After nearly a year of negotiations with the state’s utility companies, Massachusetts officials announced a set of new energy efficiency standards on Friday in what is anticipated to be the most ambitious plan in the nation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued an interpretive release on Wednesday in an attempt to offer guidance to public companies regarding the need to  disclose the impact of environmental legislation and regulation on their businesses.

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Representative Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., has introduced legislation that would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. Calling the EPA regulation “boneheaded,”  Pomeroy further stated that the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the current provisions of the Clean Air Act is dangerous, irresponsible and just plain wrong.

At first the course in carbon trading at the University of  Houston seemed like a sensible environmental idea, particularly because the business school teamed up with the law school.  But now that the Obama Administration has just announced that it is awarding clean energy tax credits, educators might be taking a more serious look at the interface between the environment and the legal issues involved.  Obama Awards $2.3 Billion in Clean-Energy Tax Credits 

Some of the more moderate Democratic senators are asking the White House to shelve  the cap-and-trade legislation, according to a report in the Politico.
Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told the Politico that she and several Senate Democrats told the Obama Administration that the cap-and-trade bill should be put off.
It seems that the contentious battle over health care has taken its toll. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) have all indicated that passage of cap and trade next year is unlikely.

According to the White House, President Obama is still planning to leave for the Copenhagen climate change summit tonight. . The President’s plans remain unchanged even though the climate talks are reportedly in disarray and his heath care legislation is “on the precipice”.
To help spur the climate talks along, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday proposed that the world’s major economies fund $100 billion a year over the next decade for developing nations to fight climate change.
But, as the Washington Post reports, there will be no major treaty and …

The Obama Administration’s message on how it plans to stimulate the economy and create jobs became a bit confused this week.
First, the Environmental Protection Agency  formally announced its CO2 and greenhouse gas (GHG) endangerment finding on Monday.

The astonishing news from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) continues.
The Sunday Times reports that the scientists at the CRU at the University of East Anglia admitted that they threw away “much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.”
The CRU made this admission in response a Freedom of Information request. Scientists who have sought access to this data for years now learn that the raw data was purportedly dumped in the 1980’s.

The Ogiek people, East Africa’s honey-hunting forest dwellers, are about to lose their home, according to Minority Rights International (MRG). The news comes as the Kenyan government has approved plans to forcibly remove thousands of settlers from the Mau Forest, the Ogiek’s ancestral lands.

With the Kerry-Boxer cap & trade legislation on an indefinite hold in the Senate because of concerns over high unemployment and the likelihood of contentious 2010 elections, two other senators, Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Jim Webb (D-VA), are trying their hand at a bipartisan approach to clean energy.