Environmental Politics

"Boys and girls, are global temperatures rising or falling?"

"In a year the Republican-controlled Congress is expected to take a significant whack at President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda, GOP lawmakers on Wednesday told top environmental officials they should scrap what was once a fairly obscure proposal to define what is and isn’t considered a body of water by federal law."

"President Obama is taking aim at roughly $50 billion in tax breaks for the oil, natural gas and coal industries. "

"CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Coal companies working with the government on the long-planned $1.65 billion FutureGen clean-coal project said Tuesday they have no choice but to shut it down after the Department of Energy suspended the majority of its funding."

"Thousands of chemical storage tanks across West Virginia would be exempt from the law passed in the wake of the Freedom Industries spill, under legislation introduced Tuesday in the House of Delegates."

"The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday said the collapse in oil prices has cast doubt on the State Department's conclusion that building the Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline would not cause a big boost in greenhouse-gas emissions."

"Medical experts reacted with alarm Monday as two top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination appeared to question whether child vaccinations should be mandatory — injecting politics into an emotional issue that has taken on new resonance with a recent outbreak of measles in the United States."

"In a vote last month 15 Republican senators agreed that climate change is caused by human activity. Only three were ready to state how they would tackle it and none suggested a target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions"

"An overwhelming majority of the American public, including half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future."

"However the negotiations with Congress turn out, the budget will lock in the course of climate policy through the next presidential election."