"PORTLAND, Maine — The summer air is sizzling as the Fourth of July approaches, yet 86-year-old Richard Perkins already worries about how he’s going to stay warm this winter."
"U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has directed his agency to limit the 'sue and settle' practice that critics say the Obama administration used to issue new regulations."
"Fishing and environmental groups sued the Trump administration [June 29] for concluding that Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) plan to replumb California's water system would not jeopardize key threatened species.
Brown wants to build two 40-foot-diameter tunnels buried 150 feet below ground to shuttle water around the ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the state's two main rivers meet before flowing to the ocean through San Francisco Bay.
"This week, while attention was focussed on the Senate’s health-care bill, the Trump Administration continued to quietly do the one thing it does well: wreak havoc on the environment."
"Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, plans to convene a team of researchers to test the scientific premise of human-caused climate change, he told coal industry executives on Thursday."
"In the four months since he took office as the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law."
"A year ago, the U.S. House tried to block the military from preparing for climate change. Now, several GOP members have voted to support studying the security risks."
"In forceful remarks before Germany’s Parliament on Thursday, Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to defend the international climate agreement spurned by the Trump administration, anticipating a difficult meeting of the leaders of the world’s major economies next week in Hamburg."
"Mainstream experts in energy policy and finance reacted skeptically to the White House's carefully orchestrated energy policy hootenanny this week, as President Donald Trump and his Cabinet declared what he called 'a golden age of American energy dominance.'"
"An Office of Inspector General report on the National Park Service (NPS) found that the agency did not change records on crowd sizes at the inauguration nor did its public affairs officials leak information to the press."
