National (U.S.)

"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar launched the Obama administration's first coordinated response to the impacts of climate change Monday, which he said would both monitor how global warming is altering the nation's landscape and help the country cope with those changes."

"A coalition of environmental groups says U.S. EPA is 26 years tardy in limiting toxic metal discharges from coal-fired power plants and is threatening to sue the agency if it does produce the rules."

"Government scientists figure that one out of five male black bass in American river basins have egg cells growing inside their sexual organs, a sign of how widespread fish feminizing has become."

As governments tighten their belts, it's getting harder for them to pay scientists to monitor the health of the nation's ecosystems. So increasingly, they're turning to citizens who do that kind of work for free. The Environment Report's Ann Dornfeld reports on the growing influence of these "citizen scientists".

An EPA study of possible gas drilling pollution in Wyoming has become a case in point in a national legislative battle.

Intensified monitoring for toxics in the air around certain schools has only raised more questions about health effects -- and some lawsuits.

Lawyers for a long-established sustainable forest products label are challenging the legitimacy of another label backed by the paper and timber industry.

After he finishes health legislation, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus will stake a claim of jurisdiction on the climate bill.

"In the last five years alone, chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses. However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment."

"The federal government, acting to protect endangered fish, is setting up new rules to limit where and when orchardists, farmers and others can use some common pesticides. ... The rules, coming from the Environmental Protection Agency, follow from a decision last year by the National Marine Fisheries Service to require limits on three common pesticides -- chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion -- in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California."