Romney's Dirty Energy Week: Big Oil Subsidies, Keystone and More

With every week of his campaign that goes by, Mitt Romney makes one thing clearer and clearer: he'll stop at nothing to embrace the reckless agenda of big polluters.

Big Oil and Big Coal executives are filling his campaign war chest, and he's tirelessly pushing their priorities and using their talking points. This week was no exception - almost every day offered another example of Romney doubling down on dirty energy priorities and turning his back on American jobs and the health of American families. Take a look at the calendar:

MONDAY: After Republicans and Democrats alike speak up in favor of extending the production tax credit to save and create 54,000 jobs in the wind industry, Romney's campaign announced he's opposing this American job-creating initiative. Instead of supporting American investment and jobs in a thriving sector of the global economy, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said that Romney "believes the government should get out of the business of picking winners and losers" when asked about the popular tax credits.

TUESDAY: Yet the very next day, Romney again picked some of the nation’s biggest polluters as his winners. Romney's top energy advisor and billionaire oilman Harold Hamm appeared before the Senate Finance Committee in support of the billions in tax giveaways oil companies like BP, Exxon, and Chevron benefit from every year. Hamm, the 78th wealthiest person in the world, asserted that his company could not operate without help from the federal government.

Not surprisingly, Romney himself supports giving big oil companies special tax breaks, having endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to dole out $40 billion in big oil subsidies over 10 years.Romney doesn't seem to have any problem picking winners and losers when the winners are his dirty-energy donors and the losers are the American people.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL....Hamm also made it clear that the Romney campaign just doesn't see the downside of dirty energy, ignoring history and reality by declaring "The environmental costs of fossil fuels are minimal."

WEDNESDAY: Romney, who has made it a habit to mock clean energy and American clean energy jobs, announces a six state bus tour. The problem? The states Romney is visiting have more than 400,000 Americans employed in clean energy jobs.

THURSDAY: During a campaign appearance in Ohio, Romney comments on the Keystone XL pipeline saying that - if elected- "I will build that pipeline if I have to do it myself." Romney's background in manual labor and construction remains hazy.

-- Trey Pollard, Deputy National Press Secretary

The Sierra Club Voter Education Fund seeks to educate voters about the records of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates by highlighting their extreme positions on public health and other issues of critical importance to the American people and encourage the public to find out more about the candidates and their positions on these issues.