"A new study offers fresh evidence of a connection between dirty air and COVID-19 deaths, while suggesting that a 4-month-old EPA civil enforcement freeze has made the situation worse."
"Nearly half a century after a Gold Rush-era quicksilver mining operation shut down in northern California, mercury continues to flow into a nearby creek, and federal officials blame the mine’s state landmark status for cleanup delays."
"Federal regulators on Thursday threw a significant curveball at a coalition that has been planning for years to demolish four massive hydroelectric dams on a river along the Oregon-California border to save salmon populations that have dwindled to almost nothing."
"At the dawn of the Trump era, Republicans in the White House and Congress turned an old law into a potent new weapon. An obscure 1996 statute was harnessed to wipe out 14 Obama-era regulations in 16 weeks, before President Trump set out to enact the most significant deregulatory agenda in the modern presidential era. ... Now Democrats are eager to show that turnabout is fair play ..."
"The roots of the nation’s current inability to control the pandemic can be traced to mid-April, when the White House embraced overly rosy projections to proclaim victory and move on."
"Lisa Schulte Moore loves nature. To stand in an old-growth forest, she says, 'I can only describe it as healing.' When she moved to Iowa to teach ecology at Iowa State University, she didn't get that same feeling when she found herself amid acres of corn. She wasn't hearing birds or seeing many bugs. 'All I can hear are the leaves of the rustling corn,' she says. 'Not one biological noise. You know, they call it the green desert.'"
"Record-breaking heat in the Siberian Arctic this year would have been nearly impossible without the influence of human-caused climate change, scientists said yesterday."
"Democrats are working on climate plans now in hopes that they'll be ready if voters deliver them the Senate and White House. But winning it all won't mean a Democratic cakewalk in the Senate where controversial bills require 60 votes."
"BP, Shell, and other companies say they’ll address climate change. But their pledges fall far short of what's needed to meet global climate goals."
"The U.N. environment chief said Wednesday that “time is running out” to avert an environmental, economic and humanitarian catastrophe from a deteriorating oil tanker loaded with 1.1 million barrels of crude oil that is moored off the coast of Yemen."
