Climate Health

Colbert v. Browner: Former chief defends the EPA against truthiness

In an interview with former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, Stephen Colbert came out swinging at the EPA with lines straight out of the GOP playbook.

Get the lead out: Clean air tied to decline in violent crime

Research ties the decades-long drop in violent crime to reduced urban lead poisoning.

Critical List: Judge rules on polar bears’ status; Cain’s wrong on wind and solar

A new ruling on the polar bear's status as a threatened species gives the Obama administration the power to decide the species' fate.

Amtrak carried more passengers last year than ever before.

The E.U. is wondering whether it should just give up its GHG reduction plans since no one else in the world seems be doing their part to decrease emissions.

The EPA doesn’t regulate farm dust, it regulates air pollution

One cardinal rule of American politics is "Thou shalt not piss off the farmers." (Remember how farms were going to get a free pass on cap-and-trade?) Conveniently for Republicans, earlier this year, air monitors in Arizona found high levels of particulate matter in the air, and the EPA traced it to farms and had to work with farmers to minimize the amount of dust their work was creating.

Now, Arizona is very, very dusty place, and particulate matter is a hazard to air quality. But for what a reasonable person can only assume were political reasons, Republicans started claiming that the EPA was going to start imposing "farm dust" regulations on Midwestern farms, and now they are trying to get Congress to vote against "farm dust" regulations.

Of course, these "farm dust regulations" don't govern farms or dust in particular. 

Doing your wash is hurting the planet, and it’s not because you’re using hot water

Sorry to have to bum y'all out, but here is a new way that we are all destroying the planet without even realizing it: by washing our clothes. And, yah, I know you wash your clothes in cold water, but I'm not talking about the energy your machines use. I'm talking about how whenever you wash clothes made of synthetic fibers, tiny bits of plastic flake off and get flushed with the wash water into the sewage system.

Even Republicans favor the EPA rules that Republicans are trying to block

Yet another nationwide poll has found that the public overwhelmingly supports clean air protections, across demographic and party lines. Yes, even Republicans.

State Department picked less-than-objective company to review Keystone XL impact

Sometimes you wish government bureaucrats would just stop and think. It's been clear for a while now that the State Department favors the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. But one would think that they'd like to at least preserve the appearance that they were conducting a thorough and unbiased review of the pipeline’s environmental impacts.

Apparently that wasn't a particular concern, because the department allowed TransCanada, the pipeline operator, to participate in the selection of the company conducting the environmental review. Perhaps less than surprisingly, Transcanada recommended Cardno Entrix, which considers TransCanada a "major client," to do the job.

Critical List: Spilt oil tars New Zealand shores; climate change is a top issue for Europeans

Oil has reached New Zealand beaches, after an oil tanker ran into a reef last week. The tanker was carrying 1,700 tons of oil and 200 tons of diesel.

All these attacks on obscure regulations about boilers and concrete might seem boring, but in reality, they're part of a campaign that could destroy decades of environmental progress.

Europeans think that climate change is one of the top two issues facing the globe. (Although the No. 1 concern was a sort of Voltronesque mega-problem: poverty, hunger, and lack of drinking water.)

Rick Perry used to be against ethanol, but now he's in Iowa, so … he's not sure what he thinks.

Republican anti-EPA jihad, explained

National Journal's Ronald Brownstein has an excellent column on the unusual party discipline of House Republicans have displayed in recent votes against EPA regulations.

Critical List: DOE’s loan guarantee head out; some beluga whales are toxic

Jonathan Silver, DOE's loan guarantee czar, is the first government employee to lose his job over Solyndra. leaving the government because the loan guarantee program doesn't have any money left, anyway.

Solyndra's also screwing the rest of the cleantech industry.

The BP spill is still affecting Louisiana, where the oyster season could be delayed and shrimp harvests dropped 99 percent.

A judge ruled that the EPA was a little too excited about regulating West Virginia coal mines and should have gone through more formal rulemaking on guidelines to dump coal waste into streams. Another part of their work, on water quality, is still at issue, which means coal companies could lose in the long run.