""More than four dozen former military and intelligence officials are rebuking President Trump for planning to counter the government’s own findings that climate change poses a threat to national security — warning that it’s “dangerous to have national security analysis conform to politics.”"
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When Army Staff Sgt. Samuel Fortune returned from Iraq, his body battered by war, he assumed he’d be safe. Then the people around him began to get sick. His neighbors, all living near five military bases, complained of tumors, thyroid problems and debilitating fatigue. Soon, the Colorado health department announced an unusually high number of kidney cancers in the region. Then Mr. Fortune’s wife fell ill."
"Top Trump administration officials have pushed to build nuclear power plants throughout Saudi Arabia over the vigorous objections of White House lawyers who question the legality of the plan and the ethics of a venture that could enrich Trump allies, according to a new report by House Democrats released on Tuesday."
"The White House is working to assemble a panel to assess whether climate change poses a national security threat, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post, a conclusion that federal intelligence agencies have affirmed several times since President Trump took office."
"Neil Chatterjee, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, yesterday rebuffed calls for mandatory cybersecurity standards for natural gas pipelines, citing improvement in the industry's effort to strengthen its defenses."
"Major hurricanes, devastating wildfires, a drought and a series of extreme storms ran up the count of billion-dollar U.S. climate and weather disasters."
"As Hurricane Michael quickly gained strength over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico in October, Tyndall Air Force Base began sending its stealth fighters to safer bases—all but the more than a dozen planes undergoing maintenance. Two days later, the base was being ripped apart by 155 mile-per-hour winds that left it littered with the twisted metal of torn-away rooftops and hangars.
"While the U.S. put off funding new icebreakers year after year, Russia built a fleet of more than 40 now at the ready as a melting Arctic opens new frontiers."
"Damage to key military shipyards would undermine the Pentagon’s ability to respond to military crises and counter China’s ambitions."
"Mahiuddin, a 35 year-old farmer from Badghis, a mountainous province in western Afghanistan, has been living in a camp outside the city of Herat for months, one of tens of thousands displaced by the worst drought the country has seen in years."
As the Trump administration challenges wetlands preservation policy under the Clean Water Act, an important related practice has come into question. Mitigation banking — the creation or preservation of one wetland to offset the loss of another — has become a billion-dollar industry. But as this week’s TipSheet reports, the legal and regulatory tangle aside, wetlands permitting and mitigation continues, likely near you. Tracking the local story.
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