All posts tagged "Climate"

The Trump administration Wednesday announced it would stop enforcing certain criminal violations of the Clean Air Act.

The move signals President Donald Trump and his administration's latest action to pull back previous environmental protections under the federal law that regulates air emissions and pollution.

"Today, @TheJusticeDept is exercising its enforcement discretion to no longer pursue criminal charges under the Clean Air Act based on allegations of tampering with onboard diagnostic devices in motor vehicles," the DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division wrote in a statement on X....

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area, causing damage to homes, power outages, and dangerous or deadly conditions. If you’re on the coast, it may be a hurricane; in the Midwest or South, a tornado; in the West, wildfires; and as we’ve seen in recent years, anywhere can experience heat waves or flash flooding.

Living through a disaster and its aftermath can be both traumatic and chaotic, from the immediate losses of life and belongings to conflicting information around where to access aid. The weeks and months after may be even more difficult, as the attention on your community is gone but civic services and events have stalled or changed drastically. ...

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

On a blustery day in early March, the who’s who of methane research gathered at Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara, California. Dozens of people crammed into a NASA mission control center. Others watched from cars pulled alongside roads just outside the sprawling facility. Many more followed a livestream. They came from across the country to witness the launch of an oven-sized satellite capable of detecting the potent planet-warming gas from space.

The amount of methane, the primary component in natural gas, in the atmosphere has been rising steadily over the last few decades, reaching nearly three times as much as preindustrial times. About a third of methane emissions in the United States occur during the extraction of fossil fuels as the gas seeps from wellheads, pipelines, and other equipment. The rest come from agricultural operations, landfills, coal mining, and other sources. Some of these leaks are large enough to be seen from orbit. Others are miniscule, yet contribute to a growing problem....

This article first appeared on Houston Landing and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Houston leaders vowed to prepare for the next big storm after Hurricane Harvey flooded thousands of people out of their homes.

When a rare derecho slammed the region earlier this month, however, officials and residents alike were caught off guard....

A new report has warned that climate change is creating a "cocktail of hazards" likely to affect more than 70% of the global workforce. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that 2.4 billion of the world's 3.4 billion workers will be exposed to excessive heat during their working lives. Workers in agriculture and other sectors involving open-air activities are particularly affected by extreme heat and UV radiation, which can cause health conditions such as skin cancer and cardiovascular diseases. An estimated 19,000 people die every year across the globe as a result of excessiv......

This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

Some activists view the industry's response as a badge of success.

When oil and gas companies attack a climate campaign, activists usually focus on the obvious negative: One of the world’s biggest industries, with its wealth of resources, is trying to quash their efforts to, for instance, ban natural gas in buildings....