HERE'S LOOKIN' AT CHU: Physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Steven Chu, identified late Wednesday as Obama's choice for energy secretary, has become the celebrity among the environmental and energy officials leaked so far. The team -- which also includes Carol Browner as "energy czar," Lisa Jackson as EPA administrator and Nancy Sutley as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- is expected to be introduced next week in Chicago. Obama is reportedly still mulling his pick for secretary of the interior. (Sources: The New York Times, The Washington Post)

 

SLIP-SLIDING AWAY: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned delegates at the Poznan climate talks today against "backsliding" in their fight against global warming. (Source: Reuters)

 

THE GROWTH OF GREEN: CNN features a concise overview of the environmental movement's history in America, chronicling the peaks and valleys of public and political interest over the last 40 years. The story is coincidentally reported right before CNN's much-advertised "Planet in Peril" debuts tonight. (Source: CNN)

 

CARB VS. CARBON: The California Air Resources Board is expected to adopt a comprehensive plan to combat global warming today; it would be the most powerful such plan in the United States. (Source: AP)

 

OFFSETTING THE APPLE CART: The Guardian's Fred Pearce examines why carbon-offsetting companies can't agree on how much to charge us or even how much CO2 airplane flights generate. (Source: The Guardian)

 

EPA BACKS DOWN: The agency is abandoning two rule changes, years in the making, that would have made it easier to build a coal-fired power plant, refinery or factory near national parks and would have softened rules regarding when power plants must install pollution-controlling devices. Some environmentalists speculate the EPA decided the rules weren't worth fighting for since Obama could repeal them after taking office. (Source: The Washington Post)

 

ECO-FUGITIVES: The EPA on Wednesday released an FBI-style list of its most-wanted polluters, including the guy whose oxygen tanks allegedly caused the 1996 ValuJet crash and someone accused of storing mercury-laced soil in a warehouse. (Source: MSNBC)

 

PLAYING OZONE DEFENSE: Growing ground-level ozone pollution will reduce tree growth 10 percent by 2100, according to scientists. This could exacerbate global warming indirectly, since forests absorb CO2, as well as directly, since ozone is also a greenhouse gas. (Source: ScienceDaily)