Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?
Ninety years after “Blair Mountain in West Virginia was the site of America’s largest armed insurrection since the Civil War,” the mountain “was again in the public eye as a group of marchers retraced the steps of those 1921 miners in a fight to protect the historic battlefield from being strip-mined for coal.” [Ocala]
“A wildfire burning along the New Mexico-Colorado border more than doubled in size in a matter of hours Monday,” closing highways and forcing about 1000 people to evacuate. [Fox News]
“A levee on the flood-swollen Missouri River near Hamburg, Iowa failed on Monday, sending water into low-lying farmland and prompting a flash flood watch for the town of 1,200,” authorities said. [Reuters]
“As co-president of Koch Companies Public Sector, set up in 2009 to handle government, public and legal affairs for the Kochs’ privately held oil, chemical and consumer products empire, Philip Ellender, based in Atlanta, is in charge of the Kochs’ multimillion-dollar lobbying operation.” [Politico]
The Environmental Protection Agency said it “would take additional time to review input on rules being drafted to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, a concession that the agency said won’t delay implementation of the final rules in 2012.” [WSJ]
“As catastrophic weather events continue to become more common and more severe due to climate change, the insurance industry will be sorely tested.” [Reuters]