We are hooked on burning dirty fossil fuels like cavemen, and no matter how many times we hit rock bottom — deadly coal mining accidents, the uncontrolled oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and American soldiers risking their lives overseas — we won’t embrace the safer, smarter, cleaner path of renewable energy.

Change shouldn’t be this hard.

That is the message behind a new ad campaign launched by NRDC’s Action Fund this week. The ad urges senators from both sides of the aisle to put America back in control of our energy future.

Americans want change: a recent poll found that seven in ten Americans think clean energy legislation must be fast-tracked in the wake of the catastrophic Gulf oil spill.

Yet our elected officials haven’t delivered the clean energy that voters want. Too many lawmakers fear that if they vote for a clean energy future, they will fall prey to populist mood swings come November. But they are mistaken and here is why:

1. Support for clean energy and climate action is not a flash in the pan. President Obama made clean energy one of the three planks of his platform. His energy policies have been vetted, reviewed and fleshed out through the longest presidential campaign in history and into his administration.

And all the while, clean energy has remained popular with American voters. So much so that Tea Party candidates now talk about it themselves. Most of their claims are bogus, but it is revealing that they haven’t left clean energy on the cutting room floor.

2. Tea Party candidates are like the streaker at a football game. They get a lot of attention for their bold, rebellious positions, but after you get a closer look, you want to turn your head away. Their catchphrases simply don’t hold up to scrutiny, never mind a 24-hour news cycle.

Rand Paul sounded good in his 30-second campaign spots, for instance, but just days after he won the primary, he started saying business owners should be allowed to kick people of color out of their establishments. After seeing Paul on The Rachel Maddow Show or Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric, viewers start to realize that Tea Party slogans don’t always make for sound governing policy.

3. The Tea Party is today’s rebranding of conservative Republican voters. It baffles me that people talk about the Tea Party as if it were something new, when in fact it is just the latest packaging of the radical right.
We have seen this before and we know how it ends: people who identify with the radical group of the day are people who already vote and who will continue to vote for the most conservative candidate. This is not a new batch of voters up for grabs, and therefore, there is no point in pandering to them.

4. Angry voters may scream the loudest, but that doesn’t make them powerful. It is human nature to pay attention to the loudest person in the room, but that doesn’t mean you have to like them. The official Tea Party page on Facebook has only 200,000 fans. The "Can this poodle wearing a tinfoil hat get more fans than Glenn Beck" Facebook page has 280,453 fans.

Right now, every politico is trying to figure out how to win in November, and some are getting distracted by the noise of the radical right. The truth is that these people have been angry for a long time and they will be angry long after lawmakers leave Congress. It is how they live their lives. And while they have extra visibility right now, it looks like most elections will be decided on issues particular to each state, not Tea Party anger.

5. People will vote for lawmakers who create jobs, growth and security. In the end, winning elections and governing the nation is about making people’s lives better. Passing clean energy and climate legislation will do that. It could generate nearly 2 million jobs, put America at the forefront of the global clean energy marketplace, strengthen national security and reduce dangerous pollution.

Now is not the time to be bullied. It is the time for lawmakers to stand up and put America on a path to a cleaner, better future. This kind of change isn’t hard at all.

With the health care debate largely over, now is the time to turn the heat up on our Senators to pass a strong clean energy and climate change bill.

Many lawmakers are declaring their support. And thousands of businesses have already signed up to support passing a bill. But we still need a handful of key undeclared senators to get on the bandwagon in support of passing a bill.

In the coming weeks, I am going to blog about these lawmakers so we can encourage them to support legislation that will put Americans to work in good jobs to strengthen our economy, slash dangerous pollution, and strengthen our national security.

The first one in the hot seat is the new Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown.

Granted, freshly-minted Senator Brown has a lot on his plate right now. He is still trying to find his way around the tunnels from the Russell Senate Office Building to the Capitol. But even as he gets up to speed on all manner of Senate business, Senator Brown has a very important choice to make: Will he join Senator Lindsey Graham and other Republican lawmakers to become a real leader for climate action, or will he buy into the cynicism and complacency that currently paralyzes so much party politics nowadays?

It just depends which Scott Brown comes to the Senate floor to vote.

You see, before the Tea Party threw their support behind him, Senator Brown was dubbed a liberal Republican by nonpartisan fivethirtyeight.com.

He used to belong to Republicans for Environmental Protection. So-called Green Elephants include everyone from former Representative Sherwood Boehlert, whom I am proud to say is on the NRDC Action Fund’s board of trustees, to members of local garden clubs.

Brown reflected those values in 2008 when he voted for Massachusetts to join a regional effort to reduce global warming pollution. At the time he said, "Reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Massachusetts has long been a priority of mine. Passing this legislation is an important step…towards improving our environment."

But in recent comments made during his campaign, Senator Brown was hedging his bets. When asked if he thought global warming was a big "fraud," Brown said:

"It’s interesting. I think the globe is always heating and cooling….I just want to make sure if in fact…the earth is heating up, that we have accurate information, and it’s unbiased by scientists with no agenda. Once that’s done, then I think we can really move forward with a good plan."

I’ll give Senator Brown the benefit of the doubt and consider that he is genuinely concerned about the science of global warming and wasn’t just back-pedaling to get along with the Republican leadership.

In that case, I hope he and his staffers take the time to read the letter signed last week by 2,000 scientists that urged Congress to pass a climate bill. Or maybe they will read the statement issued by 19 scientists concluding that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was correct about its Amazon predictions and that the only flaw in the entire 2,880-page report involved Himalayan glaciers. Or maybe they will read the report that was originally commissioned by President George H. W. Bush and released last June in which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Pentagon all agreed that human-induced global warming was "unequivocal."

Right now, Senator Brown isn’t saying much of anything about climate change, but I hope that will change.

I hope the real Scott Brown will stand up–the one who has a sound record on climate change and other environmental issues.

That is the Scott Brown who could become a leader in the bipartisan effort to generate clean energy and create American jobs. That is the Scott Brown who would represent Massachusetts well.

Heather Taylor-Miesle is the director of the NRDC Action Fund. Become a fan on Facebook or Twitter.

The Climate Bullies

When I was in 6th grade, I fell victim to the school bully. I was new to the school and became an easy target for an 8th grade girl with a bad attitude. She picked on me endlessly while other kids stood by and watched. I was humiliated, scared and completely at a loss about what I should do.

Thankfully I had eventually made some decent friends and one day when the resident bully showed up one of them stepped in and told her to stop. Others quickly backed her up; the bully went away and never bothered me again.

My experience with bullying is far from unique. Bullies get away with their behavior over and over again….In our schools, in our offices and even in Congress.

What gives bullies their power? It certainly isn’t the victim. And it isn’t even the bully. Instead, those with the most power, the ones who can usually make the bullying stop, are the people on the sidelines.

I have been thinking about this phenomenon as I watch the climate debate in the Senate. I see the climate bill itself (and those of us who are pushing for it) in the role of victim; the fossil fuel industry and the Tea Party are the bullies. The bystanders in this situation are the Senators who aren’t doing much of anything on climate either way. It isn’t hard to spot them, but it has been hard to get them to stand up.

In the face of a crisis like global warming, we don’t need quiet witnesses. We need bold heroes to step in, stop the fight, and solve the problem. We need lawmakers to say that now is the time to confront the crisis and jumpstart America’s economy.

It all starts with standing up to the bullies.

Consider the Tea Party. These are the bullies who spun health care reform – something that is still supported by the majority of Americans – into a sordid deal. Now they are going after climate legislation.

At the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last week, global warming skeptic Steve Milloy criticized Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for working with Democratic Senator John Kerry (D-MA) on a bipartisan climate bill. Then he went so far as to call supporters of strong climate legislation "bad people" with questionable sanity and morals.

And then there are the fossil fuel industries. They bully with money: oil and gas companies spent at least $154 million on lobbying in 2009. That doesn’t even take into account their political donations.

Intimidation and deep pockets are powerful forces, but I do hope those senators who are standing by on climate — many of whom intend to ultimately support a bill — realize that this is an opportunity to take a bold stand, to support strong legislation that represents our best tool for generating 2 million new jobs and making America more secure.

Voters love problem solvers; passing clean energy and climate legislation would give senators a chance to fix our economy, clean up our environment, and strengthen our national security.

For instance, Americans spent a record $450 billion on imported oil in 2008. That’s $1,400 for every man, woman, and child in this country sent to places like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria. Passing a clean energy and climate bill would keep a good chunk of that money invested in America.

These are the kind of solutions Americans will vote for right now.

I hope the senators who have been on the sidelines will step in on behalf of all Americans so the bullies don’t have the power anymore. If they continue to sit and do nothing, they will in their own way be as much to blame as the deniers, because both of them are impeding progress. The deniers do it noisily with malice, the bystanders do it quietly and often with good intentions, but both are doing a disservice to our nation.

No one said solving the biggest crisis of our time would be easy, but someone needs to stand up to the bullies.