Southwest (AZ NM OK TX)

"Kyle Tisdel and Samantha Ruscavage-Barz sift through rocks beside a dusty road in New Mexico's high desert, searching for remnants of life a thousand years past. With the nearest meager town of Cuba an hour away, they're off the beaten path by any standard. But to them, these dirt roads surrounding Chaco Canyon are the front lines of a monumental battle pitting ancient Pueblo culture against the modern world's thirst for oil."

New projections put sea-level rise from climate change as high as six meters (20 feet). A mapping tool from the independent research organization Climate Central shows such a rise "are striking, to say the least – the inundation of Galveston, Matagorda and Padre islands, along with cities such as Port Arthur, part of Beaumont, Galveston, Texas City, the Freeport-Lake Jackson area and part of Corpus Christi."

"Honda has earned a new Guinness World Record for fuel efficiency. In a 25 day drive across all of the European Union’s contiguous countries, a Honda Civic Tourer 1.6 i-DTEC diesel averaged 2.82 liters per 100km (100.31 miles per gallon)."

"As she knocked on the federal government's door for aid in the wake of a damaging earthquake in 2011, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) avoided talking about one aspect of the earthquake -- its cause."

"Environmental Defense Fund-backed studies of 30,000 Barnett Shale wells shows the EPA has vastly underestimated emissions."

"Despite reports of U.S. Catholics’ largely positive reception to Pope Francis’s beginning campaign on the issue, not everyone is optimistic that the Catholics of Texas will suddenly start trying to shut down their local coal plant."

"SUPERIOR, Ariz. — Outside of an aging mining town in the mountains east of Phoenix, a copper company has burrowed a shaft 1.3 miles into the high desert landscape in what is believed to be the deepest such mine in the U.S."

"The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a woman injured in a 2011 earthquake can file suit in district court against the two energy companies she accuses of causing the quake."

"The Environmental Protection Agency has announced a $168 million settlement to help remedy pollution from a coal-fired power plant on the Navajo Nation."

"University of Oklahoma officials were seeking a $25 million donation from billionaire oilman Harold Hamm last year, records show, at a time when scientists at the school were formulating the state's position on oil drilling and earthquakes."