A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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The Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to reckon with formaldehyde have been repeatedly thwarted by the companies that rely on it. If the past is any guide, even modest steps toward reform are all but guaranteed to hit a dead end under Trump. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. In a world flush with hazardous air pollutants, there is one that causes far more cancer than any other, one that is so widespread that nobody in the Uni...
The underregulated toxic chemical can be found in common household items from couches to clothes. We asked experts how you can reduce your exposure. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. ProPublica spent months investigating how a single underregulated toxic chemical – formaldehyde – creates an inescapable cancer risk for everyone in America. It’s in the air outside, at levels that fail to meet the public health goals set by the Environ...
By: Cristen Hemingway Jaynes. Ecowatch. Efforts by nations to come to an agreement on a global plastics treaty failed on Monday. While more than 100 countries sought to put a limit on the world’s plastics production – in addition to tackling recycling and cleanup – oil and gas companies were only prepared to address the problem of plastic waste. The meeting in Busan, South Korea was supposed to be the last, but negotiations will continue into 2025, reported The Associated Press. “It is clear that there is still persisting diverge...
By: Cristen Hemingway Jaynes. Ecowatch. President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Chris Wright, an executive of the oil and gas industry, as his pick to head the United States Department of Energy (DOE). Wright – chief executive of hydraulic fracturing company Liberty Energy – has been described as a “staunch defender of fossil fuel use” who claims “there is no climate crisis,” reported Reuters. Wright is expected to back Trump’s agenda of maximizing oil and gas production while boosting electricity generation. “There is no climate crisis, and we...
In Canada – Canada Announces Plan to Slash Oil and Gas Emissions 35% by 2030 By: Cristen Hemingway Jaynes. EcoWatch. The Canadian government has issued a draft of new regulations for greenhouse gas emissions produced by oil and gas. The rules would limit Canada’s emissions to 35 percent below 2019 levels by 2030. Most fossil fuels coming from Canada are produced in the oil sands of Alberta, with the United States as the largest importer. “We’re asking the oil and gas sector to invest their record profits into pollution cutting project...
By Greenpeace USA. Energy Transfer – the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline – is suing Greenpeace for a cool $300 million USD. You may remember that a similar lawsuit asserting federal racketeering and state tort claims was dismissed by a federal court back in 2019 [1], but Energy Transfer immediately re-filed a virtually identical suit in North Dakota state court [2]. That second lawsuit is still happening and is scheduled to go to trial in February 2025 in North Dakota. Not only is this a dangerous Strategic Lawsuits Against Pub...
Add your name to Greenpeace's open letter against Energy Transfer's meritless $300 million lawsuit! “We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, formally express our solidarity with Greenpeace against Energy Transfer's meritless $300 million lawsuit. Peaceful protest and free speech are fundamental human rights that underpin social progress. The Energy Transfer $300 million lawsuit against Greenpeace is an abuse of the legal system and a blatant attempt to silence legitimate work to protect people and our planet. This lawsuit makes alleg...
The policy playbook from the Heritage Foundation would strip away our rights to clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet. The policy playbook known as Project 2025 is 900 pages, and 150 of them are about how to destroy the environment. This deregulatory agenda written by former government officials and Heritage Foundation staff would strip away our rights to clean air, clean water, and a healthy planet. It would trade these basic freedoms to help polluters profit. Though the scope of planning written down in Project 2025 is new, many of...
Anchorage, AK – In a major victory for Southwest Alaska Tribes who depend on the Kuskokwim River and the surrounding lands and waters for their continued existence, a U.S. District Court in Alaska ruled today that key federal agencies responsible for permitting the Donlin mine failed to fully consider the project’s harms in the environmental study for the project. Specifically, the judge’s ruling found that federal agencies failed to realistically study the impacts to downstream waters and villages from a potentially catastrophic taili...
By Zahra Ahmad. Earthjustice. Washington, D.C. — Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took steps to limit the damage from a Trump-era Clean Air Act giveaway, which had allowed nearly half the nation’s hazardous air pollution sources, some 4,000 individual polluters, to shut down their pollution control systems, stop reporting their toxic emissions, and escape critical permitting requirements. In today’s final rule, EPA says that chemical plants, refineries, and other mega-polluters that account for significant portions of the most...
Clarkson University has received a grant worth nearly $1.5 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for research to develop and demonstrate nanosensor technology that has the potential to detect, monitor, and degrade PFAS in groundwater or surface water that may be used as drinking water sources. The project builds on nanosensing technology developed in the laboratory of Silvana Andreescu, Clarkson University Visiting Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Florida International...
This week, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Office of Pesticide Programs proposed reregistering malathion, an organophosphate pesticide linked to learning disabilities, as it claims in a new risk assessment that the chemical is 100 times less dangerous than it previously thought, even at the same exposure and toxicity levels. The July 16 proposed action relies again on a misguided new approach to evaluating organophosphates, which includes the continued use of the misused testing methodology. Organophosphates are among the mos...
By Zahra Ahmad. Earthjustice. WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would start the process to regulate toxic PFAS (per and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) found in plastic containers. This decision follows a petition filed by a coalition of environmental and health advocates, urging the EPA to address the severe risks these chemicals pose to consumers, workers, and the environment. The coalition, represented by Earthjustice, and alongside two other organizations, filed a petition under Section 21 of the Toxic Su...
By Jake Bittle and Zoya Teirstein. The Supreme Court on Friday, June 26, 2024, threw into question the future of climate and environmental regulation in the United States, scrapping a decades-old legal precedent that gave federal agencies leeway to interpret laws according to their expertise and scientific evidence. The impact of the decision to scrap the so-called Chevron deference will take years to become clear, but it could allow for far more legal challenges against regulations by agencies like the EPA and the Department of the Interior...
By: Cristen Hemingway Jaynes. Ecowatch. According to a new report by The Washington Post, last month at his private Mar-a-Lago club Donald Trump bluntly proposed a “deal” to more than 20 oil executives from some of the largest oil companies in the United States, suggesting they donate $1 billion to his presidential re-election campaign. In exchange, Trump promised that once he was back in office, he would immediately reverse dozens of environmental regulations implemented during President Joe Biden’s presidency and prevent the passage of any n...
By Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood. The Narwhal. A marine protected area managed by Kitasoo Xai’xais Nation has been designated a ‘blue park’ — an internationally recognized example of excellence in marine protection. And it is the first Indigenous-led blue park in the world The 33.5-square-kilometre Gitdisdzu Lugyeks Marine Protected Area on the central coast of British Columbia encompasses Kitasu Bay, an area rich with herring, shorebirds, whales, sea lions, and juvenile fish. The nation unilaterally declared a protected area in 2022 and began purs...
STRAUSBURG, France – The association of the Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection, whose members took action against Switzerland for violating their human rights by failing to set sufficient climate targets have won a historic victory at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Co-President of the Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti said: “This ruling is not just a victory for the Senior Women for Climate Protection. Our victory is a victory for all generations. Especially for the Portuguese youth, whose gene...
The Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act would allow polluters to recklessly pollute our streams, wetlands, and waterways while shielding them from accountability. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on H.R. 7023, The Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act. The bill would actively undermine the ability of federal agencies to protect our water resources, make it easier for industry to pollute water without permits, and limit the ability of communities and stakeholders to seek justice in the courts to...
By: Cristen Hemingway Jaynes. According to a new analysis by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States has produced the most crude oil globally for six years in a row – more than any nation in history during that time. In 2023, the daily average crude oil production in the U.S. was a record 12.9 million barrels, a press release from EIA said. Its production broke the previous global record set in 2019 of 12.3 million barrels. In December, the average U.S. crude oil production hit a monthly high of more than 13.3 million b...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced final new safeguards and rules aimed at nearly 12,000 chemical plants operating under the Risk Management Program (RMP). These crucial measures are designed to mitigate risks of explosions, fires, and other hazardous industrial incidents, which frequently occur and harm fenceline communities nationwide. The final rule mandates chemical facilities to account for extreme weather events like hurricanes and unprecedented flooding in their emergency plans, which have b...
Hilary Beaumont Last February, two balloons that were launched from Reno, Nevada, flew to Northern California. Along the way, as planned, they released a small amount of sulfur dioxide, a gas that has a cooling effect when erupting volcanoes release it. In their six-to-eight-hour journey, according to a High Country News flight-path analysis, the balloons crossed the airspace of at least five tribes, including the Colfax-Todds Valley Consolidated Tribe. But when I called Pam Cubbler, the tribe’s vice chair and lead cultural preservation o...
By Paige Bennett. A new report from nonprofits Environment America, U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund and Frontier Group has found that bans on plastic bags around the U.S. have already reduced the number of bags used by billions. The report, “Plastic Bag Bans Work”, found that bans in three states – New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont – and two cities, Portland, Oregon and Santa Barbara, California, have reduced the number of single-use plastic bags used each year by around 6 billion. According to Environment America, the num...
By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes The Canadian government made its largest land transfer in history on Thursday when it officially signed over the massive Arctic territory of Nunavut to its own government, who will now have control over the 808,200 square miles of sparsely populated mountains, tundra and vast mineral reserves. The Nunavut Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement signed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier of Nunavut P.J. Akeeagok, President of Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated Aluki Kotierk and the Minister of Northern Affairs Dan...
The head of United Nations climate talks underway in Dubai insisted incorrectly that there is no science to support phasing out fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic warming. Sultan al-Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ state-run oil company, made the comments in an online meeting on November 21. That was little over a week before he officially began to preside over annual U.N. climate negotiations, known as COP28, that are being held this year in the UAE. The comments were first reported by The Guardian, which a...
By Nydia Gutiérrez. ALBANY – Last week, Governor Hochul vetoed a bill to help preserve the state’s community gardens (S.629-A/A.4139). The bill, which passed the Senate and Assembly unanimously, would have supported community gardens by requiring the New York State Community Gardens Task Force to assess whether community gardens on publicly owned land are eligible for designation as Critical Environmental Areas (CEAs) and to recommend CEA designation for eligible gardens. The Governor vetoed the bill in a package with 31 other bills. She offe...
