"The United States is too reliant on China for minerals crucial to new clean energy technologies, making the American economy vulnerable to shortages of materials needed for a range of green products — from compact fluorescent light bulbs to electric cars to giant wind turbines."
"Independent federal experts investigating the blowout aboard the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig are finding major parallels between this year's disaster and a 2005 blast that killed 15 workers at a BP PLC refinery in Texas -- indicating the industry has failed to overhaul safety rules, they said [Wednesday]."
"In an unprecedented move, the environmental agencies of New Jersey and New York have begun forcing scores of their largest water users to either retrofit their plants with modern cooling systems which won't kill billions of fish annually or cease operating."
"Cutting through rhetoric that so often dominates debate over Canada's oil sands, a new report by a prominent academic group is a comprehensive snapshot of the failings and successes of all the industry's stakeholders and raises hope for a new era of oversight."
"The Obama administration supports a full study of the effects of gas drilling in the watershed that provides drinking water for Philadelphia and New York City, but it doesn't want to wait until it's finished for drilling to begin."
"For several weeks, nine Kansas state employees have been voluntarily working weekends and late into the night to finish a review of a permit for a power plant. ... And that worries the coal plant’s opponents, who said the extra hours were a clear signal that the state was pushing the permit process too fast."
"A federal appeals court has decided to move ahead with lawsuits challenging the Department of Energy's authority to scrap plans to make Yucca Mountain, Nev., a national repository for nuclear waste."
"Plans to open the first major coal export facility on the West Coast are likely to be delayed until next year because of an appeal filed by a coalition of environmental groups, which say shipping coal to Asia throws a wrench in U.S. efforts to reduce international greenhouse gas emissions."
"A month before the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, a Massey Energy worker admitted that he had used what turned out to be a forged foreman's card when he conducted hundreds of mine safety checks at the Raleigh County operation, the Sunday Gazette-Mail has learned."
"Negotiators from about 190 countries reached a modest set of agreements early Saturday in Cancun on how to tackle global warming but punted some of the most controversial questions for a later date." Here's a roundup of the news, analysis, and reaction from some major international news organizations.
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