E2-Wire

ON TAP THURSDAY: Foes of the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline – including billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer – will roll out a campaign pressuring President Obama to reject the project.

The goal: Get Obama’s core supporters to make their case to the president. The social media campaign will focus on “rallying support from President Barack Obama’s online supporters, including the membership of Organizing For America [OFA],” an advisory states.

The OFA is the group borne from Obama's reelection campaign that advocates for his agenda, and Keystone foes are targeting the pro-Obama group as part of the work against TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline.

Meanwhile, back at the White House: The Keystone pressure arrives as the Obama administration is seeking to keep the focus off the pipeline and on the president’s plans to roll out his climate agenda in the coming weeks.

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Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Republicans told administration officials they’re “troubled” by a recent change to the way agencies calculate benefits from carbon regulations.

The lawmakers say they’re concerned the higher “social cost of carbon” authorized by the Obama administration will be used to justify more aggressive greenhouse gas emission rules.

“This is a significant change to an already highly controversial estimate, and as such requires transparency, open debate, and an adherence to well-understood and previously agreed-upon rules,” the GOP senators, led by committee ranking member David Vitter (R-La.), wrote to agency chiefs at the Energy Department, White House Office of Management and Budget and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a letter publicized Wednesday.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she would be “thrilled” to have Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) fill the vacant seat on her panel if he wins the Massachusetts Senate election.

The recent death of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has left a vacancy on the committee, which has jurisdiction over climate change and environmental topics that have been a focus for Markey during his long House career.

Markey is ahead of Republican candidate Gabriel Gomez in polls heading into the June 25 special election to fill the seat of former Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who is now secretary of State.

House Republicans will unveil legislation that affirms Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole repository for spent nuclear fuel, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) told The Hill.

"We're working on that," Upton said. "Stay tuned."

The bill is likely to highlight the divide between the House and Senate on what to do with the Nevada site.

A group of health and environmental organizations are filing a lawsuit to force the Obama administration to review its standards for smog pollution.

The four groups are looking for the court to set a deadline for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review current limits for ozone, which were set in 2008.

"What we're looking at is getting some answers for people so that we know when we're going to be able to provide, hopefully, what we see as stronger protection for public health," Janice Nolen, assistant vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association, told The Hill on Wednesday.

President Obama on Wednesday called climate change the “global threat of our time" in a speech in Berlin.

Capitol Hill has been left guessing what the White House is cooking up on climate.

The federal government spends six times more on disaster recovery than helping communities become resilient to extreme weather that’s predicted to become more intense and frequent in a warming world, a new study shows.

The analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a prominent liberal think tank, labels the approach “pound foolish” and calls for a dedicated fund for “community resilience” fed by higher levies on fossil fuel production.

“We must help communities enhance their ability to withstand the high winds, flood waters, scorching heat, searing wild fires, and parched earth from extreme weather,” states the CAP analysis released Wednesday, which alleges the federal government “woefully underfunds” such efforts.

The Washington Post’s Innovations blog examines the implications of a solar-powered airplane that flew from California to Washington, D.C.

“Solar Impulse’s flight across America could unlock the future potential of solar energy,” the piece states.

Reuters unwraps a new World Bank report that explores how global warming threatens developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia.

The New York Times looks at why natural gas prices are increasingly untethered from oil pricing worldwide.

Discover magazine asks, “How opposed to nuclear energy are liberals?”

Politico reports that a Tuesday House hearing showed that “even if the debate over climate change is largely settled in much of the scientific community, it’s still alive in the halls of Congress.”

White House climate aide Heather Zichal will discuss Obama’s agenda at a morning forum titled: “The Politics of Climate Change.”