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Tomorrow night, Frontline will broadcast Heat, a result of some 18 months of work …

For years, big business–from oil and coal companies to electric utilities to car manufacturers–has resisted change to environmental policy and stifled the debate over climate change in America and around the globe.

The financial interests are strong. With $trillions at stake, any shock that $billions are in play to influence thinking (create confusion) and foster delay on action? Or, as per T. Boone Pickens, that $10s of millions would be spent seeking to foster investment in the wrng things.

Now, facing rising pressure from governments, green groups and investors alike, big business is reshaping its approach to the environment.

Greenwashing, anyone?

Manipulation of investment patterns?

With the election looming, FRONTLINE producer Martin Smith investigates what some businesses are doing to fend off new regulations and how others are repositioning themselves to prosper in a radically changed world.

Literally weeks, two weeks, before the election, Frontline has chosen to directly engage on the issue that should have been the centerpiece of the entire election campaign, rather than rarely queried or discussed, with just one pointed question during the debates.

Heat looks as if it will paint a picture that those of working on energy and climate change issues live with every day.

The report paints an ominous portrait. Despite increasing talk about “going green,” across the planet, environmental concerns are still taking a back seat to shorter-term economic interests.

In the face of the current financial crisis, expect the calls that we ‘can’t afford’ to deal with Global Warming … ‘let’s wait until the economic situation is better.’

In fact, as per a top-notch just released Florida climate change plan,

The Action Team completes its charge during a time of economic uncertainty. While it may be assumed by some readers that the current economic environment would hamper … progress toward a low?carbon economy, the Action Team firmly believes that current economic conditions precisely sharpen the “call to action” … Now is the time for strategic investment in … low-carbon energy infrastructure if we are to be successful in diversifying the … economy, creating new job opportunities, and positioning [the] “green tech” sector as an economic engine for growth.

Heat will evidently tackle
coal

The answer, the industry says, will be “clean coal“–a complex process by which the burnt-off carbon will be captured and buried in the earth’s crust. … there are serious doubts about whether “clean coal” will ever work. When pressed, utility CEO David Ratcliffe of Southern Company, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, concedes that “we haven’t even come close to defining what are the legal liabilities and what are the permitting requirements” for removing carbon from coal and burying it underground. Recently, several “clean coal” projects in the U.S. have stalled over these and other uncertainties. As Jeffrey Ball, environmental news editor at The Wall Street Journal, tells Smith, “There was huge, rosy optimism about it. What’s wrong is that reality is intruding.”

Damn that reality thing.

Much better to go gleefully along with fantasy-based policy-making.

And, back to that election thing. With two weeks before the election, the two candidates’ views will evidently be discussed.

On the campaign trail, both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama have announced their plans for a new energy policy that will cut carbon emissions. Optimistically, they suggest that the “greening” of American business heralds a new era of sleek technologies and opportunities for innovation. What they tend not to emphasize is cost and, on the part of every consumer, sacrifice.

What is interesting is that this might become a version of
McBlurring, attacking both Obama and McCain for not talking of “sacrifice”, thus potentially blurring the quite significant differences between the candidates on energy and global warming issues. Whether that is the case is something that I expect to find out Tuesday evening.