"Rural communities in Oregon paid millions of dollars for clean, safe drinking water because the state didn’t protect their watersheds from logging-related contamination."
The Biden administration has moved rapidly to reset energy and environment policies dramatically shifted by the Trump White House. But how quickly can such a reversal occur, what are the priorities and what are the critical pathways for change? To help sort out the latest news and track larger trends, SEJournal offers this overview and analysis, part of our extensive “2021 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment.”
A case study in how journalists can center environmental news around social justice is at the heart of a new volume of scholarly essays reviewed in the latest BookShelf. While its tale of rural residents poisoned by contaminants is decades old, its lesson of what happens when power players bank on media acquiescence holds for stories of today.
"Fifteen states and two cities sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday for declining to tighten air quality standards for ozone pollution, the main ingredient in smog."
"Methane leaking out of the more than 4 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States and Canada is a far greater contributor to climate change than government estimates suggest, researchers from McGill University said on Wednesday."
"President-elect Joe Biden will order U.S. agencies on Wednesday to revisit fuel efficiency standards as well as rules governing emissions from airplanes, and appliance and building energy efficiency standards, the transition team said."
"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is facing two legal challenges from environmental groups and a coalition of 12 states and Washington, D.C., over its new emissions standards for airlines."
"Environmental and civil rights groups are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a new lead rule critics argue doesn't do enough to remove the lead pipes that contaminate drinking water."
"Air quality regulators have lifted the limits on the number of cremations that can be performed in Los Angeles county, citing a death rate that is more than double the pre-pandemic norm and an unmanageable backlog of dead bodies."
"A wheelbarrow and a handful of metal grids for capturing litter, emblazoned with the words “Renew Oceans,” sit rusting outside an empty, padlocked office in the Indian city of Varanasi, a short walk from the Ganges."
