Arizona

Arizona motorists looking for new cars in 2012 may escape being forced by state regulations to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Arizona will no longer participate in a groundbreaking attempt to limit greenhouse-gas emissions across the West, a change in policy by Gov. Jan Brewer that will include a review of all the state's efforts to combat climate change.

Asarco officials told Rancho Resort residents Friday that an analysis of tailings from their community showed the dust is not much different from soil samples taken nearby and contain no dangerous levels of metals.

Arizona can offer solar-energy developers legendary sun-drenched skies and thousands of empty square miles but not nearly so ample a supply of a third essential resource. Water.

Executives from several large, publicly traded electric utilities were greeted in Scottsdale on Thursday by a group of "tea-party" protesters demanding that the companies fight global-warming legislation.

Asarco's failure to keep tailings dust from blowing away at its Mission mine during two dust storms last year could cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said Wednesday.

Residents ignored a call for no wood-burning fires over Christmas, causing the Valley to exceed federal health standards Dec. 24-25, county officials reported Monday.

Pinal County and state officials are about to launch a long, tangled air cleanup effort that could reduce the number, size and scope of dust clouds in future storms.

Solar and wind energy may be the wave of the future, and it's a wave more and more Yavapai County residents are surfing.

As Congress delays work on a national climate-change bill and world leaders quash expectations for an international pact, a once-growing movement to address global warming at a state level has hit its own walls.