Environmental Law

In The News (September 17)

By Dennis Pfaff and Kevin Livingston, Editors

• Support for offshore drilling may not be as deep as has been previously thought, at least in the West, suggests a new poll, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.
• Google and General Electric say that they will collaborate on developing geothermal power as well as technology to enable plug-in vehicles to return electricity to the grid, according to Green Wombat, a blog produced by Fortune.
• That sex-and-drugs-and-oil-and-gas scandal at the U.S. Department of Interior agency that regulates offshore drilling is generating new legislation to clean up the situation, reports Reuters. 
• As for offshore oil, more trouble also appears to be looming in Africa, as Nigerian militants have threatened to broaden their "oil war" to offshore oilfields and announced attacks on a crude oil pipeline in the Niger Delta,  according to this Reuters dispatch.
• In Northern California, Berkeley's city council has approved a program to give city-backed loans to property owners who install rooftop solar-power systems, with the money to be paid back as part of the owner's property tax bills, reports The New York Times.
• The annual summer retreat of Arctic Ocean sea ice appears to have ended with the ice not disappearing quite as much as last year -- but with the pack still far below average, according to scientists, The New York Times says.

Full post as published by Climate Law Update on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).