Disasters

Will the undervaluing of environmental risks and resources lead to another financial meltdown like the sub-prime mortgage disaster? A new report says credit rating agencies are ignoring water scarcity risks when rating municipal utility bonds. Investors stand to lose hundreds of billions.

"U.S. environmental groups filed a suit on Wednesday against British-based oil giant BP Plc saying the world's worst offshore spill inflicted "ongoing unlawful" harm on endangered wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico."

"The crude has stopped gushing and coastlines are largely clear of the thick goo that washed ashore for months, but the impact of the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history will no doubt linger for years."

"Six months after the rig explosion that led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, damage to the Gulf of Mexico can be measured more in increments than extinctions, say scientists polled by The Associated Press."

The floods that devastated much of Pakistan have brought more blackouts in the nation's already inadequate electric power industry.

"Four years after redrawing its levee-design assumptions to ensure that the failures of Hurricane Katrina were never repeated, the Army Corps of Engineers  has embarked on a study that threatens to relax the new, more stringent standards in ways that would reduce costs — and result in less protection in some areas."

Interviews suggest that politics initially blinded the Obama administration on oil drilling.

"BUDAPEST, Hungary — An aerial photo taken months before a gigantic reservoir unleashed torrents of toxic sludge shows a faint red trail trickling through the container wall — part of a growing body of evidence that inspectors who gave the pit a clean bill of health may have missed warning signs."

"A set of proposed regulations to modernize safety in Pennsylvania's booming natural gas industry and force drillers to disclose the chemicals they use cleared a first procedural hurdle Tuesday."