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How America’s ‘most powerful lobby’ is stifling efforts to reform oil well cleanup in state after state
This story was originally published by Capital & Main and ProPublica. Last year, representatives of New Mexico’s oil industry met behind closed doors with the very groups with which they typically clash — state regulators and environmentalists — in search of an answer to the more than 70,000 wells sitting unplugged across the state. Many leak oil, brine and toxic or explosive gasses, and more than 1,700 have already been left to the public to clean up.
No Parm, no problem: How modern chefs are veganizing the Caesar salad
Every Fourth of July, Americans fire up the grill and gather to watch fireworks in celebration of the nation’s birthday, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But unbeknownst to many, the day is something of a dual holiday — because July 4 also marks the anniversary of the creation of the illustrious Caesar salad, a mouthwatering dish that splits the difference between side salad and main course, where romaine lettuce, croutons, Parmesan cheese, and of course, Caesar dressing come together in briny, creamy harmony.
These TV shows are leaving emissions on the cutting room floor
“There’s our carbon footprint to think about, and then there’s also our cultural footprint — both of which are important, but this industry is uniquely positioned to have a large cultural footprint.”. — Sam Read, executive director of the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance. The spotlight. Dearest gentle reader,
The quick, quiet death of Biden’s natural gas export pause
When the Biden administration paused the approval of new liquefied natural gas exports in January, environmentalists and left-leaning politicians hailed the decision as a watershed moment for the climate movement. After months of pressure from climate activists, the Department of Energy, or DOE, announced that it would rethink how it evaluates the massive export projects that condense fracked gas into a supercooled liquid, known as LNG, and load it onto tankers that ship the fuel for sale in Europe and Asia. In the meantime, the administration committed to keeping the LNG projects awaiting approval in a holding pattern, preventing them from breaking ground.
A Biden effort to conserve oceans is leaving out Indigenous peoples, report finds
President Biden’s administration wants to create the largest non-contiguous protected ocean area in the world, but a new paper says the effort is failing to take into account the rights and perspectives of the Indigenous peoples most affected by the change. The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument was...
Biden admin unveils first-ever heat protections for workers. Here’s what to know.
Just a few months before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the Biden administration appears to be accelerating its timeline to finalize a regulation that could protect 36 million workers from the harmful effects of exposure to extreme heat. On Tuesday, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, released the...
These Supreme Court decisions just made it harder to solve climate change
The Supreme Court on Monday weakened a law protecting federal regulations from lawsuits, granting the companies governed by those rules more time to challenge them. The move effectively eliminates any statute of limitations on rules issued by a wide range of federal agencies, potentially placing even long-standing regulations in legal peril.
How to create a ‘world without waste’? Here are the plastic industry’s ideas.
In the time it takes you to read this sentence — say, four seconds — the world produces nearly 60 metric tons of plastic, almost entirely out of fossil fuels. That’s about 53,000 metric tons an hour, 1.3 million metric tons a day, or 460 million metric tons a year. Those numbers are fueling widespread and growing contamination of Earth’s oceans, rivers, and the terrestrial environment with plastic trash.
Hurricane Beryl makes landfall, fueled by record-breaking ocean heat
The 2023 hurricane season was the fourth-most active since 1950, with 20 named storms forming and tearing across the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean’s water ran far hotter than usual for much of the summer, smashing through previous temperature records and fueling the rapid development of several large cyclones. Somehow,...
The Biden administration is inching closer to a heat standard for workers — if the election doesn’t doom it
In the summer of 2011, Victor Ramirez was working in a Walmart warehouse in Mira Loma, California, when he suddenly fainted. When he came to, he was lying on the floor, confused about what had just happened, with his head aching terribly. While he didn’t receive any medical attention — his boss only told him to go home if he didn’t feel well enough to keep working — he knew that this sudden bout of unconsciousness must have been triggered by the relentless heat in the warehouse.
Controversial measure overturning oil well restrictions won’t be on California ballot
This story was originally published by CalMatters. California’s oil industry says it is withdrawing its controversial ballot measure challenging a state law that would have imposed new restrictions on oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes and schools. The oil industry, which spent $20 million collecting signatures...
Flouting Biden pause, agency approves largest LNG terminal in US
This story was originally published by Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Despite a much publicized pause on the approval of liquefied natural gas terminals in the United States, a federal regulatory agency Thursday approved the construction of the nation’s largest LNG terminal, months before that pause is set to end.
The Supreme Court overturns Chevron doctrine, gutting federal environmental protections
The Supreme Court on Friday threw into question the future of climate and environmental regulation in the United States, scrapping a decades-old legal precedent that gave federal agencies leeway to interpret laws according to their expertise and scientific evidence. The impact of the decision to scrap the so-called Chevron deference will take years to become clear, but it could allow for far more legal challenges against regulations by agencies like the EPA and the Department of the Interior that have a huge role in the climate fight.
The Tule River Tribe of California recruits an old ally in its fight against wildfires: Beavers
After a decade of work, the Tule River Tribe has released nine beavers into the nation’s reservation in the foothills of California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains. The beavers are expected to make the landscape more fire and drought resistant. Beaver dams trap water in pools, making the flow of water slower so the surrounding ecosystem can reap the benefits of the moisture while making it more difficult for forest fires to start. They can also help a forest heal after a fire by rehydrating the area.
Scientists just got closer to solving a major Antarctic puzzle
Three million years ago, the atmosphere’s carbon-dioxide levels weren’t so different from those of today, but sea levels were dozens of meters higher. Looking that far back presents a foreboding peek into the future, as satellite records show that melting Antarctic ice sheets are on their way to bulking up this epoch’s oceans, too. The puzzle for scientists is that the climate models they create can’t seem to match what they see with their own eyes.
How to survive a heat wave on a fixed income
Mone Choy is 68 and lives in the New York City neighborhood of Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan, on a fixed disability income of $1,901 per month. Her rent is frozen at $1,928. She lives with chronic health issues that render her unable to work. In addition to a few other intermittent gigs, Choy covers the rest of her expenses by collecting bottles from her building’s recycling and taking them to a nearby redemption center.
Climate change got a question in the presidential debate. It didn’t get much of an answer.
Over more than an hour and a half of back-and-forth, climate change got just a couple minutes of airtime during a CNN-hosted debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump on Thursday. It was the first time the men had faced each other on the debate stage since...
Supreme Court blocks an EPA plan to curb ozone air pollution
In a ruling that court observers said was “really extraordinary” and achieved through “a procedural strangeness,” the Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a federal plan to reduce air pollution that blows across state lines. The 5-4 decision from the court’s conservative justices halts, for now, the...
How do you convince someone to live next to a nuclear waste site?
The world’s first permanent depository for nuclear fuel waste opens later this year on Olkiluoto, a sparsely populated and lushly forested island in the Baltic Sea three hours north of Helsinki. Onkalo — the name means “cavity” or “cave” in Finnish — is among the most advanced facilities of...
The secret to decarbonizing buildings might be right beneath your feet
Along with earthworms, rocks, and the occasional skeleton, there’s a massive battery right under your feet. Unlike a flammable lithium ion battery, though, this one is perfectly stable, free to use, and ripe for sustainable exploitation: the Earth itself. While temperatures above-ground fluctuate throughout the year, the ground stays...
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