“All of the above” supporters claim that drilling off our precious coasts and in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge could lead to production of as much as 4 million barrels per day (nearly two decades from now). According to the Energy Information Administration, these claims are wildly exaggerated. However, even if they are taken at face value, the alternative of producing the same amount of oil using CO2-enhanced oil recovery would sequester 200 million tons of CO2 per year.

The “all of the above” plan also calls for producing 2.5 million barrels per day from oil shale. Again, there are many reasons to doubt the feasibility of this claim, but if it could be done it would not only devastate the heart of the Rocky Mountains, it would require so much energy to extract oil from the rock that CO2 emissions would be increased by another 300 million tons.

The “all of the above” plan also calls for repealing environmental standards for government fuel procurement to open the door to coal-to-liquids plants with double the carbon dioxide emissions from conventional petroleum. While the plan does not have a specific target for coal-to-liquids production, the coal industry has promoted a plan to mine an additional 1.3 billion tons of coal per year to produce 2.6 million barrels per day of liquid fuel as well as other energy sources. The result would be massive destruction in the coal fields and an increase in carbon dioxide emissions by a whopping 2.6 billion tons per year.

Responsible leaders make responsible choices. “All of the above” is nothing but a recipe for disaster.

Legislation to cap and reduce global warming pollution didn’t get across the goal line after obstructionist tactics blocked serious consideration of the Climate Security Act, as Frances Beinecke described yesterday. Nonetheless, the process of bringing the Climate Security Act to the U.S. Senate floor advanced the prospects for enacting the federal legislation we need to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

This isn’t obvious from the press coverage or from tuning in on C-SPAN. Most of the week that the Climate Security Act was supposed to be considered by the Senate was chewed up by procedural shenanigans, such as opponents requiring the entire bill to be read into the record (which took nine hours), and by bickering over who is responsible for $4 per gallon gas.

Behind the scenes, however, preparations for Senate floor consideration of the bill caused Senators and their staff to focus on the details of global warming legislation, many for the first time. This not only increased understanding of the legislation, it surfaced the key issues that must be ironed out before a federal climate bill can become law.

A roadmap to these issues can be found in an interesting letter authored by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) and signed by nine other Democrats, mostly from Midwestern states. The letter says that these Senators would require changes to the bill before they could support final passage, and highlights eight issues that need to be addressed, including impacts on the economy, technology funding, and the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. All but one of the Senators signing the letter voted to end the filibuster against the bill so that these issues could be considered in a structured amendment process. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) voted no, citing announcements of plant closings in the last week that could cost Ohio 10,000 jobs.

Equally important, Patriots must rally to demand decisive action to curb global warming pollution and build a new energy economy that will free us from dependence on oil, so that political leaders are motivated to resolve any outstanding issues, rather than use them as excuses for inaction. We are going to need a great ground game to beat the Oilers and get effective legislation across the goal line.