"U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday signed an order to hold more lease sales and to speed up approving permits to explore for oil and gas on federal land, a process he said got bogged down under former President Barack Obama."

"Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate deal may have followed months of anguished division amongst his closest advisers, but his administration has proceeded with quiet efficiency in its dismantling of other major environmental policies."

"Each day for decades, five pipelines have quietly pumped more than 2 million barrels of Canadian crude oil below northern Minnesota's forests, lakes and rivers to refineries around the Upper Midwest."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing lower biofuel quotas in 2018 than those currently on the books and required by federal law."

"On Thursday evening, Governor Brown will mount a new challenge to the administration on climate change. In a videoconference address to a global citizen festival in Hamburg, Germany, where President Trump and other officials will negotiate wording of a statement on the Paris climate change accord, Governor Brown will issue a sweeping invitation to a global 'climate action' summit meeting in San Francisco."

"PORTLAND, Maine — The summer air is sizzling as the Fourth of July approaches, yet 86-year-old Richard Perkins already worries about how he’s going to stay warm this winter."

"U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has directed his agency to limit the 'sue and settle' practice that critics say the Obama administration used to issue new regulations."

"Fishing and environmental groups sued the Trump administration [June 29] for concluding that Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) plan to replumb California's water system would not jeopardize key threatened species.

Brown wants to build two 40-foot-diameter tunnels buried 150 feet below ground to shuttle water around the ecologically sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where the state's two main rivers meet before flowing to the ocean through San Francisco Bay.

"This week, while attention was focussed on the Senate’s health-care bill, the Trump Administration continued to quietly do the one thing it does well: wreak havoc on the environment."

"Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, plans to convene a team of researchers to test the scientific premise of human-caused climate change, he told coal industry executives on Thursday."