"Just over a mile from where Patricia Flores has lived for almost 20 years, a battery smelter plant spewed toxic elements into the environment for nearly a century."
"President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order formally creating a National Energy Dominance Council and directed it to move quickly to drive up already record-setting domestic oil and gas production."
"The Energy Department on Friday afternoon announced it would “postpone” Biden’s efficiency rules for lightbulbs, clothes washers and dryers, air conditioners, air compressors and gas-powered water heaters."
"Trump’s DOGE chief mischaracterizes a contract as he marshals “deep state” conspiracy theories to justify cuts to federal agencies."
"President Donald Trump’s administration is holding up money for wildfire mitigation projects funded through legislation championed by his Democratic predecessor, threatening efforts to prevent catastrophic blazes like the ones that recently ripped through Southern California."
"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has fired nearly 400 employees after a directive from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)."
"The president, still angry about the pandemic response, may be cutting into the country’s fundamental ability to identify emerging diseases and head them off."
A coming lithium rush in Arkansas drew the notice of journalist Katie Myers, who used a grant from the Fund for Environmental Journalism to explore whether extraction activities near once-booming energy communities could avoid the economic and environmental impacts of another boom-and-bust cycle for a largely Black region with histories of land dispossession, plantation slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Lessons learned in the latest FEJ StoryLog.
Environmental journalists aiming to report local or regional stories on real estate climate risk should explore an impressive bit of data journalism on the subject; Reporter’s Toolbox lauds it not just for the exemplary work, but also because the project, from The Washington Post, allows them to look up a variety of risks in their own locales.
Whether fires in California or flooding in North Carolina, climate disasters are revealing a major fault line in U.S. emergency response — a serious insurance shortfall that may lead to financial catastrophe. The new Issue Backgrounder explores the risks of underinsured disasters, the limits to the national flood insurance programs and FEMA aid, and the predictable scapegoating that has created solution gridlock.
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