Environmental Politics

"Susan Rice, the candidate believed to be favored by President Obama to become the next Secretary of State, holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline. If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice's first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project."

"Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a skeptic of man-made global warming, is set to take over the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in the 113th Congress."

"President Obama has signed into law a bill that requires U.S. airlines be excluded from European carbon emissions fees."

"Top International Energy Agency (IEA) officials offered a bleak assessment Tuesday of the prospects for global progress on preventing big temperature increases."

"Japanese voters look likely to hand victory to a party that favors nuclear power in the first election since the March 2011 Fukushima radiation disaster -- a result a baffled Greenpeace activist likens to one of the 'wonders of the world.'"

"Republicans stopped Sen. Jon Tester's (D-Mont.) Sportsmen's Act dead in its tracks Monday evening."

"For drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, the 17-page article in the New England Journal of Medicine represented a coup. The 2006 report described a trial that compared three diabetes drugs and concluded that Avandia, the company’s new drug, performed best. ... What only careful readers of the article would have gleaned is the extent of the financial connections between the drugmaker and the research."

"The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank skeptical of climate change science, has joined with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council to write model legislation aimed at reversing state renewable energy mandates across the country."

"Remember that questionable study put out by the State University at Buffalo earlier this year, the one that claimed Pennsylvania was doing a good job at regulating the fracking industry? This week SUNY Buffalo's president announced his decision to shutter its publisher, the school's own Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI)."