"Southeast Asia is being pummeled by unusually severe floods this year, as late-arriving storms and relentless rains wreak havoc that has caught many places off guard."
"As global warming accelerates, about 480 million people in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula face intensifying and in some places unsurvivable heat, as well as drought, famine and the risk of mass displacement, the World Meteorological Organization warned Thursday."
"The revised watershed agreement extends pollution-reduction targets and bets on voluntary measures to achieve cleanup goals that have remained elusive for decades."
"Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last week joined governors from six other states signing onto a petition demanding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency add microplastics to its program collecting data on contaminants not currently covered by the Safe Drinking Water Act."
"Governments at a wildlife trade conference have adopted greater protections for over 70 species of sharks and rays amid concerns that overfishing is driving some to the brink of extinction."
"Eels are the stuff of nightmares — slimy, snakelike creatures that lay millions of eggs before dying so their offspring can return home to rivers and streams. ... Yet they’re also valuable seafood fish that are declining all over the world, leading to a new push for restrictions on trade to help stave off extinction."
"The death toll from cyclone-induced floods and landslides in Indonesia passed 600 on Monday as rescuers battled to clear roads and improved weather conditions revealed the scale of a disaster that has killed nearly 800 people in Southeast Asia."
A steep decline in the enforcement of environmental laws means the monitoring of pollution by citizens is more important than ever. But as the latest TipSheet notes, some states have passed laws that severely constrain the use of citizen monitoring or the sharing of findings. Get the backstory, along with top reporting angles and resources for finding monitoring in your area.
For more than a century, oil and gas companies have been drilling — and abandoning — wells across the country, leaving hundreds of thousands to potentially leak pollutants into the air, water and soil. Climate and environment reporter Martha Pskowski looks at how funding and regulatory issues are impacting efforts to identify and plug these wells, and offers resources for drilling into their story.
