"The White House has removed the scientist responsible for the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s premier contribution to climate knowledge and the foundation for regulations to combat global warming, in what critics interpreted as the latest sign that the Trump administration intends to use its remaining months in office to continue impeding climate science and policy."

"Dakota Access pipeline supporters faced a tough bench Wednesday in the latest round of a long-running legal feud over the project’s future, with federal judges appearing to lean in favor of requiring additional environmental review but conflicted on other issues."

"From his lab in Toulouse, France, Benjamin Sanderson models the range of extreme risks to humans from climate change, research he hopes can inform policymakers planning for worsening wildfires and floods. It is the kind of work he once performed in the United States - and hopes to again soon."

"Pandemics will emerge more often, spread faster, cost more and kill more people than COVID-19 without bold action to halt the habitat destruction that helps viruses hop from wildlife to humans, according to a study published on Thursday."

"When the Trump administration finalized a key Clean Water Act rule last year, it slammed media outlets for citing federal data showing it would erase protections for more than half the nation's wetlands and 18% of streams."

"Conservation groups sued the Trump administration Wednesday, arguing it failed to fully consider the effects on endangered species when reviewing the environmental damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."

"A shuffle to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) independent board of science advisers will add a longtime consultant who has worked for the tobacco and chemicals industries while promoting a member listed as someone “not to pick” by the Union of Concerned Scientists to be the panel's chair."

"Mountain Valley Pipeline was given another two years Friday to complete a natural gas pipeline already marked by six years of community opposition, environmental damage, legal fights and delays."

"This has been the 2020 pattern: Politics has thoroughly contaminated the scientific process. The result has been an epidemic of distrust, which further undermines the nation’s already chaotic and ineffective response to the coronavirus."