President Obama's decision to undercut EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson by cancelling a long-overdue update to smog standards was a mistake on both the politics and the policy. For smart takes on the politics of this, you can read Steve Benen and...

Originally published at EnviroKnow.com.

The Congressional Super-Committee has been tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction measures over a ten-year period by November 23rd. They'll likely consider all sorts of draconian measures like reducing social security benefits and cutting spending from other programs that help people in need.

Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency is required to protect states from sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution emitted from coal plants in other states. After dragging its feet for a while, the Bush administration introduced the Clean Air Interstate Rule in 2005. Due to its...

Building on an idea that seems to have originated with Newt Gingrich, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has spent the past few weeks calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to be abolished. In the June 13th GOP debate, Bachmann said she would pass the "mother of all repeal bills"...

Rick Santorum announced yesterday that next week, in a Western Pennsylvania coal field, he'll announce he is running for President. The leaked announcement seems to have heavily emphasized the coal field angle, since several major outlets mentioned it prominently.

On Twitter, Bill Scher asked a...

Chicago has a major coal problem. The city's Fisk and Crawford plants, which have been operating for nearly 100 years and were rebuilt more than 40 years ago, were grandfathered in under the 1970 Clean Air Act amendments. The assumption at the time was that these plants would be shutting...

This piece was co-written by Ryan Koronowski, Alliance for Climate Protection Research Director and Josh Nelson, Alliance for Climate Protection Director of Online Communications and New Media.

Former oil and energy trader Eric Bolling, a financial news personality on Fox News, often gets on television to talk about climate change....

Energy Secretary Steven Chu gave a speech at the National Press Club on Monday in which he referred to China's investments in clean energy as a "Sputnik moment."

"America still has the opportunity to lead in a world that will need essentially a new industrial revolution to give...

This piece was co-written by Ryan Koronowski, Alliance for Climate Protection Research Director and Josh Nelson, Alliance for Climate Protection New Media Director.

This week, CNN's Parker Spitzer spoke with Tim Phillips, the head of the front group Americans for Prosperity that's funded by the oil company Koch Industries. Mr....

Three weeks ago, we asked our members to nominate the worst corporate polluters of 2010. Our goal was to identify organizations that have hijacked our democracy, devastated our environment and denied the science of climate change -- all while reaping massive profits. The response was overwhelming. In just a...

As you may have heard by now, Repower America is currently accepting votes for our 2010 Snake Oil Awards. The idea is to identify the dirtiest opponent of clean energy this year and give it the negative attention it truly deserves. Our campaign director, Dave Boundy, argued that

The backers of the Yes on Proposition 23 campaign in California have plenty of reasons to be embarrassed:

· Their key talking points are based on lies.
· An overwhelming majority of their funding comes from oil and coal companies.
· Some of their key...

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the answer is no. On Thursday I documented a blatantly false Bloomberg news story designed to mislead readers about the level of support for President Obama's temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling. Bloomberg's poll (PDF), which the story was based on,...

Jonathan Cohn, writing at his new must-read blog, has a fascinating piece on the policy implications of the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The gist of his argument is that the public push for clean energy policy -- in the form of marches on Washington...

In wide-ranging interview published today by the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, House Minority Leader John Boehner told the paper's editors that President Obama had 'overreacted' to the still-gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

Boehner said Obama overreacted to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The...

Speaking at a sparsely-attended luncheon in Fairbanks, AK on Friday, Senator Murkowski (R-AL) touted her failed effort to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions as a 'badge of honor.' She went on to explain why she considered the maneuver, which went down by a 53-47 margin...

The latest NBC/WSJ poll includes a number of interesting findings. Dave Weigel and Alex Seitz-Wald both took note of BP's extremely low favorability ratings:

Indeed, the poll shows that only 6 percent have a favorable rating of BP. In the history of the NBC News/Journal poll,...

CNN released new polling Thursday with fascinating data on how Americans feel about the response to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Using the poll's toplines (PDF), I've created a series of charts which present the data in a far more useful format.

First and...

Steve Benen and Greg Sargent have been making an important point lately that hasn't yet received the attention it deserves: to the extent that Republicans intend to oppose efforts to hold BP accountable this summer and fall, they are extremely vulnerable politically.

Here's Benen first, commenting on Republican...

This is devastating:

Most of the experts have concluded that, given the limited data available and the small amount of time to process that data, the best estimate for the average flow rate for the leakage prior to the insertion of the RITT is between 25,000 to 30,000...