Trump is losing his rallying cry to save coal. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) voted on Thursday to retire two coal-fired power plants in the next few years despite a plea from the president to keep one of the plants open. Earlier this week, the president posted an oddly specific tweet that urged the government-owned […]
Health and labor organizations will have to argue again in court that chlorpyrifos, a brain-damaging pesticide, must be banned from all food uses, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday. The decision comes four months after Andrew Wheeler’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asked the court to rehear the case either by the three-judge […]
President Donald Trump delivered the State of the Union address Tuesday night, focusing on his signature issues like the economy and immigration and warning lawmakers that the ongoing investigation into his conduct posed a threat to national security, The New York Times reported. But there was one real major threat to the nation, and the […]
President Donald Trump officially nominated David Bernhardt—a former energy lobbyist environmental groups have described as a “walking conflict of interest”—to officially take over as interior secretary after Ryan Zinke stepped down in December 2018 following various scandals. “It’s a humbling privilege to be nominated to lead a Department whose mission I love, to accomplish the […]
Former coal lobbyist and acting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler has named a climate denier to serve on the agency’s Science Advisory Board, which is responsible for giving independent policy advice. Among eight new members added to the board Thursday is University of Alabama in Huntsville atmospheric science professor John Christy, who […]
By Miranda Fox The impacts of the government shutdown on the nation’s national parks have been widely reported: overflowing bathrooms, decimated habitat and widespread litter resulted in parks that remained open without staff oversight and management. In response, individuals, organizations and corporations have volunteered to help out with the clean-up. One of these is Nestlé […]
The yearly count of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico, released Wednesday, shows an increase of 144 percent from last year’s count and is the highest count since 2006. That’s good news for a species whose numbers had fallen in recent years, but conservationists say the monarch continues to need Endangered Species Act protection. The count […]
U.S. opinion on climate change is still highly polarized, with 82 percent of Democrats and only around 25 percent of Republicans ranking it a “very serious” problem, according to a November poll from Monmouth University. However, that divide is weakening. The same poll found that 64 percent of Republicans now acknowledge that it is happening, […]
By Jessica Corbett In a decision deemed by critics unsurprising but also “absolutely unconscionable,” the Trump administration’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reportedly plans to refrain from regulating a pair of toxic chemicals linked to kidney and testicular cancer, even though they are contaminating millions of Americans’ drinking water. Sources familiar with an unreleased draft […]