Does this story sound familiar? A court orders the EPA to take action under the Clean Air Act. The EPA comes out with a set of rules. Business interests complain. The EPA relents, delaying and then relaxing rules that have compliance deadlines years down the line. That's about the tack the EPA has taken on carbon regulation. But apparently the agency liked it so much, it’s decided to apply the same approach to other environmental threats. This week, the EPA decided to delay indefinitely rules that would limit the amount of mercury, lead and other toxins that boilers in power …

Like those bridges and roads and trains tracks you've got there? Want to keep them? That'll be $2 trillion. That's how much the Urban Land Institute estimates the U.S. needs to invest in infrastructure just to keep what's already in place from falling apart. Everybody else in the world gets this. In Europe, countries realize that investing in infrastructure might just create jobs while promoting economic growth further down the line. India, China, and Brazil are investing in roads and sewer systems and dams at a pace that will quickly outstrip the one set by our huff-puffing, faltering empire. To …

There's a new study fingering cell phones as the culprit behind mysteriously dwindling bee populations. That's been one of the theories floating around for years -- others include viruses, global warming, insecticide, and en masse return to the planet Melissa Majora -- but new research out of Switzerland provides solid evidence that cell phone signals confuse bees, making them abandon hives, fly erratically, and get lost and disoriented. Inhabitat points out that, while bees are crucial to the ecosystems where they live, it's unlikely that we can get the entire world economy to cut down on cell phone usage just …

Remember when we called the Arcimoto SRK "an electric car for the Facebook generation"? Apparently it's also an electric car for the "Firefly" generation. Actor Nathan Fillion got all excited about the car at its launch, and his remarks get at the main reasons for wanting an electric car: Spaceship resemblance and revenge. Thank you for giving me a way to stick it to big oil and big auto companies. Because... I am a vengeful man. And they've been sticking it to me for a long time. No matter how old I get, I don't think I'll ever get tired …

Note to climate change deniers: If you're going to lean heavily on a particular paper, make sure it's not copied out of Wikipedia. The journal Computational Statistics and Data Analysis has retracted a 2008 report by statistician Edward Wegman, which claimed the climate change consensus is an artifact of overly-intimate collaboration between scientists -- essentially, peer pressure. Denialists love this, needless to say; it's a federally funded report published in a peer-reviewed journal that doesn't just oppose the scientific consensus about climate change, but criticizes the whole idea of scientific consensus. Only problem: It's plagiarized. Oh, and it sucked to begin …

Lots of American journalists (including this one!) have gone on and on about renewables and nuclear power in Germany without having a first-hand appreciation of the situation, or even any German language ability. This has led us all to misapprehend some pretty basic facts about why the Germans decided to phase out their existing nuclear power plants, even if it means they’re burning more fossil fuels in the short term. (Granted, a big part of it was Fukushima.) Luckily a German popped over to Climate Progress to explain it all in the comments: ...It turned out that [the Merkel government’s …

Less than half of Bangladeshis have access to electricity, which is essential for economic productivity and the kind of night-time illumination that allows kids to study after dark. (Hey, not everyone is as determined as Abe Lincoln.) So the World Bank is spending to get solar-powered light systems installed where the (notoriously unreliable) electrical power grid of Bangladesh can't reach. So far 870,000 citizens have benefitted from the program, and the World Bank is putting $130 million more toward expanding it. Even so, it's a drop in the bucket: the country of 150 million people aims to provide 10 percent …

The home improvement store Lowe's is partnering with Sungevity, a solar panel company, to offer instant, in-store estimates for home solar installation. The panels can be rented for a monthly fee. There goes your excuse: Get off the grid, already. The EPA caved to manufacturers’ push to delay emissions standards for toxins like mercury and lead from industrial boilers. Former Utah governor and GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman -- who is a Republican, in case “Utah” didn’t tip you off -- says he respects science and believes in climate change. All right, we might have someone in the 2012 race …

Scholastic, the children's book publisher, took a big pile of money from the American Coal Foundation and turned it into a curriculum for 4th graders that (surprise!) didn't mention any of the drawbacks of coal. Now Scholastic is all sorry it pimped out America's kids to the industry that quite possibly cares least about their future. Or at least, it’s sorry it got caught. So the good news is that Scholastic won't be passing out copies of its pro-coal curriculum, and also the American Coal Foundation comes out looking like the cynical disinformers at the Tobacco Institute, just like always. …

If you fuel your truck with biodiesel made from palm oil grown on a patch of cleared rainforest, you could be putting into the atmosphere 10 times more greenhouse gasses than if you’d used conventional fossil fuels. It's a scenario so ugly that, in its worst case, it makes even diesel created from coal (the "coal to liquids" fuel dreaded by climate campaigners the world over) look "green." The biggest factor determining whether or not a biofuel ultimately leads to more greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional fossil fuels is the type of land used to grow it, says a new study …