"Oil and gas companies are spending millions to squash a pair of ballot initiatives this election cycle: a proposal for limiting the location of new oil and gas sites in Colorado, and a plan to charge climate polluters in Washington state."
"The Interior Department has issued formal approval for a massive solar power project in the Southern California desert, completing a wild odyssey that saw the project left for dead two years ago after its Spain-based developer went bankrupt."
"This year on Calfornia’s packed ballot, voters will decide on a contentious initiative that would overturn recent state legislation that raised taxes on gasoline to fund needed road and transit projects."
The vulnerability of critical U.S. infrastructure to cyberattacks has been a growing worry for years, as electric utilities, drinking water systems, chemical plants, nuclear plants, pipelines and more are the target of a burgeoning cadre of hackers. But for environmental and other journalists focused on the story, another problem has emerged: The secrecy that has long been part of the U.S. cybersecurity policy. In this comprehensive Backgrounder, SEJournal takes a look at the risk, the response and the resources to let reporters go deep on cyber warfare as an energy and environment story.
"Steven Chancellor, an Indiana coal executive who raised more than $1 million for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, has obtained permits to import the heads and hides of at least three male lions from Africa since being tapped last year to advise Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke about the benefits of international hunting."
"The fires burn constantly in and around Onitsha, a growing city nestled on the banks of the Niger River in southern Nigeria. Each fire is surrounded by its own hellscape of rotting food, mounded rubbish, castoff computers, and slaughterhouse scraps, and the blazes — often fueled with old tires sliced into ribbons — incinerate the city’s waste and send out noxious plumes of smoke laden with dangerously high levels of particulate pollution."
"In November 1995, a scientist and a diplomat quarreled in Madrid."
"Alaska is in the midst of a divisive civil war over a ballot initiative that pits the state's revered wild salmon fisheries against its powerful oil and mining industries."
"The United Nations shipping agency pushed back this week on any phased entry for tougher marine fuel rules and further tightened regulations that will come into force in 2020."
"A group of 20 U.S. states and several major cities on Friday urged the Trump administration to abandon a proposal to freeze fuel efficiency standards after 2020 and strip California of the ability to impose its own vehicle emissions rules."
