"BEIJING-- A dispute between China and the United States over Beijing’s subsidies to clean energy industries escalated on Sunday when a senior Chinese economic official warned that Washington 'cannot win this trade fight.'"

To judge by the U.S. federal spending on energy research and development, you wouldn't think there was any problem with energy independence, climate change, or unemployment. But you might think that the oil, nuclear, and coal industries had succeeded in strangling renewable energy in its crib.

"It might as well be called the God conference. Over the next 11 days, 193 national delegations will descend on Nagoya, Japan, in pursuit of a vexing goal befitting a deity: how to preserve life on Earth."

"The Obama administration has moved another step closer to blocking the largest mountaintop removal permit in West Virginia history, with a veto recommendation from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's regional administrator."

"The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general reported this week that the EPA had improperly used an official website to promote ways of recycling the waste that's left over when power plants burn coal, commonly known as coal ash."

The American chestnut, which was virtually wiped out by an exotic blight, may be making a comeback.
 

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

"New government data show forests play a key role in offsetting U.S. industrial emissions, but the ability of Western lands to sequester carbon is shrinking as the planet warms."

"If there is one policy left over from the Corzine administration that has been fully and enthusiastically embraced by Gov. Chris Christie, it is a program privatizing the cleanup of the tens of thousands of contaminated waste sites in New Jersey."

"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."