National (U.S.)

"Chemical regulation: EPA cranks out toxics rules during Obama’s last days in office"

"A new National Academy of Sciences' risk assessment could accelerate public health protection from pesticides."

"Energy Transfer Partners has filed a motion to bar the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from initiating an environmental study for its controversial Dakota Access pipeline crossing at Lake Oahe in North Dakota."

"The Obama administration wrote a second check for $500 million on Tuesday to the Green Climate Fund, an international organization designed to help the developing world adapt to global warming and deploy more clean energy technologies."

"In a powerful testament to the warming of the planet, two leading U.S. science agencies Wednesday jointly declared 2016 the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set just last year — which, itself, had topped a record set in 2014.

Average surface temperatures in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 2015, and featured eight successive months (January through August) that were individually the warmest since the agency’s record began in 1880.

"Among Donald Trump's cabinet nominees awaiting Senate confirmation, few are expected to face tougher scrutiny than Scott Pruitt, the president-elect's pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency. The Oklahoma attorney general is a relentless adversary of that agency and its regulations, and he has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry he would be charged with overseeing."

"A 2000 treaty committed the two nations to study and conserve their polar bears. Even as political tensions rise, climate change and other pressures make their work more necessary than ever."

"More than 60 percent of Americans would like to see the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's powers preserved or strengthened under incoming President Donald Trump, and the drilling of oil on public lands to hold steady or drop, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday."

"William K. Reilly, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H.W. Bush, is blunt in his assessment of the climate change deniers and anti-regulatory hawks who have been nominated to fill many of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s top environmental posts. Reilly, a Republican, looks with special alarm upon Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, nominated to run the EPA."