National (U.S.)

"Environmental groups are pushing former Vice President Joe Biden to adopt a more aggressive platform on climate change after losing a big champion for their cause with the departure of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Climate change is emerging as a significant issue within the Democratic Party, pitting progressives like Sanders who have called for more aggressive environmental policies such as a total ban on fracking against others like Biden, who instead opposes new fracking on public lands.

"Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork processor, said on Sunday it will shut a U.S. plant indefinitely due to a rash of coronavirus cases among employees and warned the country was moving “perilously close to the edge” in supplies for grocers."

"The long-standing practice of spreading treated sewage sludge and septage on farm fields has contaminated groundwater in some areas with PFAS, recent sampling shows."

"An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response."

"This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that soybean farmers in 25 states are now able to spray a pesticide that the agency has determined is likely to cause cancer and drift hundreds of feet from where it is applied."

"Scientists say the Trump administration’s proposed program to cut down trees to gain an upper hand over wildfire and protect the sage-grouse bird may in fact do the opposite: increase the wildfire threat and risk ecosystem “collapse.”"

"After the fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars undermining climate science, it’s easy to see how epidemiology came next."

"The Trump administration has been rushing to finalize environmental rules by mid-May to bulletproof them from future Democratic overturn, but the COVID-19 pandemic may throw off that schedule."

"Global commodities trader Cargill Inc starting this spring will pay American farmers for capturing carbon in their field soils and cutting fertilizer runoff, an executive said."

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned last year that a pandemic caused by a novel strain of influenza would cripple the country's response capabilities by driving millions of people into overwhelmed hospitals. The report, which was written before the new coronavirus first surfaced in China, offered these prescient predictions: The deluge of patients would create "a shortage of medical supplies, equipment, beds, and healthcare workers."