Governor Sarah Palin

Crude oil futures held steady around $100 waiting for the Senate to tackle the financial bailout bill, which could ease economic pain, Bloomberg reports. But the bigger fear heading into winter are low inventory levels. And that is something the credit crunch is not helping—quite the opposite, the WSJ reports (sub reqd.).

One bailout package is greenlighted—President Bush signed Detroit’s $25 billion lifeline, the WSJ reports (sub reqd.), but the big question now is whether the funds to retool auto factories will come in time to save the Big Three.

The end of the ban on offshore drilling isn’t a bad thing, says the WaPo editorial page: It was “untenable” for the U.S. to use so much oil without looking for its own at home. Sen. Barack Obama clarifies that energy policy won’t be thrown under the bus despite the financial woes, at Grist. And Newsweek looks at the latest back-and-forth in the campaign battle over clean coal–John McCain’s attack ads are misleading.

I used Global Warming to create new taxes, and now I want more money for the big freeze. Ha ha!

Patrick met with members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation to discuss energy assistance and other issues. He also testified before a House panel on the need for heating aid in cold-weather states.

"What's at stake is the real possibility that many citizens in the colder regions of this country will be at risk of freezing to death without federal help," the governor told a hearing of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Patrick said uncertainty about how cold this winter will be makes it harder to predict how much fuel aid will be needed.

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Did you know that a 10 state coalition is holding our nation's first ever carbon allowance auction at 9:00 AM EDT today?  Or that the same states will be imposing a mandatory cap-and-trade program on their electric plants beginning next month?  This may surprise those who assumed that June's tabling of the national Lieberman-Warner bill coupled with already runaway energy prices and growing overall economic anxiety signaled a reprieve from this stealth tax and power grab scheme -- at least for the remainder of the year.

Nonetheless, the New York-based Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative launches today, striving to freeze CO2 emissions through 2014 and then gradually reduce them to 10 percent below current levels by 2018. How?  By setting steadily declining annual caps on the tonnage of carbon a utility may legally exhaust into the atmosphere and forcing those that cannot comply to "purchase" allowances at auction from those that can.  Auction proceeds will then, at least in theory, be invested in low-carbon energy solutions such as solar and wind, which would gradually replace fossil-based generators. 

ABC News' Matthew Jaffe Reports: A conflict over clean coal is brewing on the campaign trail after video surfaced of Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., telling an anti-pollution campaigner in Ohio that he does not support coal plants in America.

Approached following a rally in Maumee, Ohio, last Tuesday, Biden was asked by a campaigner for 1Sky, an organization against the development of new coal-fired power plants, why he supports clean coal at a time when “wind and solar are flourishing here in Ohio.”

The animated, close-talking Biden then put his hands on the woman’s shoulders and launched into a passionate, finger-wagging argument that he and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., do not support clean coal.

“We're not supporting clean coal,” Biden said. “Guess what? China is building two every week, two dirty coal plants. And it's polluting the United States, it's causing people to die.”

Britain's tragically swamped farmland is often a self-inflicted woe, claim farmers. Global warming not to blame.

Years of neglected draining by the Government's Environment Agency (EA) have resulted in blocked watercourses causing floodwater to back up and take longer to reach the sea.

This is a side-effect of the fashion embraced by Government agencies and championed by conservation charities for minimal land management or active reversion to pre-modern farming landscapes.