TUCSON, Arizona, 15 February 2019 (CBD) – President Trump is the winner of the Center for Biological Diversity’s 2018 Rubber Dodo award. The statue is awarded each year to the person or group who has most aggressively sought to destroy America’s natural heritage or drive endangered species extinct. “From wildlife to public lands to climate, Trump […]
AUSTIN, Texas, 17 January 2019 (Earthjustice) – Toxic coal ash pollutants are leaking into groundwater surrounding 100 percent of Texas’s power plants for which data are available, with unsafe levels of arsenic, cobalt, lithium, and other pollutants seeping from the ash dumps, according to an analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). Industry groundwater monitoring […]
By Timothy Cama16 January 2019 (The Hill) – Environmental protesters on Wednesday disrupted Andrew Wheeler’s Senate confirmation hearing to be the permanent head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The protesters objected to Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee scheduling the hearing, and Wheeler participating, when the EPA is closed and most employees […]
By Oliver Milman9 January 2019 (The Guardian) – The US government shutdown has stymied environmental testing and inspections, prompting warnings that Americans’ health is being put at increasing risk as the shutdown drags on. More than 13,000 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are not at work, with just 794 people deemed essential staff […]
By Umair Irfan3 January 2019 (Vox) – Now that Ryan Zinke has resigned as the head of the Interior Department, his deputy David Bernhardt has begun serving as acting secretary. President Donald Trump said last month he would name a permanent replacement but has yet to do so. This handover of power at Interior has […]
By Michael Halpern 19 December 2018 (UCS) – CNN had a scoop this past weekend: the U.S. Department of Transportation recently removed several climate change pages from its website. The changes are indicative of a greater trend within the federal government when it comes to climate information: when in doubt, take it out.The DOT is […]
By Ellen Knickmeyer 7 December 2018 WASHINGTON (AP) – One after another, landmark U.S. protections for climate, air and land are in the crosshairs of the Trump administration as his agency leaders move past early fumbles and scandals to start delivering on a succession of promised environmental rollbacks. On Thursday, the Interior Department proposed easing […]
By Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin 6 December 2018 (The Washington Post) – Scott Pruitt, who resigned this summer as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency amid a flurry of ethics inquiries, received $50,000 for his legal defense fund from a Wisconsin billionaire, according to a financial disclosure released Thursday.The contribution came this year […]
24 October 2018 (Silencing Science Tracker) – On 24 October 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a draft “Air and Energy Strategic Research Action Plan” (Action Plan) for the period from 2019 to 2022. The Action Plan identifies research needed to “address[] EPA priorities and mandates” with respect to air pollution. Unlike previous versions, […]
By Timothy Gardner and Grant Smith; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Steve Orlofsky 29 October 2018 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. coal miners union has put a larger share of its campaign donations behind Democrats ahead of the 6 November 2018 elections than in 2016, as dimming hopes for a coal industry revival led […]
