"Regan Says EPA Will Look Again at Science Advisory Committees"
"The EPA will review and evaluate its scientific advisory committees to ensure they include “top-tier experts,” agency chief Michael Regan said in a Tuesday email to employees."
EJToday is a daily weekday digest of top environment/energy news and information of interest to environmental journalists, independently curated by Editor Joseph A. Davis. Sign up below to receive in your inbox. For queries, email EJToday@SEJ.org. For more info, read an EJToday FAQ. Plus, follow EJToday on social media at @EJTodayNews, and flag stories of note by including the @EJTodayNews handle on your posts. And tell us how to make EJToday even better by taking this brief survey.
Want to join the EJToday team? Volunteer time commitments can vary from just an hour a month up to a daily contribution, and would involve helping to curate content of interest. To learn more, reach out to the director of publications, Adam Glenn, at sejournaleditor@sej.org.
Note: Members have additional options to choose from (you'll need your log-in info).
"The EPA will review and evaluate its scientific advisory committees to ensure they include “top-tier experts,” agency chief Michael Regan said in a Tuesday email to employees."
"Hotter summers in Iraq are blasting soldiers sitting inside armored vehicles. Flooding is threatening the world’s largest navy base. Russian submarines are prowling the melting Arctic. Now NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wants to make global warming a major focus of the military alliance’s strategy and planning, pushing environmental issues to the center as a security threat."
"President Biden’s next big thing would fuse the rebuilding of America’s creaky infrastructure with record spending to fight climate change, a combination that, in scale and scope, represents a huge political shift, even for Democrats who have been in the climate trenches for decades."
"Wildfire smoke was associated with a far greater number of pediatric respiratory care visits than other sources of airborne fine particles, according to a new study, even when wildfires were less severe."
"Texas is crisscrossed by thousands of miles of freeways, but a Houston-area county is suing the state to stop one of them being expanded, arguing the air pollution and displacement will primarily harm minority communities."
"Conservatives have long argued against regulating fossil fuel production for the climate’s sake, claiming that doing so would interfere with the holy free market. A new study shows that’s a total fairy tale because the invisible hand isn’t responsible for dirty fuels’ market dominance—implicit government subsidies are. The findings show those subsidies total in the billions each year."
"The world stands on the cusp of a massive shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity, but many are worried that the transition won't be fair. Already, electric cars and efficient heating technologies are showing up disproportionately in wealthy neighborhoods. The U.S. faced a very similar problem almost a century ago with electricity, the energy revolution of that time. Most cities had been electrified by the 1930s, but many rural areas had not, because private electric companies saw little profit in string wires down lonely country roads."
"Just before the Trump administration headed out the door, a federal agency this past December cleared the way for a private company to begin pumping groundwater from under the Mojave Trails National Monument in Southern California."
"At a normal tide on a normal day on the Southern California coast, ankle-high waves glide over a narrow strip of gold sand. On one side sits the largest body of water in the world. On the other, a row of houses with a cumulative value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, propped on water-stained stilts.
Property value ebbs and flows, but when it comes to coastal real estate "the trend lines are pretty clear," says California state Sen. Ben Allen, squinting in the sun. "And they're not pretty."
"Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana violated a state hunting requirement last month when he trapped and killed a wolf near Yellowstone National Park without first taking a mandated trapper education course, state officials said on Tuesday."
"President Biden’s economic advisers are pulling together a sweeping $3 trillion package to boost the economy, reduce carbon emissions and narrow economic inequality, beginning with a giant infrastructure plan that may be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich."
"A Honduran Indigenous activist who helped led a fight against the construction of a dam has been killed, authorities said Monday."
"The Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to former President Obama’s designation of a national monument 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass."
"The Interior Department has reversed a Trump administration decision determining that a portion of the Missouri River was under the jurisdiction of the state of North Dakota rather than a Native American reservation."
"When a special team of EPA inspectors first showed up at an industrial plant belching carcinogens on the worn outskirts of Birmingham, Ala., in 2011, their findings of flagrant regulatory violations were later deemed serious enough to warrant a referral to the Justice Department."