On a sweltering hot day in July of 2013, President Obama made a historic speech on climate change at Georgetown University. Speaking to a crowd of students, he warned that the warming of our planet would have disastrous consequences if we failed to act. Unveiling his sweeping new national climate action plan, he said, "I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing."

In his speech, Obama also use his speech to lay out his conditions for the approval of Keystone XL: "The net effects of the pipeline's impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward."

In Washington, the environment is under attack. The cost-cutting deal that the House passed yesterday stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of $1.6 billion, which made up 16% of the agency's budget. Funds for clean energy were cut. Republicans put in a provision that would keep the Department of the Interior from putting aside public lands for conservation and one that killed the nascent climate centre at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

President Obama made an energy speech this week that had little new to offer, while on Capitol Hill, Republicans were pushing to relieve the government of its last options to limit carbon emissions. In the House, Republicans have passed a bill that would keep the EPA from regulating carbon, and in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid repeatedly pushed back a vote on the same issue.

An Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron this week to pay $8.6 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon rainforest from 1964 until 1990. The payout is the second largest ever in an environmental case, with only the damages BP agreed to pay in the wake of last summer's Deepwater Horizon spill being higher.

Environmental lawyers and advocates hailed the case as a landmark victory, but as Rebecca Tarbotton reports at AlterNet, Chevron is still planning to fight the case.