Environmental Politics

GOP efforts to stop EPA regulation of greenhouse gases by tacking a rider onto an appropriations bill in committee may have been thwarted for now.
 

A progressive blog reports that almost every Republican candidate running for a U.S. Senate seat this fall either denies consensus scientific findings of manmade climate change or opposes efforts to head it off.

"Bill McKibben, an environmental campaigner from Vermont with a flair for showmanship, was rebuffed Friday morning in his effort to get the White House to reinstall one of the solar panels that President Jimmy Carter had placed on the White House roof."

"Candidates are lining up behind the issue of gas drilling as the controversial method called hydrofracking takes center stage this election season in the Finger Lakes region."

Author Bill McKibben and a group of activists have found the old solar panels that Jimmy Carter installed atop the White House, and that Ronald Reagan removed. McKibben's group 350.org has been hauling the panel on a publicity road trip to DC to urge Barack Obama to reinstall them. The symbolism has everything to do with the fossil industry's victory in quashing climate legislation, the future of a world climate treaty, and the political future of a president whom environmentalists see as AWOL on his campaign promises. McKibben has booked a meeting with Obama for today.

"In the rush to develop America's biggest new source of domestic energy, one community is fighting to protect its rural way of life from the environmental strains that accompany shale gas drilling."

"Nearly two years into Obama's term, the president's climate image has changed. He is no longer a champion to some, and others are astonished at his administration's unenthusiastic support of a climate bill in the Senate this year. It failed without a vote."
 

BP plans to release today its internal investigation of its own role, and any possible wrongdoing or errors by its own officials, in the Deepwater Horizon blowout disaster. Even though some key BP decisionmakers are not talking to federal investigators -- claiming ill health or the Fifth Amendment -- documents describing what they are alleged to have told BP are coming to light. BP would be legally and financially liable for whatever it finds in its self-investigation.

An Arizona Republican operative is recruiting drifters, street people, and the homeless to run as Green Party candidates to dilute the Democrat vote. The Green Party is trying to get them removed from the ballot.

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will roll out more regulations on greenhouse gases and other pollution to help fight climate change, but they will not be as strong as action by Congress, a senior administration official said."