"Trump fired Rex Tillerson, a former Exxon CEO who supported staying in the Paris climate accord. Pompeo is a Koch brothers ally and climate policy critic."
Newsroom cutbacks are among the many obstacles that environmental reporters face in reporting local climate change stories, per a new survey of members of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The study was conducted with the SEJ by the Climate Matters project at George Mason University to help identify ways to provide reporters with better tools and professional develop training. Get the full results.
March 11-17 is Sunshine Week — a time for journalists, public and government to focus on open government. SEJ is asking EPA's press office to ensure basic responses to journalists' information requests. This and more is available here.
While environmental themes were less prominent at the Sundance Film Festival this year, our correspondent JoAnn Valenti unearthed ecological messages from documentaries that explore the emergence of climate change refugees in the face of sea level rise, the escape from modernity into wilderness and the confrontation of environmental threats by young innovators.
Coal ash can contaminate surface and ground water with toxic heavy metals. But as this week’s TipSheet reports, Trump deregulation aims to loosen EPA rules on its disposal. That may mean a big local pollution story. If journalists can find the data, that is. The latest on the new rules, plus resources for coverage.
"While the orcas of Puget Sound are sliding toward extinction, orcas farther north have been expanding their numbers. Their burgeoning hunger for big fish may be causing the killer whales' main prey, chinook salmon, to shrink up and down the West Coast."
"U.S. EPA's youngest social justice advisers are hammering the federal government for its lack of action on climate change."
"For more than a dozen years, the vast majority of sea turtles born on Florida beaches have been female, says Jeanette Wyneken, a biological sciences professor at Florida Atlantic University."
"The Standing Rock Tribe argues in a report that thousands of barrels of oil a day could leak into the Missouri River and not be detected by the company's equipment."
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