Environmental Politics

"With efforts to revamp the nation's chemical safety law stalled in Congress, the Obama administration's top environmental regulator vowed three years ago to act on her own to beef up the oversight of toxic substances. But key parts of the initiative by Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are still bottled up in an obscure White House office under intense pressure from industry lobbyists to back off."

"The video shows corn being harvested against an orange sky as a pianist plays a somber tune."

"CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- Wyoming's governor persuaded the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to postpone an announcement linking hydraulic fracturing to groundwater contamination, giving state officials -- whom the EPA had privately briefed on the study -- time to attempt to debunk the finding before it rocked the oil and gas industry more than a month later, an investigation by The Associated Press has found."

"The problem facing cigarette manufacturers decades ago involved tragic deaths and bad publicity, but it had nothing to do with cancer. It had to do with house fires. Smoldering cigarettes were sparking fires and killing people. And tobacco executives didn't care for one obvious solution: create a 'fire-safe' cigarette, one less likely to start a blaze."

"The Interior Department's rollout of hydraulic fracturing disclosure rules for public lands late last week was preceded by a bevy of White House meetings between President Obama's aides and industry lobbyists."

"Confidential memo seen by Guardian calls for climate change sceptics to turn American public against solar and wind power"

"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday signed -- and hailed -- Utah’s latest natural-gas drilling plan as an environmentally sensitive leap toward energy security."

"U.S. officials are expected Tuesday to approve a plan by Anadarko Petroleum Corp. to drill 3,700 natural-gas wells in eastern Utah, capping a yearslong review of a project that will be one of the largest in the region."

"A government scientist sacked for exposing the dangers to firefighters from the caustic air at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11 got her job back on Monday."

"The Heartland Institute's failed billboard campaign attacking the existence of climate change is driving a surge of corporate donors to abandon the group and prompting a mutiny among its Washington-based staff, which is decamping for less volatile surroundings, according to sources."