Environmental Politics

"A tightening congressional race in upstate New York could become the first public referendum on shale-gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing."
 

"Months after the funding was approved, state legislators still haven't decided how to proceed with a study of the proposed Pebble copper and gold mine."

"Some of the country's largest emitters of heat-trapping gases, including businesses that publicly support efforts to curb global warming, don't want the public knowing exactly how much they pollute."

"TOKYO -- Delegates from more than 190 countries struggled Friday to break a deadlock on setting ambitious goals to preserve animals, plants and ecosystems, raising the prospect that the two-week U.N. meeting might end in failure."

"Energy magnate David Koch ceded his spot on a National Cancer Institute (NCI) advisory board last month, but green advocates are taking aim at the conservative mega-donor nonetheless by calling for a review of federal ethics policies that allowed him to sit on the panel despite a potential conflict of interest."

Despite the dominance of jobs and government spending as issues in Washington state congressional races, anti-environmental positions seem to be a non-starter in a state where so many people love the outdoors.

"President Barack Obama will make a visit to Charlottesville, Va. on Friday to rally for Tom Perriello, the vulnerable freshman Democrat who has championed a number of White House causes in the past two years."

The majority of Republicans running for House and Senate seats disagree with proven scientific facts about global warming. That means that if Republicans take control of one or both chambers this November, there is little hope for legislation to address climate change.

The Bureau of Land Management is likely to re-open an ethics investigation involving Steve Henke, a former BLM district manager who recently took a job as head of an advocacy group for the oil and gas industry he used to regulate.

A study claiming that California's Proposition 23 would create jobs failed to disclose that it was funded by big out-of-state oil companies and the Koch brothers, who have been anonymously funding political causes that boost profits of their oil business. Proposition 23 would delay California's climate change law, which environmentalists say would create green jobs.