"President Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took a step closer to confirmation Dec. 11 when the Senate voted 53-41 to put her nomination to a final confirmation vote."

"Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg was named Time magazine’s 2019 “Person of the Year” early Wednesday."

"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Tuesday proposed a “Blue New Deal” plan in what she calls an effort to protect oceans and rebuild the economy associated with oceans."

"A majority of Americans say they want more stringent oversight of large-scale livestock operations, according to a national poll by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for a Livable Future released Tuesday. The polling follows a recent recommendation from the nation’s leading public health association to temporarily halt the creation of new concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, and increase their oversight and regulation."

"Relations between EPA and its inspector general took another hit today as the agency's watchdog office issued a new report taking aim at Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson."

"Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, made an appearance Tuesday at the United Nations climate summit to assure the world that “Americans are continuing to lead on climate change, even with a climate denier in the White House.”"

"A top Interior Department official broke a federal ethics rule by improperly meeting with his former employer, a conservative research organization, to discuss the rollback of endangered species protections that the group had been pushing, the department’s internal watchdog said in a report published Tuesday."

"A New York state judge on Tuesday handed Exxon Mobil a victory in the civil case brought by the state’s attorney general that argued the company had engaged in fraud through its statements about how it accounted for the costs of climate change regulation."