Does your mouth water at the thought of corn that's engineered to produce a poison that kills insects? If not, Connecticut might be the place for you.

The state's Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation that would require food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically engineered ingredients such as GM corn. The bill sailed through on a 35-1 vote, and now moves to the state House.

From the Connecticut Post:

Speaker of the House J. Brendan Sharkey [D] wants to support legislation that would require the labeling of products that contain genetically modified organisms.

But he's not sure whether the House will approve the version approved in the state Senate late Tuesday night that would depend on three nearby states to approve similar legislation by July of 2015.

The cleanest electricity is no electricity at all -- a fact that is not lost on new Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

During his first speech after being sworn into his new post, Moniz said energy efficiency would be one of his top priorities.

From Greentech Media:

Secretary Moniz spoke to a crowd at the Energy Efficiency Global Forum about his upcoming agenda as secretary.

"Efficiency is going to be a big focus going forward," he said. "I just don't see the solutions to our biggest energy and environmental challenges without a very big demand-side response. That's why it's important to move this way, way up in our priorities." The audience applauded.

It would sure be nice to know what exactly caused a fertilizer plant to explode in Texas last month, killing 14 people -- especially given that 800,000 Americans live near similar facilities. But federal investigators are complaining to Congress that their work has been stymied by other government agencies, meaning the mystery might never be solved.

From The Dallas Morning News:

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, in a letter released Tuesday, accused the Texas state fire marshal and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives of hampering its work by blocking access to key witnesses for three weeks after the massive blast — “an unprecedented and harmful delay.”

Board chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso wrote that the “incident site was massively and irreversibly altered under the direction of ATF personnel, who used cranes, bulldozers and other excavation apparatus in an ultimately unsuccessful quest to find a single ignition source for the original fire.” ...

Those rambunctious fossil-fuel flunkies in the U.S. House of Representatives were at it again Wednesday. They passed a bill that would allow Keystone XL to bypass environmental laws and be built without approval from President Obama.

But the vote tally showed that support for construction of the pipeline is waning among House Democrats, following years of campaigning by environmentalists.

The House voted 241-175 to do away with an ongoing environmental review for the northern leg of the tar-sands pipeline project and make it more difficult for opponents to file appeals. (The southern leg is already more than halfway built.) The vote was mostly along partisan lines: All but one Republican voted in favor, and all but 19 Democrats voted against. Reuters reports that the number of Democrats in favor of the bill was down from the 69 that voted to approve similar legislation in April 2012.

"Pure political theater" is how The Guardian described the passage of the bill:

Barack Obama’s advocacy group, Organizing for Action, has been calling out Republican climate skeptics in Congress, but climate activists are not impressed. They're planning to crash OFA events and push the group to fight the Keystone XL pipeline.

350.org and CREDO Action, the political arm of the company CREDO Mobile, are leading the charge. OFA is bracing for it. From BuzzFeed:

OFA circulated a set of talking points to its members for use in dealing with unruly activists. The document, obtained by BuzzFeed, includes information on the science behind climate change and the president’s environmental positions, and ends with a section titled “Keystone Talking Points.” …

"Oops."

Gulf Coast oil refiners and chemical processors say that a lot, but regulators are doing precious little to rein in what the industry euphemistically calls "upset" emissions.

Upset emissions are inadvertent releases of chemicals by industrial operations when something goes awry. And things seem to go awry awfully frequently. An ExxonMobil refinery in Baton Rouge, La., was averaging two accidental releases every week during one grim stretch.

That's according to an analysis by The Center for Public Integrity, which found that upset emissions are more prevalent than industry admits or government knows. Some highlights from the center's investigative report:

Scientists used modern genetic sequencing and rotten old museum samples to peer back in time at the cause of the potato blight that led to more than 1 million deaths in Ireland in the 1840s.

The fungus-like water mold that ravaged the country's potato crop sent hungry Irish survivors fleeing for far-flung new countries -- which is why so many people now justify getting wasted every St. Patrick's Day, saying they're sure they have an Irish ancestor somewhere in their family tree.

What the scientists found was a strain of Phytophthora infestans that is different from similar water molds that are still ravaging the world's crops. From the BBC:

Researchers in the UK, Germany and the US analysed dried leaves kept in collections in museums at Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, UK, and Botanische Staatssammlung Munchen, Germany.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) opposed using federal money to help the victims of Superstorm Sandy rebuild their homes, roads, and tattered lives.

That's because he's a fiscal grinch who thinks disaster victims should fend for themselves, Lord of the Flies-style. Right? Well, perhaps not.

Residents of Inhofe's own state are about to receive a bounty of heartfelt help from the federal government in the wake of Monday's epic tornado, which killed at least 24 people and leveled buildings across five counties.

And Inhofe is good with that. He has adopted the very reasonable position that aid money should flow in from federal coffers to help rebuild Oklahoma's shattered neighborhoods.

It's not just thinking about climate change that can make you feel sick -- climate change itself is bringing maladies upon us. Allergies, fungal infections, malaria, and other health problems are taking a growing toll as the climate shifts — and they are expected to grow worse.

Some members of Congress want the U.S. government to start preparing for these health hazards. On Friday, Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.), Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and two other Democrats in the House introduced the Climate Change Health Protection and Promotion Act, which would authorize the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research climate change's health impacts and would help public health officials better plan for the onslaught.

Climate change is expected to boost homicidal heat waves in Manhattan, while cold snaps in the densely packed borough should become slightly less deadly.

Researchers from Columbia University and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention used climate models and two emissions scenarios to project seasonal patterns in temperature-related deaths in Manhattan. In all 32 of the scenarios developed by the researchers, the spike in summertime heat-related deaths was forecast to more than outweigh the decline in deaths caused by cold weather.

The study was published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. "Monthly analyses showed that the largest percentage increases [in deaths] may occur in May and September," the scientists wrote.