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Both President Obama and the GOP-controlled House are pushing infrastructure investment as a job-producing way of maintaining and upgrading U.S. roads, bridges, dams, waterways, airports, and quality of life. The big questions include how to do it -- a set of choices with huge environmental consequences.

"HONG KONG -- On Midway atoll in the North Pacific, dozens of young albatross lie dead on the sand, their stomachs filled with cigarette lighters, toy soldiers and other small plastic objects their parents have mistaken for food."

"TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

"One in 10 babies along Minnesota's North Shore are born with unhealthy levels of mercury in their bodies, according to a new report on contamination around Lake Superior, the first to look for the pollutant in the blood of U.S. infants."

"Oil, gas and mining industries are battling a late addition to the 2010 financial reform law that requires energy companies to disclose their payments to foreign governments."