"The EPA can shield some records regarding a former official’s role in pesticide policymaking from a conservation group, a divided Second Circuit ruled Monday. Messages between staff about how the agency should communicate its policies are protected by the deliberative process privilege, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit."
"Environmentalists on Monday accused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of imperiling hundreds of vulnerable species when it expanded hunting and fishing on 147 national wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries under President Donald Trump."
"At least a third of the scientists and staff at EPA’s specialized forensics lab have quit or retired over the past five years, an exodus that threatens the unit’s central role in solving some of the nation’s most difficult environmental crimes."
"The Biden administration’s oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico last week doesn’t just lock in decades of future drilling and greenhouse gas emissions, it also opens up more extraction in an area where chemical companies dumped tons of hazardous industrial waste."
"ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST PARISH, La. — As white smoke wafted from a massive oil and gas refinery that sits near his backyard, Michael Coleman reminisced about the sweet days of his childhood, before sugar cane fields that stretched for miles were sold and replaced by chemical companies that wiped out the “nice little community we had here.”
"The Biden administration approved an offshore wind farm off the coasts of Rhode Island and New York on Wednesday as part of a plan to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030."
"The department recommended higher fees for oil and gas leases, but there was no sign the government planned to take global warming into account when weighing new applications."
SEJ offers an extensive Climate Change Resource Guide to reporters and editors, especially those newer to the climate change beat, in order to support their coverage of this all-important topic. On this page you'll find policy and advocacy documents sorted by intergovernmental, governmental and NGO & private sector categories.
As the dust settles on COP28, climate change news abounds. So to help environmental journalists find and report stories on the beat, SEJ Publications continues to expand its growing Climate Change Resource Guide. Explore dozens of new information sources in the just-added Disaster and Extreme Weather section. Plus, hundreds of other topical resources and more in the overarching Guide, including on deadline reporting, local reporting, science 101s, key sources and experts, news sources, and a policy and advocacy library.
The history of environmental racism is a long one in the United States, far longer than the efforts to address the problem. But reporting on environmental justice continues to tick upwards, and an analysis in the latest Backgrounder points to promising progress, explaining why for journalists the year ahead may yield important stories, whether about future footholds or new missteps.
