"HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- Patriot Coal has agreed to phase out mountaintop removal and other forms of strip mining, in a move Patriot officials say is in the best interests of their company, its employees and the communities where it operates."

"Citing gross negligence and what it called the company's profits-first culture, the federal government on Thursday announced it had entered into a settlement with BP of all criminal claims stemming from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, fining the company a record $4.5 billion and securing 11 felony pleas from the company for the 11 people killed in the April 2010 blast."

"Georgia tops all other states for the amount of power it generates from coal-burning units that are “ripe for retirement” because they aren’t cost-effective, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists report."

"Among air experts, it's an open secret: federal and state officials grossly undercount a crucial type of air pollution, often by an order of magnitude and particularly in areas like Houston with its major concentrations of petrochemical plants."

"Research to be released Thursday shows that West Coast refineries continued to produce gasoline even though Americans were told they were temporarily shut down, leading to price spikes in May and October, McClatchy Newspapers reports."

"BP and the U.S. government portrayed in public a united front as a runaway well spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. But they privately sought to withhold potentially critical information from each other, possibly slowing efforts to solve the crisis, according to new testimony."

"WASHINGTON -- Terrorists could black out large segments of the United States for weeks or months by attacking the power grid and damaging hard-to-replace components that are crucial to making it work, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report released Wednesday."

"Barack Obama claimed climate change as a personal mission of his second term on Wednesday, offering for the first time to take charge of the effort to find a bipartisan solution to the existential crisis."

Various news organizations are reporting that Thursday may see announcement of a plea deal between BP and the Justice Department in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill. They say BP will plead guilty to criminal misconduct and pay a record criminal fine.

"Climate change is suddenly a hot topic again. The issue is resurfacing in talks about a once radical idea: a possible carbon tax."