The Knight Center is offering this free, flexible massive open online course (MOOC), with popular instructor Alberto Cairo. The four-week course runs June 11-July 8, powered by Google News Initiative.
Big environmental issues such as the use of pesticides, labelling of organic foods and the preservation of farmland and water are central to a huge farm bill lurching its way through the nation’s legislature, hamstrung by partisan politics. Our latest Backgrounder sets up the landscape for your coverage.
"The Interior Department said Thursday it plans to approve the Palen solar farm, which would be built on public lands just south of Joshua Tree National Park, in the open desert east of California's Coachella Valley. The 3,100-acre, 500-megawatt power plant would be one of the country's largest solar projects, generating enough renewable energy to balance out the planet-warming emissions of 17,000 average homes in nearby Palm Springs."
"The Trump administration is taking another stab at controversial hunting regulations for national preserves in Alaska."
"A number of U.S. paper mills are expected to discharge hundreds of pounds of a controversial chemical into rivers — a reality that the federal government is aware of and has signed off on, according to internal Federal Drug Administration (FDA) documents."
"As Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt has moved to roll back a sweeping array of Obama-era regulations he's relentlessly cited his goal of providing 'regulatory certainty.'"
"Floods on the Mississippi River are getting more frequent and more severe. But scientists warn that the infrastructure meant to protect towns and farms against flood waters is making the problem worse."
"The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge to Virginia’s decades-old ban on uranium mining."
"At the age of 46, DeWayne Johnson is not ready to die. But with cancer spread through most of his body, doctors say he likely has just months to live. Now Johnson, a husband and father of three in California, hopes to survive long enough to make Monsanto take the blame for his fate."
"Wastewater treatment plants taking discharges from nearby pharmaceutical manufacturers have 'substantially' higher concentrations of drugs in the water, according to a new national study."
