Economy & Business

""The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) internal watchdog is launching a project to analyze the environmental impact of the federal ethanol mandate."

"It’s 11.30am in the pumping heart of Canada’s tar sands industry, on a day when local crude is trading at a rock-bottom $29 a barrel. For the down-and-out men and women heading down to the free lunch in the basement of a Fort McMurray church, it’s hard to see a way back up."

"Bill Gates has branded fossil fuel divestment “a false solution” and accused environmentalists of making misleading claims about the price of solar power."

"FORT McMURRAY, Alberta — At a camp for oil workers here, a collection of 16 three-story buildings that once housed 2,000 workers sits empty. A parking lot at a neighboring camp is now dotted with abandoned cars. With oil prices falling precipitously, capital-intensive projects rooted in the heavy crude mined from Alberta’s oil sands are losing money, contributing to the loss of about 35,000 energy industry jobs across the province."

"In the disappearing rainforests of Indonesia, a 9-year-old boy copes with the trauma of eviction"

"Back in 1990, as the debate over climate change was heating up, a dissident shareholder petitioned the board of Exxon, one of the world’s largest oil companies, imploring it to develop a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from its production plants and facilities."

"The House of Representatives voted Friday to end the 40-year-old ban on exporting American oil to foreign nations, launching a showdown with the Senate and the president in the nation’s latest battle over energy and climate change."

"Throughout the 1980s, the company struggled to solve the carbon problem of one of the biggest gas fields in the world out of concern for climate impacts."

"Citigroup Inc., the third-biggest U.S. bank, said it will cut back on financing for coal mining projects, in the latest blow to the industry that’s viewed as a key contributor to global warming."