"Deforestation last year rose to the highest level since 2015 in Brazil's Cerrado, prompting scientists on Monday to raise alarm over the state of the world's most species-rich savanna, a major carbon sink that helps to stave off climate change."
"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Monday [Dec. 27] that it will require more facilities to report the release of a carcinogenic gas called ethylene oxide (EtO), after previously not requiring them to do so."
"Fed by rain and snowmelt from mountains, this valley nestled among northwestern Afghanistan’s jagged peaks was once fertile. But the climate has changed in the last few decades, locals say, leaving the earth barren and its people struggling to survive."
"In the village of Paguate as June Lorenzo’s grandmother knew it growing up, orchards and fields of wheat and corn carpeted nearby hillsides. Streams traversed a verdant valley where people hunted and grazed sheep near the small farming community in Laguna Pueblo. This was before a massive mine cratered the nearby land and altered the skyline. Lorenzo has looked for old photos of that landscape, but they’re hard to find. That place exists now only in stories from elders."
"Richard Leakey, the world-renowned paleoanthropologist-turned-conservationist, has died at 77."
"Hawaii’s Department of Health on Monday upheld the governor’s order requiring the Navy to drain massive World War II-era fuel tanks after oil leaking from the aging facility contaminated Pearl Harbor’s tap water."
"The Bureau of Land Management will try to persuade a federal judge Tuesday to allow Ormat Nevada’s geothermal project to proceed over objections from an American Indian tribe and an environmental group."
"The German government said Monday that it considers nuclear energy dangerous and objects to European Union proposals that would let the technology remain part of the bloc’s plans for a climate-friendly future."
SEJournal looks ahead to key issues in the coming year with this "2022 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment" special report. Check out the guide's various Backgrounders, TipSheets, WatchDog reports an overview analysis.
A trove of confidential documents about a well-known groundwater pollution problem helped journalists Paul LaRocco and David M. Schwartz uncover how much had actually been hidden about the contamination’s severity and how it could have been kept from worsening. In the latest Inside Story Q&A, LaRocco and Schwartz share the story behind their award-winning investigation.
