"Environmentalists sued the Obama administration on Thursday seeking new federal water-quality standards designed to protect marine life against the corrosive effects of carbon emissions absorbed into the ocean from the burning of fossil fuels."
"California will tighten controls on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, factories and public utilities under a pair of bills signed on Thursday by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown."
"The governor of North Dakota has activated the state's National Guard ahead of a U.S. District judge's decision Friday morning that could inflame protesters who have been gathered here for weeks in an effort to block a pipeline project."
"A North Dakota judge issued a warrant Wednesday for the arrest of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who is accused of spray-painting construction equipment during a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline."
"A federal judge ordered U.S. wildlife managers on Wednesday to enlarge habitat protections in Idaho, Montana and Colorado for the Canada lynx, a rare wild cat that roams the Rockies and mountain forests of several other states."
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will order wastewater disposal wells shut near the epicenter of a 5.6 magnitude earthquake that struck on Saturday around Pawnee, Oklahoma, local media reported on Tuesday."
"A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from opening more than 1 million acres in Central California to oil drilling because the agency did not properly explore the potential dangers of fracking."
"A former top Bureau of Land Management official in New Mexico who later headed an oil and gas trade group accepted improper industry gifts while at the agency and 'attempted to obstruct' a federal investigation into his conduct, according to an inspector general's report that was kept from the public for more than three years."
"Murray Energy Corp. made a $250,000 donation to the Republican Attorneys General Association last year and, in return, the coal mining company’s chief executive got a closed-door meeting with state prosecutors to discuss the Obama administration’s regulation of power plants. Eleven days later, the attorneys general went to federal court to fight the rules that Murray Energy says could put the coal industry out of business."
The Congressional Research Service produces expert nonpartisan backgrounders on many subjects of interest to environment and energy journalists. But Congress won't release them. Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, you can read them now.
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