Economy & Business

"The Republican congressman from one of Hurricane Irma’s hardest hit counties is leading a legislative effort to let companies conceal how climate change affects their businesses. Only weeks before the storm came ashore, Florida U.S. Rep. Bill Posey reintroduced legislation designed to bar federal regulators from forcing companies to better disclose their climate-related risks to their shareholders."

"A weakened Irma brought rain and wind to a wide section of the country on Tuesday after causing at least 11 deaths and leaving some 6.7 million people without power in five states."

"Vaccine giant Sanofi Pasteur has quietly pulled the plug on its Zika vaccine project, a move that underscores how difficult it may be at this stage to develop a vaccine against the virus."

"Texas on Monday edged toward recovery from the devastation of Hurricane Harvey as shipping channels, oil pipelines and refineries restarted some operations and authorities lifted an evacuation order for the area around a once-burning chemical plant."

"Gasoline futures surged on Wednesday to a two-year high while crude oil was down, as flooding and damage from Tropical Storm Harvey shut nearly a quarter of U.S. refinery capacity, curbing demand for crude while raising the risk of fuel shortages."

"Scientists warn of more and expanding 'bull’s-eyes' as Americans build in parts of the country at ever greater risk because of climate change and severe weather."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will no longer sponsor an awards program honoring voluntary corporate actions to combat global warming, it announced on Friday, the agency’s latest move to undo Obama-era climate change programs."

"Oil and gas producers might have a harder time breaking even in shale plays containing federally controlled land, but that may have little to do with the regulatory and permitting burdens associated with extracting hydrocarbons from public acreage, energy researchers say."

"Homeowners suffering flood damage from Harvey are more likely to be on the hook for losses than victims of prior storms — a potentially crushing blow to personal finances and neighborhoods along the Gulf Coast. Insurance experts say only a small fraction of homeowners in Harvey’s path of destruction have flood insurance."

"As Exxon Mobil responded to news reports in 2015 that said that the company had spread doubt about the risks of climate change despite its own extensive research in the field, it urged the public to “read the documents” for themselves. Now two Harvard researchers have done just that, reviewing nearly 200 documents representing Exxon’s research and its public statements and concluding that the company “misled the public” about climate change even as its own scientists were recognizing greenhouse gas emissions as a risk to the planet."