In contesting a federal effort to propel Washington’s environmental agenda, House Republicans nixed a congressional proposal to establish a new government program called the National Climate Service. Part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and akin to the agency’s National Weather Service (NWS), the proposed division has been hailed by congressional Democrats as an essential federal service that would help inform farmers, insurance companies, and the general public of projected weather patterns. The central idea, Democrats and NOAA officials note, is that while the NWS provides short-term weather conditions, the National Climate Service would concurrently provide long-term projections of future climate-related events.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (left) called on world leaders Monday to collaborate in financing a multibillion-dollar fund to combat global warming. Speaking at a conference in Bangladesh’s capital, Mr. Ban said global efforts must be taken to establish a $100 billion Green Climate Fund dedicated to taming the "damaging" effects of climate change, and that the global economic crisis should not hinder such efforts.

TransCanada’s much anticipated Keystone XL oil pipeline will endure further delay as the State Department announced Thursday a plan to reroute the pipeline away from certain areas that critics claim are "environmentally sensitive."

As an investigation unfolds over a controversial U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program, another "green" loan recipient lingers at the brink of financial collapse. Massachusetts energy firm Beacon Power Corporation, which develops "flywheel-based" energy storage systems, filed for bankruptcy Sunday after receiving a $43 million Energy Department loan guarantee in August 2010 — only months after taxpayers were put on the hook for a $535 million loan guarantee granted to the now-defunct solar energy company Solyndra.

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is probing a $730 million conditional loan commitment to Severstal, a Russian company operating mainly in the steel and mining industry. Writing to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the California Congressman questioned whether Severstal North America, a subsidiary of the powerhouse Russian manufacturer, should benefit from public financing to improve and expand facilities in Dearborn, Michigan.

California has enacted the nation’s first cap-and-trade program, designed to provide financial incentives to companies to help curb greenhouse-gas emissions. After an exhausting eight-hour meeting last Thursday with union leaders, industry representatives, and various supporters and opponents of the plan, the California Air Resources Board voted unanimously to implement the first state-administered system that would stick a price tag on carbon emissions and permit the state’s industries to trade carbon credits. The plan is an integral component of the state’s ambitious 2006 global-warming law, signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which looks to slash emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

As federal prosecutors confirmed in a court filing Wednesday that a criminal investigation involving the recent raid on Gibson Guitar Corporation is now in motion, other American guitar makers are expressing concern for their own business operations. Gibson facilities in Memphis and Nashville were raided by federal agents on August 24, leaving the company with an estimated loss of $2 to $3 million.

A report released last week by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Inspector General questions the procedural policy of the EPA’s 2009 decision that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare. The report, entitled "Procedural Review of EPA’s Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes," does not decry the science of greenhouse gas emissions, but observes that the procedures conducted by the agency to make its "scientific" determination were askew. The release "calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding," asserted Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Despite ongoing controversy over the federal government’s scandalous loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt Solyndra, a $25 billion green-car loan fund has managed to avoid the congressional guillotine. The Department of Energy’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program, which was established during the Bush years and began dispensing funds during the Obama administration, is designed to provide debt capital to the auto industry and assist manufacturers in retooling facilities and equipment and improving fuel economy for vehicles manufactured in the United States.

As the Solyndra bankruptcy debacle begins to unwind, President Obama and political leaders will find that an increasingly bright light is shone on the federal government’s mischievous administration of green energy loans and subsidies. William Yeatman, energy policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) — a think tank promoting free markets and limited government — testified at a House Water and Power Subcommittee of the Natural Resources Committee hearing Thursday on a contentious loan program orchestrated by the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), a power marketing administration within the U.S. Department of Energy.