"Attack of the Superweeds"
"Herbicides are losing the war — and agriculture might never be the same again."
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).
"Herbicides are losing the war — and agriculture might never be the same again."
"Lynn Rigsbee was sitting on her couch on a Tuesday morning last year when an explosion knocked her to the floor. The blast came from a hydrogen plant a few hundred feet from her house in Long View, N.C., northwest of Charlotte. It broke doors loose from deadbolts, shattered windows and blasted a hole through her roof."
"A new analysis from Earthworks suggests that oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin in Texas, one of the largest oilfields in the world, are routinely emitting carbon dioxide and methane without the correct permits, with offenders including big names like Shell and Exxon."
"Report launched with youth activists including Greta Thunberg paints ‘unimaginably dire’ picture"
"Almost half the world’s 2.2 billion children are already at “extremely high risk” from the impacts of the climate crisis and pollution, according to a report from UNICEF. The UN agency’s head called the situation “unimaginably dire”.
"A divided federal appeals court on Thursday affirmed that parts of Kansas' "ag-gag" law - among the first laws in the nation restricting undercover animal rights activists - violates the First Amendment, upholding a permanent prohibition against the state enforcing the provisions."
"U.S. officials launched a review Thursday of climate damage and other impacts from coal mining on public lands as the Biden administration expands its scrutiny of government fossil fuel sales that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions."
"Community organizers and New York residents hope high-resolution maps of hot spots in the Bronx and Manhattan will result in more equitable development."
"Governments should take advantage of the third postponement of a United Nations biodiversity summit tasked with striking a global deal to protect nature by boosting ambition and finance for conservation and restoration, environmentalists said Thursday."
"There was barely a buzz in the air as John Miller pried the lid off of a crate, one of several "bee boxes" stacked in eight neat piles beside a cattle grazing pasture outside Gackle, North Dakota. 'Nothing,' Miller said as he lifted a plastic hive frame from the box, squirming with only a few dozen bees."
"Numbers of the country’s carrion-loving birds dropped by over 97% in the 1990s. Now, a successful breeding scheme is giving them a boost".
"The Environmental Protection Agency will ban the use of a pesticide widely applied on food crops but linked to neurological damage in children, reversing one of the Trump administration’s most fraught public health decisions."
"A federal judge in Alaska on Wednesday blocked construction permits for an expansive oil drilling project on the state’s North Slope that was designed to produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years."
"For the first time, a Native American may become the director of the National Park Service. President Joe Biden nominated Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III Wednesday and will be considered by the U.S. Senate. If confirmed, he will be the 19th permanent director of the National Park Service."
"Construction on an enormous $9.4 billion plastics plant proposed in St. James Parish must be delayed so the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can do a more extensive and lengthy review of the facility's impacts on the environment and nearby minority communities, a top Army official said Wednesday."
"The Caldor Fire burning in California has grown 24 times its size in two days, forcing another 10,000 residents to evacuate."