"Former President Donald Trump said he wants to cut the Interior Department if he returns to the White House, and indicated “environmental agencies” more broadly are also on the chopping block."
A new federal rule to cut power plant pollution and carbon dioxide emissions promises to escalate a yearslong, highly partisan battle at the core of U.S. climate change policy. Our Issue Backgrounder lays out the shifting regulatory approaches from the administrations of George W. Bush to Joe Biden, and notes the legal tug-of-war that has heightened the importance of another big player — the Supreme Court.
"Canada’s advertising regulator has determined that ads claiming liquified natural gas (LNG) will lower emissions are inaccurate, misleading, and distort scientific data."
"Florida’s coral reefs experienced the deadliest bleaching event in history last summer, a toll largely caused by record hot coastal waters. Now, water temperatures in the Florida Keys are already approaching the coral danger zone — earlier and hotter than last year."
"For the first time, Florida home sellers will have to disclose certain aspects of a property’s flood history, under legislation Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law this week."
"Claudia Sheinbaum has been elected Mexico’s first ever female president in a historic result. Dr Sheinbaum, 61, a climate scientist and former mayor of Mexico City, is a member of the leftist Morena party and the handpicked successor to populist Andres Manuel López Obrador."
"David Hom suffered from diabetes and felt nauseated before he went out to hang his laundry in 108-degree weather, another day in Arizona’s record-smashing, unrelenting July heat wave. His family found the 73-year-old lying on the ground, his lower body burned. Hom died at the hospital, his core body temperature at 107 degrees."
"Former president Donald Trump suggested to oil executive donors this month that he could ease the Federal Trade Commission’s scrutiny of their industry’s mergers and acquisitions if he returns to the White House, according to five people familiar with the matter."
As global warming worsens heat-related illnesses, U.S. government agencies have refined a data tool whose greatest value may be to warn people about the extreme heat events that can send them to the emergency room or worse. The latest Reporter’s Toolbox explores the improved HeatRisk site and how its combination of climate and medical considerations refocuses attention on the vulnerable.
"It has been 20 years since we first saw the paleo-climatologist Jack Hall, played by Dennis Quaid, standing at a railing overlooking a command center at NOAA and asking his colleagues the question that baffled them: “What about the North Atlantic Current?”"
