Gas is the new coal. At least that’s what the Obama administration seems to think. In accepting his nomination to run for a second term, President Obama pledged to “continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet,” and to create 600,000 new jobs in the natural gas industry.

The two goals are directly related in the administration’s policies; in March 2012, the Obama EPA announced new emissions rules for power plants that meant no new coal plants will be built in the U.S. All those coal plants will likely be replaced with gas-fired plants — a trend that was already in the works thanks to declining gas prices and increasing supply.

But Obama’s enthusiasm for gas puts the big, national environmental groups in a bit of a tough spot. While many recognize that burning gas to generate electricity emits 47 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than coal, concerns about environmental problems stemming from hydraulic fracturing have led many green groups to moderate their stance.

Pennsylvania is at the forefront in the debate over “fracking,” the process by which a high-pressure mixture of chemicals, sand, and water are blasted into rock to tap into the gas. Recent discoveries of great reserves in the Marcellus Shale region of the state prompted a rush to development, as have advancements in fracking technologies. But with those changes have come a number of concerns from citizens about potential environmental and health impacts from natural gas drilling.

There is good reason to be curious about exactly what’s in those fluids. A 2010 congressional investigation revealed that Halliburton and other fracking companies had used 32 million gallons of diesel products, which include toxic chemicals like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, in the fluids they inject into the ground. Low levels of exposure to those chemicals can trigger acute effects like headaches, dizziness, and drowsiness, while higher levels of exposure can cause cancer.

Pennsylvania law states that companies must disclose the identity and amount of any chemicals used in fracking fluids to any health professional that requests that information in order to diagnosis or treat a patient that may have been exposed to a hazardous chemical. But the provision in the new bill requires those health professionals to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that they will not disclose that information to anyone else—not even the person they’re trying to treat.

“The whole goal of medical community is to protect public health,” said David Masur, director of PennEnvironment. He worries that the threat of a lawsuit from a big industry player like Halliburton or ExxonMobil for violating a confidentiality agreement could scare doctors away from research on potential impacts in the state. “If anything, we need more concrete information. This just stifles another way the public could have access to information from experts.”

The provision was not in the initial versions of the law debated in the state Senate or House in February; it was added in during conference between the two chambers, said State Sen. Daylin Leach (D), which meant that many lawmakers did not even notice that this “broad, very troubling provision” had been added. “The importance of keeping it as proprietary secret seems minimal when compared to letting the public know what chemicals they and their children are being exposed to,” Leach told Mother Jones.

The limits on what doctors can say about those chemicals makes it impossible to either assuage or affirm the public’s concerns about health impacts. “People are claiming that animals are dying and people are getting sick in clusters around [drilling wells], but we can’t really study it because we can’t see what’s actually in the product,” said Leach.

At the federal level, natural gas developers have long been allowed to keep the mixture of chemicals they use in fracking fluid a secret from the general public, protecting it as “proprietary information.” The industry is exempt from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory—the program that ensures that communities are given information about what companies are releasing. In 2005, the industry successfully lobbied for an exemption from EPA regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act as well, in what is often referred to as the “Halliburton Loophole.” The Obama EPA has pressed drillers to voluntarily provide more information about fracking fluids, but the industry has largely rebuffed those appeals.

The latest move in Pennsylvania has raised suspicions among the industry’s critics once again. As Walter Tsou, president of the Philadelphia chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, put it, “What is the big secret here that they’re unwilling to tell people, unless they know that if people found out what’s really in these chemicals, they would be outraged?”

This story was produced by Mother Jones as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

“Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the breakup, which rendered me speechless,” Hubbard said in response to the images. Below, you can see the original shots from 2009 beside those taken this summer:

(h/t Wales Online)

Photo: taberandrew

Soon has been a favorite among climate skeptics for years, since coauthoring a paper back in 2003 that claimed that the 20th century was probably not the warmest, nor was it unique. That paper, published in the journal Climate Research, was widely criticized by climate scientists for its content, not to mention the funding it received from the American Petroleum Institute. An astrophysicist by training, Soon has also claimed that solar variability — i.e., changes in the amount of radiation coming from the sun — are to likely to blame for warming temperatures.

In 2007, Soon coauthored a paper challenging the claim that climate change harms polar bears. The paper drew plenty of criticism, as it was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute, The Charles G. Koch Foundation, and ExxonMobil — groups with a clear interest in the debate over whether the bears merited endangered species protections.

Given that Soon had previously disclosed some of his corporate funding, in December 2009, Greenpeace submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Smithsonian Institution asking for information about Soon’s funders and any conflict of interest forms he may have submitted. In response, Smithsonian produced a list of his major bankrollers, which included more than $800,000 from major energy interests. According to the document, Exxon provided $55,000 for a study on Arctic climate change in 2007 and 2008, and another $76,106 for research into solar variability between 2008 and 2010.

ExxonMobil spokesman Alan Jeffers accused Greenpeace of “peddling this discredited conspiracy theory” about its support for climate deniers. He maintained that the company stopped funding Soon in 2009. “We made a decision to discontinue funding groups whose positions on climate change weren’t very constructive. It was distracting,” said Jeffers. “The issue of climate change is so important, it shouldn’t be distracted by the type of things Greenpeace does,” Jeffers said.

Even if Greenpeace and Smithsonian are wrong and ExxonMobil has stopped funding his work, Soon still appears to be getting significant backing from other fossil fuel companies, with the coal giant Southern Company providing $120,000 to look at “solar variability and climate change signals from temperature” in 2008 and 2009, and the Koch Foundation providing Soon another $65,000 last year.

“Dr. Soon needs to make clear what exactly these corporations expected from him,” said Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace. “There’s been a long-term campaign of climate denial for over 20 years, organized by big coal and big oil. This is evidence that it continues to this day.”

The company sold off a bunch of assets in order to pay for the Gulf oil disaster, which is how they managed to keep the profits up. BP also hasn’t been drilling in the deepwater since that whole giant oil catastrophe it unleashed last year. But to still report an increase in income is, well … let’s just say I have a hard time feeling too bad for them because their profits weren’t as high as they could have been.

Never fear though, as the company says it expects to be back out drilling in the Gulf by the second quarter of this year.

For Gulf coast residents, though, the nightmare was just beginning. A year later, business hasn’t come back for many in fishing and tourism, and the compensation check from BP still hasn’t arrived. In the areas closest to the shores, people are reporting health problems consistent with exposure to chemicals. Dead turtles, dolphins, and fish are still washing ashore. So are tar balls. So while most of the country has moved on, a number of Gulf coast residents have been in D.C. over the past week to tell decisionmakers one thing: It’s not over.

Mother Jones talked with several Gulf residents who have become advocates for their communities in the wake of the spill.

Kindra Arnesen, 33, of Buras, La.

Arnesen and her husband, David, were just putting the finishing touches on the house they rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina when the Deepwater Horizon exploded. The disaster made an accidental activist out of this fisherman’s wife and restaurant owner.

“We’re not used to having to come up here and ask all these agencies in D.C. to do what our tax dollars pay them to do. I own two homes, a restaurant, and four boats. I’ve put that back together in the last five years. I don’t owe no money on anything. We work really, really hard for what we do and what we get, and then it is almost like we’re painted by our own politicians through their actions, or lack thereof, as people that don’t need to exist, like we are expendable.”

To read my interview with Arnesen, click here.

Cherri Foytlin, 38, of Rayne, La.

Foytlin, a reporter, wife of an oilfield worker, and mother of six, walked 1,243 miles from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., to demand a better future for Gulf residents.

“I would love for my husband to be making solar panels, but all the solar panels are being made in China. One of the things I’m totally advocating is bringing clean energy jobs here, and then providing subsidies so our oil workers get those jobs first.”

“We are not divided. It’s them that’s dividing us up, and making us feel like we’re against this other group, that the oil workers are against the green movement and the green movement are against the oil workers. They are not — they are against the oil companies. That’s a big difference. The oil companies don’t care about the oil workers.”

To read my interview with Foytlin, click here.

Ryan Lambert, 53, of Buras, La.

Lambert rebuilt his charter boat company, Cajun Fishing Adventures, after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. But a year after the oil disaster began, business still hasn’t come back.

“BP hasn’t made people whole. I’m not saying I’m so much worried about me, because financially, I’m okay. I’m the oldest one in the business, just about. But the youngest guys are starving to death. People are losing their homes, losing their boats and there’s BP advertising that they’re spending millions of dollars. They’re not. They’re not making anyone whole.”

To read my interview with Lambert, click here.

People are sick. Nearly three-quarters of Gulf Coast residents that the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental justice group, polled this year reported health concerns that they believe are related to the spill. Of the 954 residents in seven coastal communities, almost half said they had experienced health problems like coughing, skin and eye irritation, or headaches that are consistent with common symptoms of chemical exposure. While the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is conducting health monitoring for spill cleanup workers, residents in the areas closest to the spill are concerned that their own health problems have gone unattended.

Fish and other sea life in the Gulf are still struggling after the disaster. The death toll for dolphins and whales in the Gulf may have been 50 times higher than the number of bodies found, according to a recent paper in Conservation Letters. Earlier this year, a large number of dead dolphin calves were found on the coast, and scientists have linked many of those deaths to the oil disaster. Anglers are also reporting dark lesions, rotting fins, and discoloration in the fish they’re catching in the Gulf, as the St. Petersburg Times reported last week.

While those most affected by the spill are still waiting for payments, some state and local officials have been making bank off the disaster. As the Associated Press reported recently, some local governments have been using the $754 million from BP to buy iPads, SUVs, and laptops. Meanwhile, BP just gave another $30 million to Florida to help entice tourists onto its beaches this summer.

Congress hasn’t changed a single law on oil and gas drilling in the past year. A year later, the liability cap for companies that cause a major spill is still just $75 million, companies with dismal safety records can still obtain new leases, and they can still avoid compensating families when workers die on rigs. In January, the National Oil Spill Commission released 300 pages of findings and recommendations that Congress has largely ignored.

GOP House members want more drilling off all our coasts with less environmental review. The Natural Resources Committee is considering a trio of bills that would open new areas for drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans for drilling, speed up the process of approving permits, and force the Department of Interior to move forward with lease sales in the central Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Virginia without further environmental review. And, for good measure, the legislation would even create economic incentives for oil companies to use seismic technology to survey for oil reserves, letting taxpayers cover half the cost.

“Fail safe” technology isn’t fail safe. The blowout preventer (BOP), the device that was supposed to stop a catastrophic spill after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, failed due to a faulty design and a bent piece of pipe, according to a report released in March. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement contracted the Norwegian firm Det Norske Veritas to conduct a forensic examination of the BOP. The blind shear rams, which were supposed cut through and close off the well, failed because a pipe had buckled, the 551-page report concluded – a problem that casts doubt on all the other BOPs in use today.

The country’s offshore regulator has a new name, but it’s still got plenty of problems. The much-maligned Minerals Management Service got a branding overhaul and is now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE). And while it’s made a number of changes in the past year, there are still plenty of concerns about whether the agency is up to the task. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and BOEMRE head Michael Bromwich acknowledge that it will take years of reforms to ensure that drilling is safe for workers and the environment.

Fewer than half of people who have filed claims from the spill have been paid. The Gulf Coast Claims Facility, under the direction of administrator Kenneth Feinberg, has approved approximately 300,000 claims out of the 857,000 it has received from individuals and businesses, totaling $3.8 billion. The claims facility cited the “unprecedented magnitude of the task” in its announcement marking the year since the spill. A number of residents have grown frustrated with the process and say they would rather sue than wait on the claims facility.

BP still doesn’t want you to see its tar balls. That’s right — even a year later, BP is still blocking reporters from the beaches.

What did we learn?The National Oil Spill Commission on Tuesday released a voluminous report on the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and its implications for the future of offshore drilling in the United States. The report, a doorstop of more than 300 pages, contains a long list of advice for the oil industry and federal regulators about how to avert a future catastrophe. But many of the commission’s recommendations require action from Congress — and given the current political climate, those changes might be hard to make for at least the next two years.

“The industry fought measures in Congress and previous administrations to tighten safety standards and prevent regulations,” said Richard Charter, senior policy adviser for the marine program at Defenders of Wildlife. “If industry continues its past practice of foot-dragging and a recalcitrant attitude about actually implementing safer drilling practices, then what we will be left with is a big pile of paper and no action.”

The commission released an advance copy of one chapter of the report last week that outlined the risks that rig operator BP, owner Transocean, and cement-provider Halliburton took that likely caused or contributed to the explosion. In the rest of the report, while allocating the blame for the Deepwater spill largely to the three companies involved, the commission made it clear that it believes systemic failures across the industry underlie the tragedy. The authors note that Transocean and Halliburton are two of the largest offshore drilling contractors, working with a number of other major industry players beyond BP.

“The Deepwater Horizon disaster did not have to happen,” said commission cochair and former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) on Tuesday. “It was both preventable and foreseeable … That it did happen is the result of a shared failure that was years in the making.”

The commission laid out a number of changes that Congress would need to make to prevent a repeat disaster: raising the cap on liability (which ensures that companies that spill only have to cover up to $75 million in damages in the event of a disaster), extending the window of time granted to regulators to evaluate permit applications for new drilling from 30 to 60 days, and creating a new office in the Department of Interior charged specifically with overseeing safety in offshore drilling. The commission also recommended better compensation for regulators (an incentive to keep them working in government rather than industry) and a dramatic increase in funding for the Department of Interior agency that oversees drilling.

The commission did not offer a new figure for the liability cap, which was set under the Oil Pollution Act in 1990 and has not been increased since then. There were several proposals before Congress last year following the spill, including one that would eliminate the cap entirely and force companies to be on the hook for all the costs incurred in a spill, though the change, along with a larger spill-response bill passed by the House, was never approved in the Senate.

With Republicans now in control of the House, few expect that any package of spill response measures will be considered this year — let alone one as aggressive as the measures the lower chamber approved last year. Nevertheless, Graham was optimistic about the likelihood of proposals actually going somewhere in a Republican-controlled House. “I believe that this issue and the searing impact that the Deepwater Horizon has had on the conscience of America is such that it will override an ideological preference for less government, less government intrusion,” he said.

His cochair (and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator under George H.W. Bush), William Reilly, also said he thought Congress would heed the advice. “It’s very hard to predict Congress,” he said, “but in the conversations I’ve had, we have had a respectful hearing.” The cochairs will appear before several House and Senate committees later this month to discuss the proposals. “We’re going to make a lot of noise,” Reilly said.

But the early signs from the new Congress aren’t too promising. Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), the new chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, has outlined plans to increase domestic drilling. His statement in response to the commission report, while acknowledging that some of the proposals “deserve real consideration,” struck a similar chord against any measures that could rein in drillers. “Congress needs to ensure that offshore energy production meets the highest safety standards, but as gasoline prices continue to rise we cannot allow ourselves to become increasingly dependent on hostile foreign nations for our energy needs,” he said.

The industry certainly provided no cheering section for the report. The American Petroleum Institute (API), which last week laid out its 2011 mission to make it easier for oil companies to drill in the U.S., released a statement Tuesday claiming that the industry has already undertaken “numerous steps to further improve safety.” The oil industry’s largest trade group argues that more regulations aren’t necessary: “API is deeply concerned that the commission’s report casts doubt on an entire industry based on its study of a single incident.” American Solutions for Winning the Future, Newt Gingrich’s pro-drilling 527 committee, dismissed the report as “anti-energy blather.”

The defensive stance from oil interests, says oil industry veteran Bob Cavnar, can be blamed at least in part on the fact that the commission itself lacked anyone from the industry; instead it is made up largely of academics and environmentalists. “The major changes to offshore drilling require congressional action,” said Cavnar, whose book Disaster on the Horizon assessed the causes of the blowout on the rig. “With a Republican Congress, the chances of those changes being made are zero unless the industry pushes it, and because the industry rejects the report, that’s not going to happen.”

While many in the environmental community welcomed the commission’s advice, they noted that even those proposals are still not enough to bring the risks of an accident down to zero. Many groups still want see offshore drilling stopped altogether.

“I think the recommendations are pretty tepid given the severity of the crisis,” said Jackie Savitz, director of pollution campaigns at the advocacy group Oceana. But, she admitted, “Even the small things they’re suggesting, I think it’s going to be hard to convince Congress to make those changes.”

In the wake of the tragic shootings in Tucson on Saturday, there has been a lot of talk about the influence of heated — and at times, violent — political rhetoric, which has seemingly escalated in recent years. Sarah Palin has gotten plenty of attention for her midterms target map (replete with bulls-eyes) of congressional districts, including Arizona’s Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D), who was critically injured in the shooting. But it’s worth noting some of the other examples of extreme rhetoric — notably Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R) calling on constituents to get “armed and dangerous” over the climate bill.

Here’s Bachmann in a 2009 radio interview, talking about the cap-and-trade bill that was under debate in the House at that time:

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

Now, it’s important to note that the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, certainly appears to be suffering from mental illness and that his political ideology, if he even has one, is not really clear at this point. (See Mother Jones‘ exclusive interview with one of his close friends for more.) He — or any other twisted individual — could have well committed a heinous act like this without elected officials fanning the flames. But it’s also certainly true that statements like Bachmann’s haven’t really helped create a positive discourse in this country on key policy issues — in this case, climate change.

It’s not just Republicans though (though I would certainly note that we’ve seen much more of this from the right in recent years). Remember West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s campaign ad that featured him gunning down — literally — the cap-and-trade bill? Ken Ward has a thoughtful post on the need to back off the violent rhetoric on coal issues in particular, highlighting the Manchin ad.

Given that it’s well known that there are paranoid, dangerous, and fragile individuals among us, the insinuation that violence against the government is a meritorious pursuit is irresponsible. There are serious debates to be had about policy, but those don’t involve guns.

It’s not perfect, and it’s not binding, but international climate negotiators have struck a deal.

The final hours in Cancun were a world of difference from the closing night of the Copenhagen climate talks. Last year’s summit closed with drama, confusion, and plenty of unhappy delegations, but the Mexico conference came to an end with multiple standing ovations for the host country and widespread concurrence among countries to approve the text of an agreement.

It was after 3:00 a.m. when the parties adopted the agreement — or two agreements, really: one that delays a decision on the future of the Kyoto Protocol and another laying out in more detail a new deal on climate that includes major emitters like the U.S. and China. Of the 194 countries represented in Cancun, 193 backed the text — which, while it falls short on many fronts, represented “a new era in international cooperation on climate change,” said Patricia Espinosa, the minister of foreign affairs for Mexico and president of the summit. Much of what is included in the 32-page agreement [PDF] for a new climate deal is based on the spare Copenhagen Accord, formalizing it within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The greatest success may have been that the Mexican organizers, particularly Espinosa, were able to restore faith in the process. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh praised Espinosa as a “goddess” for her bringing together the parties around an agreement. “You have not only crafted a balanced agreement but most importantly you have restored the confidence of the international community in multilateralism and the multilateral process at a time when the confidence had hit a historic low,” he said. “I believe we have launched a process where the trust deficit has been considerably bridged.”

Broadly, the agreement accomplishes most of what observers hoped it would heading in two weeks ago: It records the commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions that developed and developing countries made in Copenhagen, establishes a framework for transparency, sets up a global climate fund with the goal of providing $100 billion in financing to developing countries by 2020, and establishes an initiative aimed at curbing deforestation.

Observers and many parties acknowledged that the progress was modest, and that the emission pledges are not legally binding and fall short of the stated goal of limiting global warming to under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). And there are still outstanding questions about the fate of the Kyoto Protocol, which binds most industrialized nations to emissions targets, and which is set to expire in 2012.

Not everyone is entirely happy with the final text. Bolivia objected to the adoption of the agreements, saying it did not require enough of wealthy nations. Ambassador Pablo Solon said his country “is not prepared to sign a document which means an increase of the average temperature which will put more human lives in a situation close to death.” But Espinosa moved to adopt the agreement anyway, calling it “one party trying to impose a right of veto upon the will of the conference.” Solon objected to the move to override dissent, a departure from the usual practice to accept agreements only with complete consensus. “Today it is Bolivia, tomorrow it could be any other country,” said Solon.

Most delegations, however, were eager to walk away with something they could declare a win — including the U.S. and China, a signal that the language in the text bridged differences between the two countries about emissions targets and how they would be tracked by other countries.

“What we have now is text that, while not perfect, is certainly a good basis for moving forward,” said U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern. Xie Zhenhua, Stern’s Chinese counterpart, gave similarly positive remarks.

I caught E.U. commissioner for climate action Connie Hedegaard, who led last year’s talks, leaving the plenary early Saturday morning and asked about the difference between this year and last. “The major difference is that people this year realized if we didn’t get a result here the process risked dying,” said Hedegaard. “Basically it was the political will that changed.”

Environmental groups praised the progress, even while noting the agreement’s flaws. Friends of the Earth called it a “wholly inadequate response” while noting “progress in some areas.” The World Wildlife Fund noted “measurable progress” but added that a “lot more work and some big political challenges remain.”

Among the 193 countries that approved the agreement, there was acknowledgment of the significant challenges that remain, but also a more clear desire to compromise. “This deal is not ideal, but it is a deal that works, and that works for us,” said Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates.

Mohamed Aslam, environment minister for the Maldives, said, “I speak from a country whose survival is dependent on any deal we get here. Nobody can doubt what sort of interest I have when I speak about the outcome of this conference. It is a negotiation. Therefore we don’t get everything we want. There are compromises.”

The debate over the future of the Kyoto Protocol — which legally binds industrialized countries to reduce emissions — is the major lingering question. The United States, of course, famously failed to sign on to Kyoto. Japan and Russia have balked at a second commitment period for the 13-year-old protocol, while developing countries have said that allowing the agreement to expire is a deal-breaker for their ongoing participation in broader climate negotiations. “The biggest hole in the Cancun agreement is its failure to permanently resolve the Kyoto conflict. To be fair, that would have been an impossible task this year,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But Kyoto will come back as a front-burner issue next year in Durban, and it will be impossible to avoid it again.”

It’s not clear, said Sivan Kartha, a senior scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute in Boston, whether the one-year delay on a decision will serve as “a lifeline or a noose” for Kyoto.

U.S. envoy Stern skirted the question of whether the new agreement is heading toward a legally binding form anytime soon. “The day will come when there is a legal agreement, but we’re not going to hang everything up on that,” Stern told reporters.

“We should not see this Cancun conference as an end. We should see it rather as a beginning,” said Mexico’s Espinosa. “The text we have before us really seems to be the best we could achieve at this point in a long process.”