southern environmental law center

April 30, 2015 - Five years after the BP disaster, a group of governors led by North Carolina's Pat McCrory is pushing for drilling in the Atlantic. The group has close ties to a secret-money nonprofit and energy lobbyists, a relationship that raises questions about transparency, ethics and the blurring of public and private interests.

March 18, 2015 - With the public comment period for Atlantic oil and gas drilling set to close on March 30, coastal residents, businesspeople, elected officials and scientists are speaking out in unprecedented numbers against what they see as an excessively risky proposal.

March 12, 2015 - Independent political groups unaffiliated with campaigns spent more than $10 million in North Carolina's 2014 state-level elections, nearly tripling the amount spent on legislative races two years earlier. While Republicans enjoyed a slight edge in support, Democrats are catching up.

January 28, 2015 - The Obama administration has proposed opening Atlantic waters to offshore oil and gas drilling after years of being lobbied by a coalition of coastal-state governors that had more than a little industry help. But a growing grassroots movement aims to keep the drills at bay.

January 21, 2015 - A new report from the conservation advocacy group Oceana finds that developing offshore wind resources along the Atlantic Coast would create twice as many jobs and produce twice as much energy as opening the area to risky oil and gas drilling -- and North Carolina stands to gain the most jobs of all.

January 8, 2015 - With help from an environmental law firm, a conservation group and a landowner are challenging the constitutionality of the North Carolina commission formed to regulate the controversial gas drilling technique. But fracking's challenges in the state are not only legal -- they're also economic.

December 22, 2014 - Environmentalists say a long-awaited federal rule governing disposal of the toxic waste left over after burning coal is "too little and too late" -- and that when the next disaster inevitably occurs the White House will share the blame.