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Ever since comprehensive climate legislation died of neglect in the U.S. Senate in 2010, environmentalists have looked to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to step in and save the day. According to the Supreme Court, the agency has the power—and the responsibility—to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act if the EPA decided climate [...]
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson on the Energy Star program, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last week. Over the past two decades, Energy Star products—selected for high energy efficiency—have saved Americans about $230 billion in utility bills and prevent more than 1.7 billion metric tons of carbon emissions. Best know for appliances, Energy [...]
At the start of the fall, greens were not happy with President Obama. There was lingering disappointment about the failure of climate legislation a year before—a failure that many environmentalists blamed on insufficient action from the White House. That was bad enough, but at the beginning of September Obama shocked many of his environmental allies [...]
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator LISA JACKSON, in a statement announcing the release of the EPA’s long-awaited rules on mercury and other air toxics. The regulations—which have been in the works for two decades—are the first to restrict emissions of mercury, a potent neurotoxin, from power plants. According to the EPA, the new rules—with which [...]
During his career as a running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jerome Bettis made a habit of running over opponents—that’s why they called him “the Bus.” Now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hoping that Bettis can handle conservative lawmakers the way he used to brush aside opposing linebackers. Bettis was in Washington on Thursday [...]
Recent examinations of the health and environmental impacts of mountaintop mining – stripping the tops off of mountains to extract coal – has the practice looking pretty guilty. It apparently spikes birth defects, worsens chronic conditions like heart disease, and ruins land, and it doesn’t look like it will be clearing its name anytime soon. [...]
If you report on the environmental issues surrounding hydraulic fracturing and shale natural gas, you’ll hear a certain line from gas industry representatives over and over: there has never been a documented case of groundwater contamination by fracking. There are angry homeowners who say that fracking has spoiled their water supply, and suspicious incidents across [...]
Jia Lynn Yang of the Washington Post has a nice piece this morning on the real impact of government regulations on employment, pivoting off the tightening environmental rules that have led some coal plants to close early. She finds that on the whole, regulations don’t have much impact on jobs: Some jobs are lost. Others are [...]
Many of President Obama’s progressive supports have soured on him in recent months, as the debt crisis and a Republican House has forced him to embrace deep spending cuts, and environmentalists are among them. There’s still unhappiness among greens over the White House’s perceived failure to push hard for carbon cap-and-trade legislation—legislation that was a major [...]
As if the stifling, tripe-digit temperatures gripping much of nation weren’t bad enough, the heat wave is also contributing to dangerously high levels of air pollution—especially around the cities of the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic region. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) air quality rankings range from 0 to 500—500 being the worst—and the air quality [...]
