The world’s largest and most influential development bank said on Wednesday it would lift its longstanding ban on funding nuclear power projects. The decision by the board of the World Bank could have profound implications for the ability of developing countries to industrialize without burning planet-warming fuels such as coal and oil. The ban has been formally in place since …
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Why Rooftop Solar Could Crash Under the Republican Tax-Cut Bill
Over the past two decades, more than 5 million U.S. households from California to Georgia to Maine have put solar panels on their roofs, drawing energy from the sun and reducing their electric bills. But that could soon come to a crashing halt. The big domestic policy bill passed by House Republicans last month would, by the end of this …
Read More »Document Shows E.P.A. Plans to Loosen Limits on Mercury From Power Plants
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to weaken a Biden-era regulation that required power plants to slash pollutants, including the emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin that impairs brain development, according to an internal agency document. Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, intends to announce the proposed changes within days, according to two people who have been briefed on the agency’s plans. Mr. …
Read More »Trump Administration to Uphold Some PFAS Limits but Eliminate Others
The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that it would uphold drinking water standards for two harmful “forever chemicals,” present in the tap water of millions of Americans. But it said it would delay deadlines to meet those standards and roll back limits on four other related chemicals. Known as forever chemicals because of their virtually indestructible nature, PFAS are a …
Read More »Republican Budget Bill Aims to End I.R.A. Clean Energy Boom
At least 24 factories have been set up in the United States to produce electric cars that qualify for the credit, including a Ford plant making plug-in hybrids in Louisville, Ky., and a General Motors battery plant in Ohio, according to a study from Atlas Public Policy, a research firm. Near Savannah, Ga., Hyundai invested in a $7.5 billion factory …
Read More »Farmers Sued Over Deleted Climate Data. So the Government Will Put It Back.
The Agriculture Department will restore information about climate change that was scrubbed from its website when President Trump took office, according to court documents filed on Monday in a lawsuit over the deletion. The deleted data included pages on federal funding and loans, forest conservation and rural clean energy projects. It also included sections of the U.S. Forest Service and …
Read More »Energy Department to Repeal Efficiency Rules for Appliances
The Energy Department said on Monday that it was preparing to roll back energy and water conservation standards for a long list of electric and gas appliances, targeting 47 regulations that it said were “driving up costs and lowering quality of life for the American people.” The moves follow an executive order last week from President Trump directing the Energy …
Read More »There Is No ‘Energy Emergency,’ a New Lawsuit Claims
Fifteen states sued the Trump administration over its declaration of an “energy emergency,” arguing that there is no emergency and that the order instructs regulators to illegally bypass reviews of fossil fuel projects, potentially damaging the environment. The president’s Jan. 20 executive order, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” directed federal agencies to speed up energy projects like drilling for oil …
Read More »U.S. Government to Stop Tracking the Costs of Extreme Weather
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday it would stop tracking the cost of the country’s most expensive disasters, those which cause at least $1 billion in damage. The move would leave insurance companies, researchers and government policymakers without information to help understand the patterns of major disasters like hurricanes, drought or wildfires, and their economic consequences, starting …
Read More »At the Biennale in Venice, A Fantasy Island Imported from Mexico
Mexico City’s small urban farms — known locally as chinampas — practice a sort of agriculture in reverse: instead of bringing water to land as most farms do, chinampas bring land to water. The chinampas in use today go back about a thousand years, to when Aztec farmers began building rectangular fields on top of vast lakes and growing food …
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