Environmental Politics

"Four years after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, BP is being welcomed back to seek new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico."

"Internal emails between staff at North Carolina's environmental agency suggest state regulators were coordinating with Duke Energy before intervening in efforts by citizens groups trying to sue the company over groundwater pollution leeching from its coal ash dumps."

"An effort in Congress to modernize a patchwork system of state and federal laws governing chemical safety is generating debate between a bipartisan group of state legislators who say the update would rob states of the ability to regulate sometimes toxic substances within their own borders and businesses who say they need regulatory certainty to grow jobs and the economy."

Eighteen coal facilities in Ohio are operating with expired pollution-discharge permits under an agency where allegations of coal-industry influence arose during a personnel flap last year, an Associated Press review has found.

"Efforts to attach a measure fast-tracking natural gas exports to a Ukraine aid package by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Wednesday were stopped dead at a committee markup."

"Oh sure, the Tesla Model S may be the 'best car sold in America' per Consumer Reports, and it may be a Wall Street darling and perhaps the only electric vehicles for which demand exceeds supply. But that didn't stop regulators in New Jersey from ordering Tesla to shut down its stores by April 1 because the company doesn't use dealers like every other automaker."

The State Department's environmental impact statement for the Keystone XL pipeline has been the focus of a spin war among economic and political interests with a stake in the decision. The news media fell in line with the industry narrative that it "cleared the way" for the pipeline, ignoring the factual errors in the report. Media critics at the left-leaning Media Matters ask why the mainstream media failed to note Reuters' expose of the EIS' overstatement of rail traffic offering an alternative route for the oil.

"CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Diminished domestic demand has produced a virtual moratorium on federal coal sales in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, home to the 10 top-producing coal mines in the country."

"Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) yesterday announced plans to use an aid package for Ukraine to advance his proposal for expediting exports of domestic natural gas to U.S. allies and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

"Key senators have put language in the state budget bill that would stall Maryland's efforts to limit one of the Chesapeake Bay's main pollutants, phosphorus."