oil

Feeding the globe's insatiable energy appetite is a highly dangerous business. And, unfortunately, events like the BP oil spill are not once-in-a-generation freak accidents. Here, we take a look at the biggest energy-related accidents in 2011.

The evolution of the American transportation industry took another step forward today when the Obama administration finalized historic fuel economy standards for cars and light-duty trucks.  Starting in 2025, the minimum fuel efficiency for all new models will be 54.5 miles per gallon.

Greenpeace activists have interrupted drilling operations on Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya Arctic oil platfform.

Perhaps more than any other sitting U.S. President, Barack Obama has been Commander in Chief through some of the most obvious examples of what climate change will do to America. The last few weeks alone have given us severe droughts in some areas of the country while others have seen unprecedented flooding; The state of Colorado is battling some of the worst wildfires in their history; and massive heat waves are engulfing large swaths of America. And let’s not forget the massive snowstorms in the winter of 2010 – 2011.

In Part 1 of this series, we explored the overall environmental issues that are facing the U.S., mostly as a part of coordinated attacks by politicians in Washington. In the next few articles, we’ll take a look at what each candidate has said or done in regards to both environmental and energy issues.

Canadian scientists are taking to the streets in protest of the Harper government's latest cuts to scientific research and its increasingly backward environmental policies.

Environmental and energy issues became one of the central issues of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. While the economy itself took center stage, energy issues were right behind it, being pushed by the insufferable chant of “Drill baby drill.” In the four years that have followed, the U.S. has seen a boom in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the worst oil spill in our history, skyrocketing (and then plummeting) gas prices, a disastrous oil pipeline plan that threatens the safety of our aquifers, and a Republican-led assault on environmental safety standards.

Investigating the extent to which renewable energy can meet electricity demands in the United States over the next several decades, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has come to some telling conclusions.

Climate-change skeptics like to call environmentalists “alarmists” because of their call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The skeptics say the science is too uncertain, that there’s no rush to act, and those who argue otherwise are sanctimonious lefties out of touch with reality.

Christy Clark, the premier of British Columbia, has joined the ranks of public officials the world over, which have clouded the definition of "clean energy" by using the term to seve their own interests.