Logo from America's Power website

Logo from America's Power Web site

After a ride on the light rail system that puts Detroit and Grand Rapids to shame, I stepped off the car originating in the suburbs into the festive bedlam downtown Denver. Imagine a Tigers game crowd and an Ann Arbor Art Fair crowd all trying to get to the stadium and buy some art on a stick before the first inning.

On the circus-like street I noticed a camera crew focusing their lens on a clean-cut young man with a big Top 40 radio voice dressed in a “clean coal” golf shirt.

This Ryan Seacrest wannabe making a buck anyway he can is on the payroll of a consortium of big coal companies, who have a propaganda Web site and PR campaign called americaspower.org.

Undoubtedly you’ve seen its TV ads.

Especially if you ever surfed in the direction of CNN during the primary coverage of last winter and this spring: the ones promoting clean coal as the answer to the energy crisis, even though it doesn’t exist and might never. Even though coal plants emit a third of the world’s greenhouse gases. Even though a shift to true clean energy like wind and solar and renewable biodiesel is necessary and ultimately inevitable for our survival as a species on earth.

While writing this report, I saw two “clean coal” ads on CNN.

Coal companies are huge sponsors of Barack Obama and of the Democratic National Convention. Lots of outdoor advertising here, and in Boulder, according to a kid I just spoke with from musicfordemocracy.org who got into town three days ago.

Michigan Messenger and the kid weren’t the only ones a little cockeyed about the coal industry’s ubiquitous presence here and their influence with the Democrats.

DailyKos editors met this morning with representatives of the coal industry, and the coal Web site even put up an item about it. A risky and/or cocky move. Or were they handing out money and know something we don’t. Ha ha. Sort of.

Further, what do they already know about Michelle Obama’s speech tonight? Check this out, from the clean coal Web site:

On this very stage later tonight, we’ll hear from Michelle Obama.

As she has crossed America on the campaign trail, I’m sure that she has met lots of families who are struggling to pay higher energy costs. It will be interesting to see if she includes any of the stories of those folks in her speech tonight.

Over the next few days, many big names will take the podium.

What will they say about energy policy? Will they talk about how America’s growing energy demands plays a part in how we address the climate change issue? Will they talk about how to ensure a reliable, affordable energy supply?

We hope so!

CNN is being piped into the “Big Tent” — a progressive netroots headquarters down the street from the convention center, which is where I’m writing this.

This morning I attended a talk here called “Now or Never — Climate Solutions” moderated by a man well-read in my household, Lester Brown.

This is not the story that I will try to save the world with. I will not try to scare you into a depression with statistics — and there are endless amounts of those — about disappearing water, disappearing ozone, disappearing species, the dying of the oceans and what will eventually be the collapse of human society if we don’t act now — not after coal companies have had their final windfall — but right now, to cut our carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2020.

But what I will do now is leave you with a quote from one of the panelists, David Orr, a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College in Ohio.

There was only time for one question when the session was done.

An audience member asked what had changed in American politics since the bipartisan efforts in the late ’60s and early ’70s to protect the environment such as the Clean Air Act and the Nixon-signed Endangered Species Act currently under attack by George Bush. Why are things so different now and why have those regulations all been eroded over time?

Orr said, “The two biggest reasons why are money in politics and media consolidation.”

So here we are. At the Democratic National Convention, and the coal industry has financed it. And the corporate cable news network covering the event is in bed with the same dirty money.

And so it is.