"WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency this week quietly withdrew two draft rules dealing with the regulation of chemicals. The potential rules were in limbo at the Office of Management for several years."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has fined Royal Dutch Shell affiliates $1.1 million for emitting too many pollutants into the air during the 2012 drilling season offshore in the Alaska Arctic."

"The eight-state commission that sets water quality standards for the Ohio River wants a two-year delay on enforcement of a more stringent mercury standard while it considers relaxing those rules."

"In the 1980s, it was South Africa. In the 1990s, it was tobacco. Now fossil fuels have become the focus of those who would change the world through the power of investing."

"Manmade climate change played a substantial role in the exceptional warmth in the eastern U.S. during the spring of 2012, a major NOAA-led report concludes. Not only that, it greatly increased the odds of the punishing heat that baked the north central and northeast U.S. during the following summer."

"Federal regulators have reached a tentative deal with Carnival Corp. on a plan to reduce air pollution from nearly a third of its cruise ships, but the accord comes too late to reverse at least a temporary loss of lucrative cruise business for Baltimore."

"CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Polluted air causes roughly 200,000 early deaths each year across the United States, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conclude after tracking emissions from industrial smokestacks, vehicle tailpipes, marine and rail transport, and commercial and residential heating."

"More than 50 years into the age of nuclear energy, one of the biggest growth opportunities may be junking old reactors."

"'It's a jungle if you're an eagle right now on the Chesapeake Bay,' says Bryan Watts, a conservation biologist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va. 'You have to watch your back.'"

"The Obama administration's launch of a crude-by-rail safety inspection push dubbed the 'Bakken blitz' could open fault lines between freight operators and oil producers that have turned to the tracks to tote a record-high volume of flammable fuel."