"Climate Change a Security Issue, Veterans Coalition Says"
A veterans group is warning that climate change could be a matter of life and death that literally puts U.S. troops in harm's way.
A veterans group is warning that climate change could be a matter of life and death that literally puts U.S. troops in harm's way.
"California's long-awaited boom in solar power plant construction took a major step forward Wednesday when state regulators approved the first in a string of projects that will soon blanket thousands of acres of desert with mirrors harnessing the energy of the sun."
The likely primary upset of Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski could signal big changes on the GOP side of the Senate Energy Committee -- and possibly a shift toward hard-line opposition to any Democrat legislation.
"The BP oil spill was a massive 'failure' in government oversight and administrations should be forced to consult with experts in the field before making expansive drilling policy, top officials of the White House's oil spill commission said on Wednesday."
"Two weeks after BP's Macondo well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government's Minerals Management Service finalized a regulation intended to control the undersea pressures that threaten deepwater drilling operations. MMS did not write the rule. As it had dozens of times before, the agency adopted language provided by the oil industry's trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, and incorporated it into the Federal Register."
"While it is too early to gauge the long-term environmental or economic effects of the release of 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf, it now appears that the direst predictions about the moratorium will not be borne out."
"The United States on Tuesday offered to help major economies such as China and India develop shale gas, a rapidly growing sector in North America which US officials bill as a clean alternative." The motives may be as much geopolitical as environmental.
"The Tennessee Valley Authority has lost nearly $50 million in power generation from its biggest nuclear plant because the Tennessee River in Alabama is too hot."
Campo Kumeyaay Nation, a small tribe in the desert mountains east of San Diego, benefitted from the casino that opened in 2001. Now it wants to build a 25-turbine wind farm called Kumeyaay 1, the only large-scale renewable energy plant on Indian land in the country. But a big problem is the tribe's tax status: as a sovereign nation it can not receive the federal tax credits that make such projects feasible.
"White House claims that the worst of the BP oil spill was over were undermined [Thursday] when a senior government scientist said three-quarters of the oil was still in the Gulf environment and a research study detected a 22-mile plume of oil in the ocean depths."