Laws & Regulations

"A report being released on Monday shows Florida isn’t alone in easing up on building regulations even as the effects of global warming escalate. The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety examined building policies in 18 Atlantic and Gulf Coast states and found that despite the increasing severity of natural disasters, many of those states have relaxed their approach to codes - or have yet to impose any whatsoever."

"Schemes that favour coal companies in Appalachia have left a national shortfall experts said was ‘one of the biggest public failures that has gone under the radar’."

"President Trump's nominee for deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Andrew Wheeler, has spent much of his career working for less oversight from the agency."

"The Trump administration will rewrite rules governing how to choose areas considered critical to endangered species to settle a lawsuit brought by 20 states and four trade groups, according to state attorneys general."

"EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt met with an Indiana coal executive last year who was seeking to soften a pollution rule — and who once boasted about raising more than a million dollars for President Donald Trump’s campaign, according to documents provided to POLITICO."

"From the cockpit of a Cessna airplane, Gary Mowad, a special agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, spotted what looked like a dried-out pond in rural eastern Colorado. The banks of the pond were black, so he suspected it was actually a pit for oil company waste."

"A federal court of appeals on Thursday (March 15) put construction of the controversial Bayou Bridge oil pipeline back on track."

"President Donald Trump disagreed with executives of major oil and gas companies Thursday about the importance of keeping binding dispute settlement procedures in a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement, according to a person familiar with the discussion."

"Two environmental groups filed suit Thursday to force the Environmental Protection Agency to disclose its correspondence with the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that has led a years-long campaign to discredit climate science."

"U.S. President Donald Trump has bashed international efforts to combat climate change and questioned the scientific consensus that global warming is dangerous and driven by human consumption of fossil fuels. But there is a disconnect between what Trump says at home and what his government does abroad."