"Key Senate Democrats continue to hope they can pass a renewable electricity standard and other smaller energy bills this year despite the dwindling time and interest in the lame-duck session."

"Congress may lose its best chance to pass a suite of public lands proposals that would protect more than 2 million acres of federal lands as wilderness if it fails to move an omnibus measure in the lame-duck session, conservation groups say."

"The Senate moved forward Wednesday on long-awaited legislation that would overhaul the nation's food safety system, grant new powers to the Food and Drug Administration and make farmers and processors responsible for preventing food-borne illness."

"A bipartisan Senate deal to limit the use of controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) was scuttled hours ago amid opposition from the industry's main trade group, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said [Wednesday]."

A House Energy subcommittee held one last hearing on climate science before GOP deniers take over the gavels. It was quite a show.

"Failure to manage the risks of a complex well and to learn from an earlier narrowly missed disaster contributed significantly to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a panel investigating the BP oil spill said Wednesday."

"Stand before the pond known here in southwestern Pennsylvania as Little Blue Run, and you’ll see nothing that resembles its bucolic-sounding name. The one-time stream is now an industrial pond, filled with arsenic-laced waste from a coal-fired power plant."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified a list of 134 chemicals that will be screened for their potential to disrupt the endocrine system."

"Approximately 13 million metric tons of rare earth elements (REE) exist within known deposits in the United States, according to the first-ever nationwide estimate of these elements by the U.S. Geological Survey."

"The Obama Administration has ignored wrenching climate impacts such as ocean acidification in its effort to estimate the cost of carbon emissions, making emissions limits disproportionately expensive, economists say."