Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, shown here in Beijing in 2023, gave the directive about a decade ago to write software for vehicles that gave drivers “rosy” estimates of driving range, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Tesla employees were instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. In summer 2022, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible. Photo: Tingshu Wang / REUTERS

Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints – “They’ve gotten really good at exploiting the rule book and maximizing certain points to work in their favor involving EPA tests”

By Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu 27 July 2023 AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – In March 2023, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles […]

The George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River in the 1960s, before the Clean Air Act. Photo: Chester Higgins / EPA

35 vintage photos taken by the EPA reveal what American cities looked like before pollution was regulated

By James Pasley 8 June 2023 (Insider) – Don’t let the soft, sepia tones fool you. The United States used to be dangerously polluted. Before President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the environment and its well-being was not a federal priority. In the early 1970s, the EPA launched the “The Documerica […]

Aerial view of a coal waste operation in Russelton, Pennsylvania that uses waste coal to power bitcoin mining. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that although waste coal is burned using a different process, it still releases carbon dioxide that contributes to warming the atmosphere. The coal waste in Pennsylvania also releases more acid gas and sulfur dioxide than other types of coal. Photo: SCMP

Video: U.S. company plans to burn coal waste for bitcoin mining

By Evanne Yu 25 March 2022 (SCMP) – A company in Pennsylvania has an unusual plan to deal with coal waste – crypto mining. Stronghold Digital Mining uses waste left behind by decades-old coal power plants to generate the electricity for hundreds of supercomputers working to mine bitcoin. The US Environmental Protection Agency says that […]

Screenshot of the EPA Climate Change website, which was relaunched on 17 March 2021 after President Biden reversed the antiscience policies of the Trump administration. Graphic: EPA

EPA brings climate science back to website after Trump purge – “Climate facts are back”

By Richard Luscombe 20 March 2021 (The Guardian) – Canceled four years ago by a president who considered global warming a hoax, climate crisis information has returned to the website of the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of Joe Biden’s promise to “bring science back”. The revival of a page dedicated to the […]

Trump looks on as EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, speaks during an event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on 9 January 2020 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

EPA suspends enforcement of environmental laws indefinitely at request of petroleum industry – “The EPA uses this global pandemic to create loopholes for destroying the environment”

By Rebecca Beitsch 26 March 2020 (The Hill) – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws Thursday, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak. The temporary policy, for which EPA has set no end date, would allow any number of […]

Andrew R. Wheeler, Trump’s administrator of the E.P.A., continued his mission of dismantling environmental regulation in the U.S. by formally revising a proposal that would significantly restrict the type of research that can be used to draft environmental and public health regulations. Experts say the measure, made public on 3 March 2020, amounts to one of the Trump’s most far-reaching assaults on science. Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Trump E.P.A. updates plan to limit science used in environmental rules – “They’re putting in nonscientific criteria to decide what science the agency can use”

By Lisa Friedman 4 March 2020 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Trump administration has formally revised a proposal that would significantly restrict the type of research that can be used to draft environmental and public health regulations, a measure that experts say amounts to one of the government’s most far-reaching restrictions on science. […]

Geese landing in the restored wetland on Viola Farm. Matt and Marilyn Spong own a corn-and-soybean farm, located on the Delmarva. Viola Farms has been in Marilyn Spong’s family for well over 150 years. About 15 years ago they started the process of restoring a wetland habitat on their property. Photo: Kayt Jonsson / USFWS / Flickr

America’s wetlands: vital, ignored, and now defined away by the Trump administration

By Geena Reed 27 January 2020 (UCS) – Last week, the Trump administration finalized its rollback of the expanded definition of the waters of the United States. Now fewer water bodies, including wetlands and ephemeral streams, will be protected under the Clean Water Act. The quality of more than half of the country’s wetlands and 18 percent of its […]

Marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. When asked about abrupt clikmate change, she says that we’re witnessing an exciting “feminist climate renaissance”. Photo: Violetta Markelou / Huffington Post

We spoke to five climate experts about what gives them hope – “I have a tenuous relationship with hope these days, but I am certainly bolstered by the fact that we already have all the solutions we need”

By Kyla Mandel 26 December 2019 (Huffington Post) – This year comes to a close after an onslaught of bleak and terrifying revelations about the state of our planet. Glaciers are melting, species are dying, forests are burning and climate tipping points ― thresholds which, if breached, will usher in uncontrollable warming ― are about […]

Air pollution (fine particulate matter PM2.5) in the United States, 2009-2018. in 2016, pollution started to increase significantly in the U.S. Midwest and West. Data: National Bureau of Economic Research. Graphic: The New York Times

America’s air quality worsens since Trump election, ending years of gains – “This increase is a real about-face”

By Nadja Popovich 24 October 2019 (The New York Times) – New data reveals that damaging air pollution has increased nationally since 2016, reversing a decades-long trend toward cleaner air. An analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data published this week by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that fine particulate pollution increased 5.5 percent on average across the […]

Aerial view of Frying Pan Lake in Alaska. If the proposed massive Pebble Mine, located between two prime salmon spawning streams, is ever built, Frying Pan Lake, would disappear beneath a giant pile of tailings. Bristol Bay is one of the world’s greatest fisheries. Photo: SeattlePI

Battle over Bristol Bay mine: Native, fisheries groups sue Trump – “There’s simply no precedent for open pit mining coexisting with sockeye salmon on the scale proposed by the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay”

By Joel Connelly 8 October 2019 (SeattlePI) – Five Bristol Bay native and fisheries groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, seeking to restore Clean Water Act protection and block a giant open pit copper-goldmine proposed cheek-by-jowl with the world’s greatest sockeye salmon fishery. The suit was filed on National Salmon Day. The U.S. Environmental […]

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