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Water and sediment sampling operations during the EPA's response to the Enbridge oil spill on Morrow Lake, MI in 2010. USEPA

EPA Delays 'Agenda to Sideline Science' After Receiving Nearly 600,000 Comments

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is delaying the roll out of a controversial science proposal after receiving nearly 600,000 comments on the plan, The Hill reported Wednesday.

The proposal would have limited the kinds of studies the EPA could use to make regulations to only studies that relied on data that was publicly available and therefore reproducible. But scientists and environmentalists warned that would exclude many important public health studies that relied on confidential patient medical records, ABC News reported.

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Food
Alex Wong / Getty Images News / Getty Images

On Indigenous People’s Day, a Look at the Movement to Revive Native Foodways and How Western Science Might Support—For a Change

By Ricardo Salvador

"Tribes are not sovereign unless they can feed themselves," noted Ross Racine, executive director of the Intertribal Agriculture Council. This is such a brutal fact that that the destruction of Native foodways was used by the U.S. government to effectively weaken, destroy and remove Native people from their ancestral lands during the period of Western colonization, genocide, expansion and cultural undermining that ran from the 17th into the present century (in the form of "Food Distribution Programs," largely the food that has made many Native communities both dependent and among the sickest in the world.)

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North Carolina hog CAFO in Hurricane Florence floodwaters, Sept. 18. Larry Baldwin / Crystal Coast Waterkeeper / Waterkeeper Alliance

In a Warming World, Carolina CAFOs Are a Disaster for Farmers, Animals and Public Health

By Karen Perry Stillerman

In the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, I've joined millions who've watched with horror as the Carolinas have been inundated with floodwaters and worried about the various hazards those waters can contain. We've seen heavy metal-laden coal ash spills, a nuclear plant go on alert (thankfully without incident), and sewage treatment plants get swamped. But the biggest and most widely reported hazard associated with Florence appears to be the hog waste that is spilling from many of the state's thousands of CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations), and which threatens lasting havoc on public health and the local economy.

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Food
rotofrank / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Here’s What Agriculture of the Future Looks Like: The Multiple Benefits of Regenerative Agriculture Quantified

By Ricardo Salvador

At the Union of Concerned Scientists, we have long advocated agricultural systems that are productive and better for the environment, the economy, farmers, farmworkers and eaters than the dominant industrial system. We refer to such a system as our Healthy Farm vision. Based on comprehensive science, we have specified that healthy farm systems must be multifunctional, biodiverse, interconnected and regenerative.

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Food
grobery / CC BY SA 2.0 (Flickr)

What’s for Dinner? A Preview of the People, Process and Politics Updating Federal Dietary Guidelines

By Sarah Reinhardt

Months behind schedule, two federal departments have officially kicked off the process for writing the 2020-2025 iteration of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Updated and reissued every five years, these guidelines are the nation's most comprehensive and authoritative set of nutrition recommendations. And although the process is meant to be science-based and support population health—and has historically done so, with some notable exceptions—there are plenty of reasons to believe that the Trump administration is preparing to pitch a few curveballs.

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Astronaut Rickey Arnold took this photograph of Hurricane Florence from the International Space Station on Sept. 10. NASA

Hurricane Florence: Four Things You Should Know That Your Meteorologist Is Truly Too Busy to Tell You

By Kristy Dahl

Hurricane Florence is currently making its way as a Category 4 storm toward the southeast coast and is expected to make landfall sometime on Thursday, most likely in North Carolina. Our hearts are with those who are looking at the storm's predicted path and wondering what this means for their homes, families and communities.

As millions of residents in the storm's path make preparations to stay safe, our hearts are also with the thousands of people who have faced similar risks in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico in the past year. If you are in the Carolinas, please do take care to heed local warnings and evacuation orders—and know that we are all hoping for your safety.

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Brazilian Things / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Amazon Deforestation in Brazil: What Does It Mean When There’s No Change?

By Doug Boucher

I was recently invited by the editors of the journal Tropical Conservation Science to write an update of a 2013 article on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon that I had published with Sarah Roquemore and Estrellita Fitzhugh. They asked me to review how deforestation has changed over the past five years. The most notable result, as you can see from the graph in the just-published article (open-access), is that overall it hasn't changed. And that's actually quite surprising.

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Drnadig / iStock / Getty Images Plus

EPA Exodus: Nearly 1,600 Workers Have Left Since Trump Took Office, Analysis Shows

By Jessica Corbett

Since President Donald Trump took office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has seen an exodus of nearly 1,600 former federal employees, including some who say they "did not want to any longer be any part of this administration's nonsense" and believed they "could do better work" elsewhere, according to a new report from the Washington Post.

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Divestment rally at Harvard University on April 17, 2015. 350.org, CC BY-NC-SA

Fossil Fuel Divestment Debates on Campus Spotlight Societal Role of Colleges and Universities

By Jennie C. Stephens

As a new academic year begins after a summer of deadly heat waves, wildfires, droughts and floods, many college students and faculty are debating whether and how to get involved in climate politics.

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