National (U.S.)

New Jersey is pulling out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and three other states may follow. Why is RGGI on the ropes and who is throwing the punches? RGGI is made up of 10 northeastern states stretching from Maine to Delaware. In 2008, they banded together to form a carbon-trading program for power plants --- a market mechanism that enables utilities to buy and sell emission credits so they can meet caps on the amount of carbon they're allowed to put into the air.

The rise of the 'tea-party' movement has caused House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R=MI) to transform himself from a green advocate to an anti-EPA standard bearer.

Dengue fever, a painful disease transmitted by mosquitos, is now showing up in Florida for the first time in more than 70 years. Climate change could be a factor.

"The government issued warnings on Friday about two materials used daily by millions of Americans, saying that one [formaldehyde] causes cancer and the other [styrene] might."

"Judging from an annual survey by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities, the American public is roughly as fractured in its attitudes toward climate change today as it was last year."

"The snowpack in the Rocky Mountains has been gradually thinning over much of the past century, and a new study attributes much of that to global warming."

"A report says the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was “not forthcoming” with other commissioners in his decision to have the agency’s staff wind down the review of an application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada."

"As the heat wave continues, some civil rights leaders say high temperatures pose a particular threat to poor, minority communities."

"Proposed federal clean-air rules could have a profound impact on American Electric Power, leading to an increase in electricity bills, the closing or partial closing of 11 power plants and the loss of 600 jobs, the company said."

"A fire in an electrical switch room on Tuesday briefly knocked out cooling for a pool holding spent nuclear fuel at the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant outside Omaha, Neb., plant officials said."