"Three recent Supreme Court decisions increase industries’ chances of winning regulatory challenges, but only after a period of divergent lower court rulings on what the nation’s primary commercial chemical law requires."

"Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions both in the U.S. and globally." "Current EPA rules are inadequate, experts say, but the agency has committed to updating them. States like California, Maryland, and Washington can show the way."

"Some priority regs — including climate standards for existing gas-fired power plants, curbs on lead and copper in drinking water, and heat protections for workers — could be doomed."

"A deep dive into the petrochemical industry's proposals for the global plastics treaty."

"Allegations of possible payments to help secure votes. Claims of abuse of agency funds by top diplomats. A possible job offer to entice a candidate to withdraw from a race. These are not the shenanigans of a corrupt election in an unstable country. Rather, they are efforts in the seemingly genteel parlors of a United Nations-affiliated agency, meant to sway decisions related to the start of seabed mining of the metals used in electric vehicles."

"Flowing down the Mississippi River, the excess fertilizer that washes off vast swaths of farmland fuels a persistent “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and threatens drinking water supplies upstream. Yet despite more than a quarter-century of federal effort and billions spent on potential solutions, experts say the watershed is “not even close” to its targets for fixing the problem."

"Companies have spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics crisis and may have breached a host of US laws, a new report argues."

"The putrid smell of burning garbage wafts for miles from the landfill on the outskirts of Jammu in a potentially toxic miasma fed by the plastics, industrial, medical and other waste generated by a city of some 740,000 people. But a handful of waste pickers ignore both the fumes and suffocating heat to sort through the rubbish, seeking anything they can sell to earn at best the equivalent of $4 a day."