As new heads for environmental and energy agencies come before the Senate for confirmation, they will likely feel heat over the gulf between the Obama administration's rhetoric on transparency and its iron discipline on message control. Case in point: Gina McCarthy, widely expected to be Obama's nominee for EPA's top administrator slot.
"The acting head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warned staff on Tuesday that it may place an unspecified number of jobs on temporary furlough if across-the-board federal budget cuts take effect at the end of this week."
"War has erupted between clean-air activists and state leaders, with the battleground being the data driving decisions about Utah’s air quality."
"A California senator's decision to quit and jump to Chevron Corp. has sparked questions about whether he should have negotiated for that job while in a position to help the company politically."
"The former U.S. EPA official who tangled with Texas officials in a drilling contamination case outside Fort Worth said the state's oil and gas regulators were more interested in promoting the industry than policing it."
"WASHINGTON, DC -- If Congress does not act this coming week, automatic federal spending cuts, called the sequester, will go into effect March 1 that will impact the environment. Funding for parks, energy development, travel, clean air and water, fish and wildlife protection, pollution prevention, and disaster readiness will be cut."
"A team of state scientists has outlined serious concerns about the damage South Carolina will suffer from climate change – threats that include invading eels, dying salt marshes, flooded homes and increased diseases in the state’s wildlife."
"Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is a 315,000-acre stretch of eelgrass and tundra pockmarked with lakes and lagoons, a site where the geese called Pacific black brants stop off to feed before they begin their journey to wintering grounds in Mexico."
"Native Americans on an oil-rich North Dakota reservation have been cheated out of more than $1 billion by schemes to buy drilling rights for lowball prices, a flurry of recent lawsuits assert. And, the suits claim, the federal government facilitated the alleged swindle by failing in its legal obligation to ensure the tribes got a fair deal."
The U.S. food industry's response to the emerging obesity problem has often put its own profits ahead of public health.
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