Environmental Politics

Taxpayers can't escape paying what they owe the U.S. Treasury. But for big oil companies who owe royalties, it's another matter.

"Some of the biggest names in the oil industry -- Exxon Mobil Corp., Marathon Oil Corp. and the American Petroleum Institute -- have waded into the fight to stop the Obama administration from strengthening Clean Water Act regulation of streams and wetlands."

"At least 45 people have been confirmed dead after a furious storm that has reportedly spawned over 100 tornadoes during the past week tore through the Midwest and moved on to southern states...." Meanwhile, budget cuts in the stopgap 2011 spending bill will diminish the National Weather Service's ability to predict weather that may harm people, property, or businesses.

State governors elected amid the Tea Party fervor are setting about dismantling laws and rules that protect people from environmental pollution, saying they are too burdensome on business.

EPA and Justice Department officials in the Obama administration are putting more emphasis on environmental justice  -- an effort to reduce the greater hazards faced by poor and minority communities. But that job is not easy, especially in the face of industry resistance.

Some 10,000 young activists descend on Washington, DC, this weekend to train, network, lobby, and demonstrate on climate change in an event called Power Shift. On dirty energy, they suspect President Obama has goe over to the dark side.

"Pennsylvania environmental regulators say they spend as little as 35 minutes reviewing each of the thousands of applications for natural gas well permits they get each year from drillers intent on tapping the state's lucrative and vast Marcellus Shale reserves."

"We're one week away from the first anniversary of the worst oil spill in the nation's history, and to commemorate it, House Republicans spent Wednesday marking up a trio of bills that would dramatically increase drilling in the US."

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker's payback to the billionaire Koch brothers who helped elect him went beyond crushing unions to deregulating pollution. According to the liberal blog Think Progress, Walker and state Supreme Court Judge David Prosser worked quietly behind the scenes to allow Koch's Georgia Pacific paper plants to keep dumping thousands of pounds of phosphorus into the Fox River near Green Bay.

"In negotiating the budget deal that averted a government shutdown, Democrats and the White House claimed a big victory in preventing Republicans from blocking a set of environmental regulations. But as details of the compromise became known Tuesday, it was clear Republicans had won deep reductions in spending at the Environmental Protection Agency."