Columbus, OH

Grist

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized new regulations to govern the more than 80 industrial facilities across the nation that use ethylene oxide, a highly potent and toxic chemical, to sterilize medical equipment. The rule was announced eight years after the agency discovered that ethylene oxide is 30 times more toxic to adults and 60 times more toxic to children than previously understood. This new rule marked the first time regulations for these sterilization facilities had been revised in three decades.

Two lawsuits challenge the EPA’s regulation of ethylene oxide

“Native people are still here regardless of what the settler colonial state might try and say. You can uplift and amplify that ongoing relationship with the land here and now.”. — Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles, PhD. The spotlight. Climate change is a world-ending problem: Flooding, fires, hurricanes, and heat are threatening...

Indigenous geography could change how we relate to the Earth

One in 11 people worldwide went hungry last year, while one in three struggled to afford a healthy diet. These numbers underscore the fact that governments not only have little shot at achieving a goal, set in 2015, of eradicating hunger, but progress toward expanding food access is backsliding. The...

One in 11 people went hungry last year. Climate change is a big reason why.

Sunday was an unprecedented day, and not just because President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race so close to the election. July 21 was the hottest day on record, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, with a global average temperature of 62.76 degrees Fahrenheit, slightly beating out the previous record set on July 6 of last year.

Earth just sweltered through the hottest day ever recorded

The green transition will deepen entrenched socioeconomic barriers for Indigenous peoples — unless Western forms of science and ongoing settler colonialism are addressed by researchers. That’s according to a new study out this month focused on the use, and abuse, of Indigenous knowledge to solve climate change. Despite disenfranchisement, researchers added, Indigenous nations remain the best stewards of the land.

The green transition will make things worse for the Indigenous world

For more than a century, zoning ordinances rooted in segregation have encouraged the construction of single-family homes, often at the expense of apartment buildings and other structures that promote urban density. Beyond contributing to a mounting housing shortage and spiraling prices, such policies have contributed to sprawl and dependence upon automobiles.

Canada makes an unprecedented push for multifamily housing

If all goes according to plan, by the end of the year, some 170 countries will finalize the world’s first legally binding treaty to curtail plastic pollution. Its success will depend in no small part on money: creating a funding pipeline so that signatories, especially in the Global South, can execute the promises they agree to.

One way a plastics treaty could help the Global South: Fund waste management.

Colorado State

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David Heitz

A bill quietly introduced this spring in the Colorado legislature to decriminalize the possession of drug paraphernalia obtained by harm reductionists has become law. As low-key as the legislation was introduced, the bill was signed into law without fanfare June 6. It garnered little to no media attention.

Colorado legalizes needles, pipes for meth and crack if obtained by harm reduction group

Ohio State

The Lantern

On Tuesday, licensed Ohio dispensaries began legally selling non-medical marijuana to consumers; however, the drug’s possession, growth and/or usage are still prohibited on Ohio State’s campus. Credit: Jefferee Woo/Tampa Bay Times/TNS [Original caption: Four citizen-led petitions with proposals to update Dallas’ charter hit the 20,000 valid signature threshold to make it on the Nov. 5 election ballot, including one that would ban police officers from arresting or citing people carrying less than four ounces of marijuana.] As of Tuesday, students 21 and older can now legally purchase marijuana in Ohio.

Dispensary sales of recreational marijuana began Tuesday; possession and usage still prohibited on Ohio State’s campus

Denver, CO

In addition to collecting more than 8,000 used needles in the past year from Denver drug users, the Harm Reduction Action Center passed out 10,000 meth pipes and “snort kits,” according to a newsletter sent to its supporters Thursday. They also connected about 1,700 people to medical, mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Denver group hands out 10K meth pipes, ‘snort kits,’ connects 1,700 to treatment annually

Texas State

Edinburg, TX

This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government, and statewide issues. The Rio Grande is no longer a reliable source of water for South Texas. That’s the sobering...

As the Rio Grande runs dry, South Texas cities look to alternatives for water

Minnesota State

As a kid, Mary Kunesh watched her dad travel to reservations in northern Minnesota, working as a pro bono attorney for tribal nations who needed legal assistance. She heard stories from her grandfather about her family’s history, filled with brave Lakota women like her aunt Josephine Gates Kelly, the first tribal chair of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

The state senator leading efforts to return land to tribal nations

To advance his climate agenda, President Biden has prioritized one scheme above all others: infrastructure subsidies. The massive spending packages his administration pushed through Congress over the past four years — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act — provided an infusion of dollars for green energy developers to erect solar farms, geothermal plants, and new transmission lines to carry clean electricity into American homes.

Permitting reform is back. Is the latest deal worth it?

WyoFile

The woman who shot a video of a hydrothermal explosion in Yellowstone National Park on Tuesday morning told WyoFile she and her family were terrified as the blast sent boiling water and rocks skyward, destroying parts of a boardwalk, its guardrail and a nearby bench.

Yellowstone hydrothermal explosion: ‘We were terrified’

Around the world, an estimated 20 million people make a living by collecting discarded plastic, aluminum, and other refuse from dumpsites and landfills and selling it to recyclers. They’re called “waste pickers,” and though their work is essential — they round up nearly 60 percent of all the postconsumer plastic waste that gets collected for recycling — it is often unacknowledged, unremunerated, and underappreciated.

Does the plastics industry support waste pickers? It’s complicated.

“When you lose it, you’ve lost a record of climate on Earth that can never be recovered. There’s a lot of scientists who realize this, and have realized it for decades, who are making heroic efforts to recover this ice before it disappears forever.”. — Ice core scientist...

Meet the scientists behind the ice sanctuary — a memory vault for dying glaciers

Pennsylvania State

Siri Lawson and her husband live on a stamp of wooded, hilly land in Warren County, Pennsylvania, nestled in the state’s rural northwest corner. During the summer heat, cars traveling on the county’s dirt roads cast plumes of dust in their wake. Winter’s chill can cause a hazardous film of ice to spawn on paved roads. To protect motorists from both slippery ice and vision-impairing dust, communities across Pennsylvania coat these roads with large, cheap volumes of de-icing and dust-suppressing fluids. In Lawson’s case, her township had been using oil and gas wastewater as a dust suppressant, believing the material was effective.

‘Roadspreading’ returns: How Pennsylvania’s oil industry quietly dumped waste across the state

Jacksonville, FL

Jacksonville Today

A historic marker could be erected to honor the victims of the racist mass shooting at the Dollar General store in Jacksonville’s New Town neighborhood nearly a year ago. If approved by the Jacksonville City Council, a marker would be installed at Kings Road and Canal Street on Aug. 25, a day before the first anniversary of the shooting, when a white gunman took the lives of three Black people.

Memorial considered to honor Dollar General victims

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Walmart and Reynolds Consumer Products have agreed to stop selling certain plastic bags in Minnesota for two and a half years, after the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, argued in court that the companies had falsely marketed them as recyclable.

Minnesota settles ‘deceptive environmental marketing’ lawsuit over ‘recycling’ plastic bags

Kentucky State

Northern Kentucky Tribune

Gov. Andy Beshear sent a letter to Anne Milgram, administrator for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on Wednesday, expressing his support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ recommendation that the DEA ease restrictions on marijuana.

Gov. Andy Beshear pens letter to DEA in support of easing federal restrictions on marijuana

NewsBreak

Farmworker advocates celebrate rare EPA ban of toxic pesticide

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced an emergency order this week suspending all use of an herbicide known to cause irreversible developmental damage to human fetuses....

Farmworker advocates celebrate rare EPA ban of toxic pesticide

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