A lawyer set himself on fire to protest climate change. Did anyone care?

By J. Oliver Conroy 15 April 2019 (The Guardian) – On a recent Saturday in Brooklyn, against the unlikely backdrop of a huge blue-and-white Ikea outlet, several dozen volunteers hand-churned compost. Decomposing food scraps emit considerable heat, and the 6ft-tall compost heaps were warm to the touch. As shovels and pitchforks pierced the compost, gusts […]

Middle class declining in OECD nations – “Today the middle class looks increasingly like a boat in rocky waters”

10 April 2019 (OECD) – Governments need to do more to support middle-class households who are struggling to maintain their economic weight and lifestyles as their stagnating incomes fail to keep up with the rising costs of housing and education, according to a new OECD report. Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class says that the […]

Climate chaos is coming, and the Pinkertons are ready – As they see it, global warming stands to make corporate security as high-stakes in the 21st century as it was in the 19th

By Noah Gallagher Shannon 10 April 2019 (The New York Times Magazine) – The Pinkertons wanted me to picture myself in a scene of absolute devastation. “A hurricane just wipes out everything, and you need to feed your children,” Andres Paz Larach said. The power grid is down, shipments of food are cut off, the […]

Lawsuit blames fisheries management for decline of southern resident orca population in Salish Sea

By Alex Halverson 3 April 2019 (SeattlePI) – West Coast salmon fishing contributed to southern resident orca population decrease through mismanagement and a reliance on outdated science, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court Wednesday argued. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Wild Fish Conservancy filed a suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service […]

Newly disclosed meetings with industry create ethics questions for U.S. Interior Secretary – Bernhardt met with fossil fuel, timber, and mining representatives

By Jacob Holzman 8 April 2019 (Roll Call) – Recently posted versions of acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s daily schedules contain at least 260 differences from his original schedules, with the newest records showing meetings previously described as “external” or “internal” were actually with representatives of fossil fuel, timber, mining, and other industries, according to […]

Big cities, bright lights and up to 1 billion bird collisions each year in the U.S.

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 […]

Survivors of Hurricane Michael in the Florida Panhandle fear they have been forgotten

By Patricia Sullivan and Joel Achenbach 6 April 2019 MEXICO BEACH, Florida (The Washington Post) – The towering debris piles that lined Highway 98 are gone now, six months after the 16-foot storm surge from Hurricane Michael pulverized this town. But smaller berms of waste remain: concrete blocks, rebar, pipes and planks, mounded like artificial […]

Creeping floodwaters threaten Washington’s cherry blossoms – “The infrastructure is breaking down because of the daily flooding”

By Ashraf Khalil 3 April 2019 WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) – Washington’s cherry blossom season has gone well this year, thanks to warm weather that has coincided perfectly with the annual blooming that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each spring. But officials are claiming that Washington’s iconic trees are under a looming threat that requires […]

More than 1 million acres of U.S. cropland ravaged by record floods and dozens of levee breaks – “There’s thousands of acres that won’t be able to be planted”

By P.J. Huffstutter and Humeyra Pamuk29 March 2019 CHICAGO/COLUMBUS, Nebraska (Reuters) – At least 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of U.S. farmland were flooded after the “bomb cyclone” storm left wide swaths of nine major grain producing states under water this month, satellite data analyzed by Gro Intelligence for Reuters showed. Farms from the Dakotas […]

Massive disaster relief bill at risk of stalling as Trump, Democrats fight over help for Puerto Rico

By Erica Werner and Jeff Stein 29 March 2019 (The Washington Post) – President Trump’s opposition to aid for Puerto Rico has sparked a partisan standoff over a major disaster bill covering much of the United States, threatening to derail the legislation when it faces a critical Senate vote Monday. The stalemate has caused days […]

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