News bites: Carbon emissions from energy hit record high, Germany abandons nuclear power, and a new oil sands controversy

Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from power generation hit a record high in 2010.

Bloomberg has more here, while the Guardian contrasts the faster-than-expected rise with the “snail’s pace” of international climate talks.

This should give President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel something to talk about when she visits Washington June 7; Germany is abandoning nuclear power.

The AP has more on federal plans, announced Monday, to shut down all of the country’s 17 nuclear plants by 2022.

The New York Times explores why the Japanese nuclear industry avoided, for decades, the grassroots opposition that sprang up in the U.S. and elsewhere.

This story is spreading like wildfire in environmental circles:

Canada’s Postmedia News service — via The Vancouver Sun — reports that Canada’s government “has acknowledged that it deliberately excluded” key data about oil sands’ greenhouse gas emissions from a major report.

Look for U.S. green groups to cite this story as they press the State Department to reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would expand delivery of oil sands crude to Gulf Coast refineries.

Elsewhere, the BBC reports that the European Court of Human Rights “has ruled that Russia violated the rights of the jailed oil tycoon and outspoken Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.”