Energy & Environment

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.”

The National Biodiesel Board (NBB) has hired Lindsay Fitzgerald, an Environmental Protection Agency expert on the national renewable fuels mandate, to be its director of regulatory affairs.

Fitzgerald comes to the newly created position from her role as a specialist in EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, where she worked on the Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates increasing amounts of biofuels in the nation’s transportation fuels supply.

“Her extensive knowledge of the RFS will be a tremendous benefit to our industry and to our members as they navigate the program,” Anne Steckel, NBB's vice president of federal affairs, in a statement.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said he’s sure Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is bluffing about ending the filibuster.

“The only other ... use of that term is Holocaust denier,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said Tuesday at a hearing.

Opponents of proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest were dealt a blow Tuesday when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it wouldn’t conduct a broad environmental evaluation for the projects.

Jennifer Moyer, the Corps’s acting regulatory chief, said during a House hearing that there is “no compelling justification” to conduct an area-wide environmental impact statement for each of the three outstanding applications to build coal export terminals in Washington and Oregon.

“They are independent projects in different locations, whose impacts are not related,” she told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Energy and Power.

Litigation aimed at forcing limits on emissions is on hold after reports that the president will soon tackle climate change.