Environmental Politics

House Republicans will disband the special committee created by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to focus on climate change and energy independence.

"A coalition of 20 environmental groups took to the airwaves today in their escalating pushback against a $7 billion Canadian oil sands pipeline, launching a two-week ad campaign urging President Obama to 'prevent the next oil disaster' by rejecting a permit for the project."

"Subsidies and tariffs to promote domestic ethanol production are “fiscally irresponsible and environmentally unwise” and should be ended, a bipartisan group of United States senators declared in a letter to the chamber’s leaders on Tuesday."

"Republicans plotting their offensive against the Obama administration’s environmental policies are eyeing a powerful weapon that would force the Democratic-held Senate to schedule votes on nullifying controversial regulations."

"Contractors working for Dow Chemical and Sasol North America, a chemical manufacturer, hired private investigators to conduct a two-year corporate espionage campaign against the environmental group Greenpeace, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday in federal district court in Washington."

"When the Department of Homeland Security wants advice on how to guard against terrorist attacks at chemical plants, it relies heavily on a special agency panel focused on the topic. There's just one problem, critics say: The committee is stacked with more than a dozen chemical corporation lobbyists and other industry representatives, who have worked to water down agency standards and oppose tougher security requirements."

The Senate cleared procedural hurdles on Monday and took up a House-passed bill to improve food safety. Final passages was expected Tuesday. House leaders have said they will accept the Senate version, sending it to President Obama for signature. The Senate version now includes controversial exemptions for small farmers.

"In the name of job creation and clean energy, the Obama administration has doled out billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest polluters and granted them sweeping exemptions from the most basic form of environmental oversight, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found."

Petrochemical companies are spending more money to influence government decisions on energy and climate.
 

"Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a broad-based initiative on Tuesday aimed at accelerating the development of offshore wind power projects on the Outer Continental Shelf along the nation’s Atlantic coast."