The first time Donald Trump was president, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency developed a regulation known as the “science transparency” rule. The administration liked to call it the “secret science” rule.
“Transparency” sounds positive, but this rule instead prevented the EPA from using some of the best available science to protect human health.
Congress is moving forward with President Donald Trump’s bill to provide tax cuts for billionaires while ripping social services away from millions of Americans. In particular, the natural resources section of this massive bill reveals how congressional Republicans are trying to sell out public lands to the highest bidder to fund those insider tax breaks, while Big Oil campaign donors and other Wall Street insiders stand to see financial gain.
If passed, this bill would be the largest successful attack by Congress on U.S. lands and waters in modern American history. It would give the oil industry free rein over more than 293 million acres of public lands and waters—an area larger than Texas and California combined—for drilling through its first rounds of mandated lease sales alone.* Factoring in expected tax cuts and other legal changes that would benefit fossil fuel CEOs, the tax bill would be a massive win for Big Oil and a massive loss for the American public.
As climate disasters grow in frequency and intensity, from devastating wildfires to relentless hurricanes to record-breaking heat waves, the Trump administration has once again taken a step that threatens to deepen the climate crisis: formally announcing the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. In the midst of an escalating climate crisis that’s upending livelihoods and lives, this decision raises urgent questions about the future of national and global progress. Namely, what does it mean for the international climate effort to combat climate change when the world’s largest historical emitter steps away from the table? And what are the implications for Americans already grappling with the mounting costs of a warming planet?
Fossil fuels are the leading driver of climate change, yet they are still heavily subsidized by governments around the world.
Although many countries have explicitly promised to reduce fossil fuel subsidies to combat climate change, this has proven difficult to accomplish. As a result, fossil fuels remain relatively inexpensive, and their use and greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow.
Project 2025, the far-right extremist agenda developed by the Heritage Foundation, would increase the power of corporations at the expense of Americans’ health and well-being. It would give more control to health care companies—including some of the most profitable companies in the world—by jeopardizing protections that help many patients access and afford the care they need. Project 2025 would also take us back to a time when corporations were free to pump dangerous toxins into the air we breathe and the water we drink. If Project 2025’s plan for a far-right administration takes effect, corporations will profit while patients are saddled with high bills, less accessible health care, more exposure to toxins, and more harmful health conditions.
Less than a month into summer 2024, the vast majority of the U.S. population has already experienced an extreme heat wave. Millions of people were under heat warnings across the western U.S. in early July or sweating through humid heat in the East.
Death Valley hit a dangerous 129 degrees Fahrenheit (53.9 C) on July 7, a day after a motorcyclist died from heat exposure there. Las Vegas broke its all-time heat record at 120 F (48.9 C). In California, days of over-100-degree heat in large parts of the state dried out the landscape, fueling wildfires. Oregon reported several suspected heat deaths.
Electric power generation in the U.S. is shifting rapidly away from fossil fuels toward cleaner and lower-carbon sources. State clean energy targets and dramatic declines in the cost of renewable electricity are the most important reasons.
But fossil fuel plants still generate 60% of the U.S. electricity supply, producing air, water, and land pollutants and greenhouse gases in the process. To reduce these impacts, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a suite of rules on April 25, 2024. They focus mainly on coal plants, the nation’s most-polluting electricity source.
Indianapolis proudly claims Elvis’ last concert, Robert Kennedy’s speech in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and the Indianapolis 500. There’s a 9/11 memorial, a Medal of Honor Memorial, and a statue of former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning.
What few locals know, let alone tourists, is that the city also houses one of the largest dry cleaning Superfund sites in the U.S.
Power plants are an enormous source of carbon pollution, producing more than 25 percent of the United States’ total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Now—backed by the transformative power of the new clean electricity investments of the Inflation Reduction Act, which also affirmed the strength of the Clean Air Act to tackle climate change—the Biden administration has a rare opportunity to set the first-ever carbon pollution emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Sixteen young Montanans who sued their state over climate change emerged victorious on Aug. 14, 2023 from a first-of-its-kind climate trial.
The case, Held v. State of Montana, was based on allegations that state energy policies violate the young plaintiffs’ constitutional right to “a clean and healthful environment” – a right that has been enshrined in the Montana Constitution since the 1970s. The plaintiffs claimed that state laws promoting fossil fuel extraction and forbidding the consideration of climate impacts during environmental review violate their constitutional environmental right.
You’ve just finished a cup of coffee at your favorite cafe. Now you’re facing a trash bin, a recycling bin, and a compost bin. What’s the most planet-friendly thing to do with your cup?
Many of us would opt for the recycling bin – but that’s often the wrong choice. In order to hold liquids, most paper coffee cups are made with a thin plastic lining, which makes separating these materials and recycling them difficult.
In fact, the most sustainable option isn’t available at the trash bin. It happens earlier, before you’re handed a disposable cup in the first place.
The race to decarbonize passenger cars and light-duty trucks in the U.S. is accelerating. Battery electric vehicles accounted for almost 6% of all new vehicle sales in 2022, up from close to 3% in 2021, and demand is outstripping supply, even as manufacturers roll out new models and designs. The Biden administration is spending billions of dollars to build out EV charging networks and providing incentives for purchasing new and used EVs.
This shift offers big economic and environmental benefits, but they’re not spread equitably. People who bear the most burdens in our current transportation systems often receive the fewest benefits and are least able to change their situations.
On the morning news, you see the weather forecast is for high heat, and there is an “excessive heat watch” for later in the week. You were hoping the weather would cool down, but yet another heat wave is threatening human health and increasing the chance of wildfires. On top of these warm days and nights, air quality data has been showing unhealthy levels of pollution.
Sound familiar? This scenario is increasingly the new normal in many parts of the world.
The U.S. coal industry chalked up a couple of rare wins this summer. First the Supreme Court issued a ruling limiting the government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Then President Joe Biden’s climate plan stalled in Congress again.
But while some specific threats to the industry have subsided, that doesn’t mean coal-fired power plants will make a comeback.
In a highly anticipated but not unexpected 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled on June 30, 2022 that the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act.
The ruling doesn’t take away the EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, but it makes federal action harder by requiring the agency to show that Congress has charged it to act – in an area where Congress has consistently failed to act.
You probably clean your shoes if you step in something muddy or disgusting (please pick up after your dog!). But when you get home, do you always de-shoe at the door?
Plenty of Australians don’t. For many, what you drag in on the bottom of your shoes is the last thing on the mind as one gets home.
The average American’s everyday interactions with energy sources are limited. They range from turning appliances on or off, to commuting, to paying utility bills.
The connections between those acts and rising global temperatures may seem distant.
However, individuals hold many keys to unlocking solutions to climate change – the biggest challenge our species currently faces – which is perhaps why the fossil fuel industry spent decades misleading and misinforming the public about it.
Plastic waste of all shapes and sizes permeates the world’s oceans. It shows up on beaches, in fish, and even in Arctic sea ice. And a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine makes clear that the U.S. is a big part of the problem.
As the report shows, the U.S. produces a large share of the global supply of plastic resin – the precursor material to all plastic industrial and consumer products. It also imports and exports billions of dollars’ worth of plastic products every year.
During President Joe Biden’s first week in office, he announced a pause on all new lease sales on public lands and waters alongside a review of the entire federal oil and gas program. Despite these attempts, a Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty in Louisiana blocked the leasing pause, and the Biden administration announced they would hold lease sales both on and offshore in the coming months. The onshore lease sales are poised to offer up 740,000 acres of public lands, and offshore plans will offer a whopping 80 million acres of public ocean to oil companies to lease. Federal leases lock in oil development for decades, and the offshore lease sale alone has the potential to emit 723 million metric tons of CO2* into the atmosphere over its lifetime, equivalent to operating more than 70 percent of the United States’ coal-fired power plants for a year.
With the passage of a massive economic rescue bill, more than 200 million vaccines distributed, a historically diverse Cabinet in place, and a pledge to cut carbon emissions upward of 50 percent, it’s clear that the Biden administration has wasted no time during its first 100 days. As part of its effort to take a whole-of-government approach to solving the overlapping health, economic, racial justice, and climate crises, the administration has also been rapidly fulfilling its conservation commitments to the American public.
