The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill was likely the last hope for major climate-change legislation for a number of years. With Obama on the defensive and unwilling to spend political capital on the issue, and with Congress certainly getting more Republican in November, a great window of opportunity has been missed.

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

Climate legislation is returning to the Senate’s docket, and leaders on Capitol Hill are hoping that this version, a compromise bill spearheaded by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), can pass without getting caught in the morass of money and politics that has delayed action so far.

A long, long time ago…

By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger

Today, Representative Ed Markey pushed this story back to the forefront with a Huffington Post piece. After setting the record straight on Romney’s falsehood and explaining the urgency of clean energy legislation, Markey finishes strong:

So the next time you hear Mitt Romney or other opponents of clean energy and climate legislation railing about the costs of action, you should multiply your suspicion by whatever number they are attempting to sell. Odds are, it is far from even-handed.

While this is a solid piece, and Representative Markey makes his case well, he barely mentions the other Republican politicians who have repeated this lie. I understand the value of pegging this on a potential 2012 Presidential candidate, but there are over a dozen current elected officials in the Republican party who have repeated this lie as well.

Since I last updated the count a few weeks ago, eight additional Republican politicians and party organizations have repeated the lie, bringing the total to 20.

By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger

Yesterday, Senators Kerry and Boxer introduced the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA). You can view a section-by-section summary and the full text of the legislation here.

Many bloggers have already weighed in with their initial reactions. What follows is a round-up of these first impressions, as well as a few thoughts of my own.

On Monday, I wrote about the eight Republican politicians (note: since then Rep. Pete Sessions joined the party) who had already begun parroting this false talking point. I followed up with many of these Republican politicians, requesting clarification on their factually incorrect statements. The most interesting response — by far — came by way of an series of increasingly heated emails between myself and Murkowski staffer Robert Dillon. Mr. Dillon is the Republican Communications Director for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

I noted yesterday that Mitt Romney had picked up on the $1,761 cap and trade lie over the weekend, telling a starstruck audience at the hyper-conservative value voters summit that cap and trade legislation would “would cost the average American family $1,761 a year.”

Evidence has now surfaced that Romney told the $1,761 lie at least once before the summit began, in this interview with Human Events on Friday the 18th. Note the difficultly with which Romney struggles to explain not only how this is supposedly a 15% tax, but also the exact purpose of cap and trade legislation.

I mentioned last week that both CBS and Politico were forced to issue corrections on pieces they published citing inflated cost-estimates of a version of climate legislation that was never considered by Congress.

Despite immediate and forceful pushback from the Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office and environmental groups, solid reporting by the Wonk Room and the Washington Post, and thorough debunkings by Media Matters and Politifact, several leading GOP elected officials have begun citing the highly misleading figure.

By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger