Economy & Business

"Australia's lower house of parliament on Monday voted to scrap the country's controversial carbon tax, setting up a final showdown in the Senate as early as Tuesday to decide the scheme's fate."

"A proposal by House appropriators to carve out $442 million of the Interior Department and U.S. EPA budgets to pay for rural county services has raised concerns among lawmakers of both parties that it could sap money from other important agency functions, including land conservation, wildfire prevention and clean water."

"Developers citing new scientific evidence are pressing to end federal protections for the California gnatcatcher, whose status as a threatened species has barred development in many areas of prime Southern California coastal real estate for two decades."

"Food companies have spent billions of dollars to cover up the link between sugar consumption and health problems. That's the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)."

"One year after President Barack Obama rolled out his climate change action plan, the administration is putting fresh emphasis on its environmental agenda."

"White House changes to proposed rules for tobacco products significantly weakened language detailing health risks from cigars and deleted restrictions that might have prevented online sales of e-cigarettes, published documents show."

"Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, a hedge-fund billionaire and major Democratic donor, are linking arms Tuesday to release a report, Risky Business, that argues U.S. companies should treat climate change as any other business threat."

"In 1957, author John Graves decided to take a canoe trip down the upper Brazos River before a series of dams would turn his favorite stretch of river into a string of lakes. Graves feared that his beloved river would be squeezed dry if five proposed flood-control dams were built in the upper Brazos."

"It might be that the U.S. environmentalists’ long campaign against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is about to backfire. Canadian pipeline operators are poised to implement an all-Canadian Plan B network of pipelines in place of the ill-fated Keystone XL that was to run the length of the U.S. heartland to the Texas Gulf Coast."