The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized its mandatory greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting rule. This new rule will require thousands of facilities to monitor and report their annual emissions of several major GHG. The registry should provide much of the detailed, facility-level information needed to develop policies to reduce emissions. Several major changes were made to the proposed rule, mostly in favor of industry. The changes appear to have reduced the amount of facilities covered and the amount of greenhouse gases tracked.

Czar oversight, or, more accurately, czar bashing, has been co-opted by conservative commentators and some Republican lawmakers. It seems conservatives are just trying to score political points by smearing czars, and smearing President Obama in the process. That’s a shame, because czar oversight is very much an apolitical issue, or at least it should be.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson announced today that she will review and possibly revise the national air quality standard for ozone, or smog. The Bush administration announced the standard on March 12, 2008, but clean air advocates and good government groups accused Bush officials of ignoring scientific conclusions in the face of political pressure. Today, EPA intimated that it will more closely align the regulation to the underlying science.

A vast majority of Americans wants government to play a more proactive role in protecting the nation’s food supply, according to a new poll commissioned by Pew Charitable Trusts.