By Sophie Lewis 22 April 2020 (CBS News) – As humans continue to stay indoors under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Earth is slowly healing. Wild animals have taken to roaming the streets, clear waters have returned to the Venice canals and the world is literally shaking less. With billions of people quarantined and businesses closed, travel has all but […]
9 April 2020 (WMO) – Depletion of the ozone layer, the shield that protects life on Earth from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation, is at an unprecedented level over large parts of the Arctic this spring . This phenomenon is caused by the continuing presence of ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere and a very […]
By Veronika Melkozerova 18 April 2020 KYIV, Ukraine (NBC News) – Wind-whipped wildfires have in recent days raged perilously close to the exclusion zone at Chernobyl, the site of what is considered to have been the world’s worst nuclear disaster. But these fires were no accident — they were set by villagers who were clearing their land for […]
By Kevin Mcgill and Matthew Brown 18 April 2020 NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Ten years after an oil rig explosion killed 11 workers and unleashed an environmental nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico, companies are drilling into deeper and deeper waters, where the payoffs can be huge but the risks are greater than ever. Industry leaders and […]
By Maria Varenikova 11 April 2020 VINNYTSIA, Ukraine (The New York Times) – Firefighters have struggled to control wildfires burning through radioactive forest in the abandoned territory around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, where radiation levels are considerably lower than they were immediately after the 1986 accident but still pose risks. Radiation readings near the wildfires, where […]
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 […]
By Madeline Holcombe and Sean O’Key 23 March 2020 (CNN) – As millions of Americans are kept from work, school and most public places as coronavirus is on the rise, satellite images show pollution on the decline.Images taken over the first three weeks of March show less nitrogen dioxide over parts of the United States than […]
OXFORD, 6 March 2020 (Emissions Analytics) – Pollution from tyre wear can be 1,000 times worse than what comes out of a car’s exhaust, Emissions Analytics has found. Harmful particle matter from tyres – and also brakes – is a very serious and growing environmental problem, one that is being exacerbated by the increasing popularity […]
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. […]
By Tony Barboza 7 March 2020 (Los Angeles Times) – Behind the tap-of-your-phone convenience of hailing an Uber or Lyft lies an inconvenient truth: Such rides generate more carbon emissions than simply driving yourself. The increased pollution comes primarily from “deadheading,” that is, drivers traveling to pick up a passenger or cruising the streets while […]
