Environment

Earlier this month Bill McKibben wrote that “Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history.”

In early October 2015, a jury awarded $1.6 million to Carla Bartlett after attorneys presented ample evidence to prove that a kidney tumor that Ms. Bartlett had developed was a result of ingesting a chemical known as C8. The chemical was discharged into the Ohio River by DuPont, and it was used for decades as a chemical in the development of Teflon.

Peabody Energy (BTU), the top miner of coal in the world, may soon file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The news comes as Peabody's stock closed Wednesday at a six-month low of $2.19 per share — a 46-percent fall. Peabody noted its potential bankruptcy in the company's March 16 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Form 10-K.

One-third of the big donations funding the bloated presidential super PACs last year came from fossil fuel interests. That’s according to campaign finance research by Greenpeace, reviewed by The Guardian. Since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling and a subsequent lower court decision in 2010, corporations, unions, and individuals have been allowed to flood elections with unlimited cash.

A Pennsylvania jury handed down a $4.2 million verdict in a lawsuit centering on water contamination from negligent shale gas drilling in Dimock, PA, a tiny town that made international headlines for its flammable and toxic drinking water.

Energy giant BP is the UK’s single biggest corporate lobbyist in Europe, new analysis by Lobby Facts reveals. As the data released on 7 March shows, BP spent between £2.23 million and £2.3 million (€ 2.75m – € 2.99m) in lobbying European policy makers on energy and climate issues in 2014, the most recent figures available. This represents a substantial increase, almost doubling BP’s declared lobby spend for the previous year, when it spent up to £1.16m (€ 1.5m).

Two recent studies further call into question the oil and gas industry's claims of the climate benefits and community benefits of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). One of those studies, published in Environmental Research Letters and titled, “Just fracking: a distributive environmental justice analysis of unconventional gas development in Pennsylvania, USA,” concludes that “the income distribution of the population nearer to shale gas wells has not been transformed since shale gas development.”

Around the nation, big utility companies are successfully lobbying lawmakers and regulators to restrict individual and corporate access to solar power, denying people significant savings on electricity bills and the opportunity to take part in the growing green energy economy. In third-party solar financing, a non-utility company installs solar panels on a customer’s property at little or no up-front cost, sometimes selling the solar energy back to the customer at rates typically lower than a utility would charge.

DeSmog recently revealed the latest troubling chapter in the story of Israel’s nascent oil and gas boom – a saga of revolving doors, multinational fossil fuel intrigue, and significant American political intervention. But there’s another interesting tale to tell, one that has gone unnoticed by many observers.

Earlier this year the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry’s top lobbying group, produced a new report on rail safety. While the report ignored serious safety improvements such as requiring modernized braking systems on trains carrying hazardous materials, it did address one area of concern for oil-by-rail activists — rail bridge safety.