Business Green: The team in charge of London’s bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase recycling and biodiversity is to be cut in half in a major shake-up that calls into question the commitment to the environment of the mayor, Boris Johnson. Leaked documents seen by The Guardian show that the Greater London Authority plans to reduce the total number of 40 staff working on environmental issues in the capital to 20. The cuts will reduce the climate change and energy team from 10 to three, …

Business Green: Political leaders may have spent much of this week downplaying expectations of a meaningful climate change deal at tomorrow’s G20 summit, but that did not stop over 50 of the world’s largest businesses joining forces yesterday to call for a larger chunk of proposed global stimulus packages to be earmarked for low carbon initiatives. In an open letter to Gordon Brown and the G20 leaders gathered in London this week, the new World Economic Forum low carbon prosperity task force calls on …

Guardian: BP is to axe 620 jobs from its solar power business – more than a quarter of that workforce – in a move it said was part of the long-term strategy to "reduce the cost of solar power to that of conventional electricity." Two cell manufacture and module assembly plants near Madrid, will be shut with the loss of 480 posts while module assembly will also be phased out at its Frederick facility in Maryland, US, with a further 140 redundancies. BP blamed the cutbacks on the credit …

Business Green: Fresh from banning energy-efficient light bulbs, legislators in Brussels are considering imposing a ban on all light bulbs. According to sources at the European Parliament, MEPs have become so frustrated with the extent to which even energy-saving light bulbs are left on unnecessarily that they are considering legislative action to tackle the problem. "Banning incandescent bulbs has worked very effectively, so why not ban those bulbs that are being left on all the time wasting …

Associated Press: President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress are taking only baby steps with his budget, putting off crucial decisions on his ambitious plans to expand health care, curb global warming and raise taxes on the wealthy. Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and both Bushes all got far stronger assists from Congress on their first budgets. Nonetheless, Obama, is counting on votes approving budget outlines this week to give him some semblance of momentum. "If we don’t …

U.S. News and World Report: Since taking over the Environmental Protection Agency, Administrator Lisa Jackson has moved quickly to reconsider several controversial Bush-era environmental decisions, signaling that the agency under her direction will play a very different role from that under recent predecessors. Nowhere is this change in direction more apparent than in a handful of recent, potentially far-reaching maneuvers related to climate change policy. In January, Jackson directed EPA officials to reconsider …

National Public Radio: A federal judge in West Virginia issued a ruling Tuesday that dealt another blow to the controversial mining practice known as mountaintop removal. The process involves blasting away the tops of mountains to expose coal seams underneath. The resulting tons of rock and dirt are typically dumped into valleys and streams. U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in Charleston blocked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from issuing so-called "nationwide" permits, which streamline the …

Reuters: Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives launched a sweeping effort on Tuesday to control greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time help industries that will struggle to meet the proposed environmental requirements. The draft legislation, which will be considered by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in coming weeks along with other panels, marks the latest attempt by Congress to bring the United States into a global effort to curtail emissions of carbon dioxide and …

CNET: The first draft of an energy and climate change bill calls for national mandates for renewable energy and energy efficiency but leaves crucial details on carbon regulations open for negotiation. The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday released the first draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, (click for PDF) which its backers hope will be voted on this summer. Key figures for the bill in the House are Rep. Henry Waxman, who chairs the Energy and …

National Public Radio: The Obama administration is trying to reverse some of the Bush administration’s environmental policies. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department have already begun to make changes in addressing climate change, air and water pollution, endangered species and pesticides.