Billions Spent On Fighting Calif. Wildfires, But Little On Prevention
"When COVID-19 blew a hole in California’s spending plans last spring, one of the things state budget-cutters took an axe to was wildfire prevention."
"When COVID-19 blew a hole in California’s spending plans last spring, one of the things state budget-cutters took an axe to was wildfire prevention."
"Blazes at the imperiled hazardous waste sites could release toxins ranging from acid mine drainage to radioactive smoke."
"The Department of Energy, EPA and the Interior Department would see modest funding increases — and a raft of new programs — in an enormous spending, pandemic and energy package that Congress has sent to President Trump for his signature."
"As the mother of five asthmatic children, Charday Urey knows the drill. When an EPA air quality index tips into the "unhealthy" zone, she closes the windows, turns on the air conditioner and keeps her kids indoors."
"A coalition of Alaska Native tribes and environmentalists filed suit on Wednesday challenging a new Trump administration policy that opens vast swaths of the largest U.S. national forest to logging, mining and other commercial development."
"Do you ever hear a new song and realize it’s unlike anything you’ve heard before? ... It happened to scientists recently, too. But it wasn’t a new singer or rapper they discovered; it’s a new population of whales."
"Perhaps the most promising solution for reducing bovines’ release of this powerful planet-warming gas [methane]? Feeding cows seaweed."
"Until now, any lawmaker who asked for $2 trillion in federal funding without offsetting savings would have been laughed out of politics. But then came the Green New Deal. And then the coronavirus pandemic. And then another bout of rock-bottom interest rates. Suddenly, a couple of trillion dollars doesn’t sound like as much money as it used to."
"President-elect Joe Biden's Cabinet and climate czar picks are likely to make a dramatic U-turn from the Trump administration's policies on global warming. That in turn could have ripple effects for the nation's pipeline sector, which depends on regulations and permitting from multiple federal agencies."
"Work crews ignite dynamite blasts in the remote and rugged southeast corner of Arizona, forever reshaping the landscape as they pulverize mountaintops in a rush to build more of President Donald Trump’s border wall before his term ends next month."