The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments April 19 in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut regarding whether electric utilities contributed to global warming. The court is being asked to decide (1) whether states and private parties have standing to seek judicially-fashioned emissions caps on five utilities for their alleged contribution to harms claimed to arise from global climate change caused by more than a century of emissions by billions of independent sources; (2) whether a cause of action to cap carbon dioxide emissions can be implied under federal common law where no statute creates such a cause of action, and the Clean Air Act speaks directly to the same subject matter and assigns federal responsibility for regulating such emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency; and (3) whether claims seeking to cap defendants' carbon dioxide emissions at "reasonable" levels, based on a court's weighing of the potential risks of climate change against the socioeconomic utility of defendants' conduct, would be governed by "judicially discoverable and manageable standards" or could be resolved without "initial policy determination[s] of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion."

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), April 5:

Washington, DC — A plan awaiting approval by the US Environmental Protection Agency that would dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after "radiological incidents" is drawing vigorous objections from agency experts, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At issue is the acceptable level of public health risk following a radiation release, whether an accidental spill or a "dirty bomb" attack.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has not caused the Obama administration to rethink its commitment to "clean nuclear power." Obama’s 2012 budget calls for an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants. "The administration’s energy priorities are based solely on how best to build a 21st century, clean energy economy," White House spokesman Clark Stevens said in a statement this week. "That policy is not about picking one energy source over another." Even as his administration has ordered a review of all US reactors, Obama last week called nuclear power an "important part" of his energy agenda.

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Alaska refused March 7 to order ExxonMobil to pay an additional $92 million in damages from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Under a 1991 settlement agreement, Exxon paid $900 million in civil damages. The US and Alaskan government sought in 2006 to reopen the settlement agreement, saying more money was needed to clean up the crude oil that was still tainting Prince William Sound. Environmental activist Rick Steiner had filed a motion seeking court intervention to bring the re-opener process to a close. Judge H. Russel Holland, who has presided over much of the litigation stemming from 1989 spill, found that the US and Alaskan governments appeared to be close to reaching an agreement with ExxonMobil, refusing to order the payment.

Oil prices rose past $104 a barrel on March 4, marking a two-and-a-half-year high and sending stocks sharply lower on Wall Street, as fighting in Libya and unrest in the Arab world intensified. As a result of the unrest, Libya's production halved, forcing Saudi Arabia to hike output to make up for the resulting shortfall. Libya has Africa's largest oil reserves and contributed about 2% of global production before the crisis broke out. The spread of unrest to Saudi Arabia, the world's number one exporter, helped further drive up prices. (AP, Proactive Investors, The Street, March 5)

The president's Oil Spill Commission—officially the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling—has presented its report to the White House and will officially disband on March 11. The report concludes that BP was long aware of problems with cementing work performed by Halliburton, which was among the contractors on BP’s Macondo well. The report finds that the "root technical cause" of last April's blowout was inadequate cementing. "BP's failures are especially troubling because it had previously identified several relevant areas for concern during a 2007 audit of Halliburton's capabilities," the report states.

Officials from the Ensco Offshore Company appeared in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Jan. 12 in connection with a lawsuit the company filed last year against the moratorium on issuing drilling permits. The moratorium was enacted after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Ensco told the court that although the moratorium has been lifted, officials continue to unreasonably delay action on deepwater drilling permit applications. Ensco is seeking a preliminary injunction compelling the US Department of Interior to "expeditiously" process five pending permit applications the company has filed. The US Department of Justice denies there are delays and says that the additional time is due to new safety precautions to which the DoI must adhere.

Sixty years ago, on Jan. 12, 1951, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, took effect, its text for the first time defining the crime of genocide under international law, establishing punishments and the responsibility of signatory nations to act against it. The world has nonetheless witnessed several genocides since then.