"As numbers of North Atlantic right whales keep declining because of entanglements with fishing gear and fatal ship strikes, conservationists are using acoustic technology and waging an escalating legal battle to push for more aggressive action to protect the world’s rarest cetacean."
"The United States’ coral reefs are in fair condition, according to a recent reef condition status report, but vulnerable to decline. Scientists estimate that along the coast of Florida, where degradation is most severe, perhaps as little as 2% of original coral cover remains."
"A satellite scheduled to launch from California later this month will measure sea level rise and provide other crucial data to scientists who study how global warming is affecting the Earth's oceans."
"A Biden administration won’t be able to untangle the legal and regulatory “mess” under part of the Clean Water Act that determines which streams, wetlands and other waters get federal protection, legal scholars and litigators say."
"Nearly 90 Democratic lawmakers wrote to the White House to protest a recent shakeup at the agency charged with organizing a key assessment that helps the government consider how to respond to climate change."
"Despite environmental groups’ opposition to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that allows the public to ask the agency to eliminate policy guidances, at least one organization has already started to use the rule to its advantage."
"One of Joe Biden’s boldest campaign pledges was to ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters,” part of a sweeping agenda aimed at curbing greenhouse gases that are warming the planet and threatening life on Earth. Transforming that promise into reality, however, will be tough."
"The White House may not be preparing to transition to a Biden administration, but Wall Street is." "The president-elect has said he would require publicly traded companies to disclose emissions and financial risks associated with global warming."
"The Trump administration on Thursday proposed to loosen Obama-era safety regulations for the oil industry in the Arctic Ocean off Alaska to ease the way for petroleum extraction in the region, an effort that President-elect Joe Biden will likely throw out once in office."
"Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, plans to squeeze in two taxpayer-funded trips abroad — to Taiwan next month and to four Latin American countries in January — before President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes over and moves to overturn most of his policies."
