"New-car shoppers appear to have already snapped up all the $1 billion that Congress appropriated for the 'cash for clunkers' program, leading the Transportation Department to tell auto dealers Thursday night to stop offering the rebates."

The World Bank is taking a renewed role in hydropower development, driven it part by estimates that the developing world has 1,333 GW of potential and unexploited hydro capacity. Some NGOs, however, don’t believe large scale hydropower is the answer for rural electrification and say the World Bank's number would be much lower if negative social and economic impacts were taken into consideration.

"State regulators violated the Alaska Constitution when they approved exploration permits for the proposed Pebble copper and gold mine without allowing the public to weigh in first, according to a civil lawsuit filed Wednesday."

"Californians’ eagerness to battle global warming seems to be cooling a bit: The latest survey on the state’s environmental attitudes, released on Wednesday, showed that 47 percent consider the threat of global warming very serious, a decline of seven percentage points from two years ago."

"The Obama administration is in talks with the Senate to craft a plan to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a top State Department official said yesterday."

"In a big win for oil companies, a federal appeals court said it will allow the U.S. Interior Department to move forward with oil and natural gas leasing plans for the Gulf of Mexico that were drawn up by the Bush administration."

"The biggest opportunity to improve the nation’s energy situation is a major investment program to make homes and businesses more efficient, according to a study released Wednesday."

"The White House says President Barack Obama plans to nominate an epidemiologist to head the government's workplace safety agency."

"Raw sewage and other pollution continued to foul American beaches in 2008. For the fourth year in a row, more than 20,000 beach closing days were reported in the USA, according to a report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, D.C."

"A microscopic pathogen and pesticides embedded in old honeycombs are two major contributors to the bee disease known as colony collapse disorder."

"The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3 billion energy spending bill that backs up President Barack Obama's promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada."

"A measure approved by the House would require the EPA to develop a system that would allow the public to be made aware of contamination within hours of sampling."

White roofs, a measure recently urged by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, are catching on both as a way of fighting global warming and a way to cool houses cheaply.

"Secretary General Ban ki-moon today announced plans to fly from Norway out over the Arctic Ocean to the Norwegian research vessel Lance near the North Pole on September 1. The planned excursion is part of his efforts to prod world leaders to take meaningful steps on global warming in treaty talks in Copenhagen in December."

The tobacco industry sees its future in recruitment of new smokers, some very young, in the Third World.