All posts tagged "Environment"

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....

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson berated her colleagues Friday for a ruling she claimed gave the impression that the Court was "overly sympathetic to corporate interests," The Daily Beast reported.

Jackson's takedown came after the conservative court voted 7-2 in favor of "allowing fuel producers to challenge California’s heightened emissions limits."

California set stricter standards for emissions than the federal government laid out in the Clean Air Act, the article stated. And, in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) moved toward phasing out the sale of gas-powered cars "in favor of zero-emission vehicles statewide by 2035."...

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Mone Choy is 68 and lives in the New York City neighborhood of Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan, on a fixed disability income of $1,901 per month. Her rent is frozen at $1,928. She lives with chronic health issues that render her unable to work. In addition to a few other intermittent gigs, Choy covers the rest of her expenses by collecting bottles from her building’s recycling and taking them to a nearby redemption center.

One luxury her budget doesn’t leave room for, even during a heat wave like the one that scorched the city last week — and remains ongoing around the world — is air conditioning. She has several AC units in her apartment (gifts from friends concerned about Choy’s health) but because she can’t afford to turn them on, they sit uninstalled....

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It’s Earth Day 1990, and Meryl Streep walks into a bar. She’s distraught about the state of the environment. “It’s crazy what we’re doing. It’s very, very, very bad,” she says in ABC’s prime-time Earth Day special, letting out heavy sighs and listing jumbled statistics about deforestation and the hole in the ozone layer.

The bartender, Kevin Costner, says he used to be scared, too — until he started doing something about it. “These?” he says, holding up a soda can. “I recycle these.” As Streep prepares to launch her beer can into the recycling bin, Costner cautions her, “This could change your life.”...

LODI, Calif. — It may look like an innocent green plant, but its name evokes something far closer to a robot or interstellar rocket.

Neo Px is a bioengineered plant capable of purifying indoor air at an unprecedented scale, the first in a potentially long line of such super-powered organisms.

"It's the equivalent of up to 30 regular houseplants in terms of air purification," said Lionel Mora, co-founder of startup Neoplants....

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No human organ is safe from microplastic contamination, it seems — not even the testicles.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico recently tested 70 samples of testicular tissue — 47 from dogs and 23 from humans — and found microplastics in every single one. The attention-grabbing study, published last week in the journal Toxicological Sciences, highlights microplastics’ “pervasive presence” in male reproductive systems, and their potential consequences on male fertility. ...