A coalition of environmental groups, including EWG, released a comprehensive biofuels platform highlighting new scientific evidence that indicates that biofuel production and use results in a net increase of greenhouse gas emissions when compared to petroleum-based fuels.

New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s amendment to the House version of the stimulus package would boost federal investment in much-needed mass transit to $12 billion and make a major contribution to reviving the U.S. economy.

The antiquated 1872 Mining Law, a relic of America’s westward expansion, has fought off many attempts at reform. Currently hardrock mining companies, many of them foreign, pay no royalties for the resources they extract and engage in environmentally destructive practices that often employ highly toxic chemicals in their mining efforts.

As Congress and the incoming Obama administration plan the nation’s next major investments in green energy, they need to take a hard, clear-eyed look at Department of Energy data documenting corn-based ethanol’s stranglehold on federal renewable energy tax credits and subsidies.

Growth Energy, a consortium of ethanol producers, petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to allow 50% more ethanol in gasoline than is currently permitted in a move designed to expand the market for corn ethanol. EWG's review of available scientific data finds that such an increase in fuel ethanol content may involve multiple human health and safety hazards, a risk of increased air pollution and potential engine damage.

There is a growing consensus in the environmental community that federal government subsidies and mandates for corn-based ethanol have produced unintended, yet potentially catastrophic environmental consequences, with little or no return to taxpayers in energy security, protection from global warming, or reducing the cost of driving.

U.S. farmers are planting fence-row-to-fence-row to produce enough corn to supply ethanol plants and at the same time meet burgeoning demand for food and feed crops. The intensification of corn production—spurred in large part by exploding ethanol production—threatens to exacerbate global warming and harm water quality, water supply, and wildlife habitat. Read the Report

In response to the threat that surging mining claims along the Colorado pose to drinking water in Las Vegas, the General Manager for the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), Patricia Mulroy, sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne requesting that “Interior carefully evaluate the implications for water quality in the Colorado River before authorizing [hardrock] mining operations within its watershed.”

When the Bush administration and Congress required gasoline refiners to blend in 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol by 2015, they made the impossibly rosy assumption that American farmers would always enjoy good weather. But as every farmer knows, years with perfect growing conditions are uncommon and getting more rare.