"Carbon offsets neared all-time lows Friday, confirming their status as the world's worst performing commodity, as slumping demand meets rising supply of the U.N. instrument traded under the Kyoto Protocol."
The battle over a coal export terminal near Bellingham, Washington, is a symptom of a profound shift in world economic roles.
"A key natural gas pipeline which crosses southern New York state is in danger of rupturing and could pose a safety threat, according to a recent report from regulators."
"Chicago's first round of testing for a toxic metal called hexavalent chromium found that levels in local drinking water are more than 11 times higher than a health standard California adopted last month.
EPA has released its Draft Scientific Integrity Policy, which will affect how freely EPA scientists may talk to reporters. It requires press officers to sit in on all reporter interviews with scientists. The press release is here. The draft policy is here.
"Monsanto Co. is preparing to launch a genetically altered sweet corn, marking the global seed company's first commercial combination of its biotechnology with a consumer-oriented vegetable product."
"Environmentalists say the Environmental Protection Agency has shot down a request for new regulations to deal with the massive area of low oxygen that crops up every summer in the Gulf of Mexico due to the huge amount of nitrogen and phosphorous from fertilizer, urban runoff and sewage systems that winds up in the Gulf."
"A federal appeals court [Tuesday] struck down a challenge filed by the Florida Department of Agriculture and several chemical companies and upheld a clean water settlement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and conservation groups."
"The Environmental Protection Agency should order companies such as Schlumberger Ltd. and Halliburton Co. to disclose the hydraulic fracturing chemicals used in U.S. oil and gas drilling, advocacy groups said."
"Canada's environment ministry will cut or reassign around 10 percent of its workers, unions said Thursday, prompting fears that services like weather forecasting and environmental protection will suffer."
