By Joel Connelly 11 April 2019 (SeattlePI) – President Donald Trump has signed an executive order designed to block states from using a provision of the Clean Water Act to delay or prevent big oil and coal projects such as a proposed coal export terminal in Longview on the Columbia River. The states of Washington […]
By Elizabeth Shogren 8 April 2019 (Reveal) – Under Republican and Democratic presidents from Nixon through Obama, killing migratory birds, even inadvertently, was a crime, with fines for violations ranging from $250 to $100 million. The power to prosecute created a deterrent that protected birds and enabled government to hold companies to account for environmental […]
By Damian Carrington 15 April 2019 (The Guardian) – Microplastic is raining down on even remote mountaintops, a new study has revealed, with winds having the capacity to carry the pollution “anywhere and everywhere”. The scientists were astounded by the quantities of microplastic falling from the sky in a supposedly pristine place such as the […]
By Lindsey Feingold 7 April 2019 (NPR) – Up to 1 billion birds die from building collisions each year in the United States, and according to a new study, bright lights in big cities are making the problem worse. The study, published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, examined two-decades […]
By Beth Gardiner 26 March 2019 Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (National Geographic) – Coal is everywhere in Mongolia’s frigid capital. It sits beneath the towering smokestacks of power plants in piles as big as football fields. Drivers haul it through town in the open beds of pickup trucks. Vendors stack yellow bags of the stuff along roadsides, […]
28 March 2019 (WMO) – The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive global temperatures toward increasingly dangerous levels, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018, its 25th anniversary edition, highlights […]
Rebecca Hersher28 March 2019 (NPR) – Several members of a powerful science panel for the Environmental Protection Agency expressed doubt at a hearing Thursday about the long-established scientific consensus that air pollution can cause premature death. The panel was meeting to consider recommendations that would fundamentally change how the agency analyzes the public health dangers […]
By Christopher Flavelle 26 March 2019 (Bloomberg) – Major flooding across the U.S. Midwest has reached at least eight Superfund sites in three states, and kept EPA staff from determining whether any are leaking toxic chemicals as a result. The Environmental Protection Agency said it is unable to access the sites containing arsenic, benzene, cyanide […]
By Johnny Simon 22 March 2019 (Quartz) – On 24 March 1989 the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. It was the worst oil spill in US history until 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon disaster pumped nearly 20 times that amount into the […]
By Steve Lundeberg30 January 2019 CORVALLIS, Oregon (OSU) – One hundred forty-three species of large animals are decreasing in number and 171 are under threat of extinction, according to new research that suggests humans’ meat consumption habits are primarily to blame. Findings published today in Conservation Letters involved an analysis of 292 species of “megafauna” […]
