as Ohio and Michigan.

Murkowski – who has 40 cosponsors for her competing plan – supports Rockefeller’s bill but said she’s keeping her own plan at the ready if it doesn’t advance.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) wants to know the extent to which Energy Department officials talked to supporters of clean energy subsidies before DoE published an unusual rebuttal to a study critical of green job programs.

He fired off a letter to a DoE official on Wednesday asking a series of pointed questions about discussions between government officials and groups like the American Wind Energy Association and the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank run by White House confidant John Podesta.

DoE was already on Sensenbrenner’s bad side for failing to provide what he believes was a timely or forthcoming response to a letter he sent back in September relating to the rebuttal, which was released by the department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. A recently released batch of emails showing possible collaboration between DoE and a group whose members stand to benefit from clean energy subsidies won't help.

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An electric utility trade group told senior House Democrats Wednesday that it does not doubt global warming science, despite backing a Senate resolution to overturn EPA's finding that greenhouse gases threaten humans.

The American Public Power Association (APPA) has come under fire from Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) over its support for Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) proposal to overturn EPA's "endangerment finding."

But in a letter to the lawmakers, the group said it's backing the resolution because EPA's finding is the legal underpinning for planned rules to limit emissions from power plants and other sources.

Four senators are pushing legislation that would ensure long-term tax credits for the fledgling offshore wind industry.

Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) introduced a bill Wednesday to extend production and investment tax credits for coastal projects until 2020.

There are currently no U.S. offshore wind farms, but several are at various stages of the planning process.

Critics of teaching evolution to students are “gaining ground” in some states by tying the issue to climate change, reports the New York Times.

“The linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy: courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general,” the Times account notes.

“Yet they are also capitalizing on rising public resistance in some quarters to accepting the science of global warming, particularly among political conservatives who oppose efforts to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases,” it adds.