Environmental journalists can find important stories using data about lobbyists registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to work for foreign firms and governments. The Sunlight Foundation and other groups have compiled some of the information into a searchable online database — a starting point for finding enviro and energy stories.
"Environmental groups in Wisconsin are suing the state’s Department of Natural Resources, claiming that the agency hasn’t done its job in implementing recent federal air pollution regulations."
"The Obama administration will soon finish rules aimed at controlling pollution from toxic coal ash, making good on a promise it made less than two months after President Obama’s inauguration."
"A coalition of 47 environmental organizations called on U.S. senators Monday to remove public lands riders from a defense bill, criticizing what they described as a 'kitchen-sink' approach to conservation."
"A new peer-reviewed analysis of sources of leaks in natural gas drilling and well operations strongly bolsters growing calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to settle on regulations cutting wasteful, harmful emissions of methane from both new and existing oil and natural gas wells."
"During their careers as oil and gas inspectors for the Texas Railroad Commission, Fred Wright and Morris Kocurek earned merit raises, promotions and praise from their supervisors. ... But they may have done their jobs too well for the industry’s taste—and for their own agency’s."
"Gary Southern, the former Freedom Industries president, faces federal charges for allegedly lying about his role at the bankrupt firm to protect his personal fortune from legal actions over the January chemical spill at Freedom’s Elk River facility."
"The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected BP's challenge to its multibillion-dollar settlement agreement over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which the oil giant complained has allowed payouts to some businesses that are unable to trace their losses to the disaster."
Journalists hurrying to get up to speed on environmental or energy issues can get objective background from reports by the Congressional Research Service (an arm of the Library of Congress), which does not release them to the taxpaying public that funded them. We thank the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project for publishing them.
Three GOP-backed House bills attacking science at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are unlikely to become law in the current Congress — or the next. The Obama administration has threatened to veto all three, which the House passed in November along party lines. None is likely to muster enough support to override a veto.
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