"Insiders predict that GOP leaders may compromise on the environmental front to avoid the government shutdowns that sullied the party's image in the 1990s."

As a kids' plaything, it's called oobleck -- a cornstarch suspension that flows at slow speeds but freezes into a solid when you try to move it fast. Washington University scientist Jonathan Katz has just published an article saying it might have succeeded in a "top kill" of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf well where ordinary drilling mud failed.

"In a New York courtroom today, oil giant Chevron Corp. won a halt to enforcement of an $18 billion judgment for oil pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon imposed by a court in Ecuador."

Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Energy Committee, speaking Monday at the Center for American Progress, said "The Republicans in Congress have become the party of science deniers, and that is profoundly dangerous."

"Facing a deadline that could mean the difference between doing business as usual or cutting pressure on hundreds of miles of natural-gas pipeline, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has recruited employees to the Cow Palace grounds for a round-the-clock search through tens of thousands of boxes of paperwork."

"The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control will review documents that AVX Corp. kept hidden for nearly 30 years to see if it warrants a criminal investigation of the company and its executives."

Few energy conferences can match the annual event, organized entirely by students, at MIT for sheer unbridled enthusiasm.

"The Obama administration is considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to rapidly rising gasoline prices brought on by turmoil in the Middle East, the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, said on Sunday."

Besides being a keystone of the ocean ecosystem, coral reefs are of huge commercial value. But they are seriously threatened by floods, runoff, rising ocean temperatures and acidity which are all symptoms of our fossil-fuel economy.