The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills. The firings threaten to paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was created by Congress in 1981 and helps to offset high utility bills for roughly 6.2 million people …
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A Quarter-Billion Dollars for Defamation: Inside Greenpeace’s Huge Loss
When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner. The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts, who said the lawsuit and …
Read More »A New Dinosaur Museum Rises From a Hole in the Ground in New Jersey
Ten years ago, this was just a big hole in the ground behind a Lowe’s home improvement store in southern New Jersey, an unlikely place to find what might be one of the world’s most important fossil sites. But 66 million years ago, tantalizingly close in time to when the dinosaurs went extinct, a multitude of sea creatures died here …
Read More »How to Plan a Garden With Climate Change in Mind
The silent season is drawing to a close. All winter, there was little birdsong to lift my heart. The occasional caw of a crow, the chickadee-dee-dee of a chickadee, the big song of the little Carolina wren that now stays on our Pennsylvania farm all winter. But no courtship call of great horned owls, no wood thrush or Baltimore oriole. …
Read More »E.P.A. Offers a Way to Avoid Clean-Air Rules: Send an Email
Last year, the Biden administration required coal- and oil-burning power plants to greatly reduce emissions of toxic chemicals including mercury, which can harm babies’ brains and cause heart disease in adults. Now, the Trump administration is offering companies an extraordinary out: Send an email, and they might be given permission by President Trump to bypass the new restrictions, as well …
Read More »Dolphin Hunting Is Their Tradition. Rising Seas Have Made It a Lifeline.
The call of a conch shell roused the dolphin hunters from their beds. Under moonlight, the six men shuffled to the village church. There a priest led them in a whispered prayer, his voice barely audible over the sound of crashing waves; the tide was high that day. Saltwater pooled in parts of the village, which is on Fanalei Island, …
Read More »At This Clinic in Hawaii, Nature Is the Medicine
50 States, 50 Fixes The air is filled with birdsong, the land a tableau of soft greens and gentle light. This is Ho‘oulu ‘Āina, a 100-acre preserve with an unusual twist. Linked to a community health center, it is a place where patients come to heal the land, and themselves. As climate change accelerates and the Trump administration abandons the …
Read More »Supreme Court Will Not Hear Appeal in ‘Juliana’ Climate Case
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal in a landmark climate case brought by 21 young people against the federal government, ending its 10-year journey through the courts. But the case provided a blueprint for numerous other climate-related lawsuits that have had greater success. Juliana v. United States argued that the government had violated the constitutional rights …
Read More »E.P.A. Investigations of Severe Pollution Look Increasingly at Risk
A refinery in New Mexico that the federal government has accused of some of the worst air pollution in the country. A chemical plant in Louisiana being investigated for leaking gas from storage tanks. Idaho ranchers accused of polluting wetlands. Under President Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency took a tough approach on environmental enforcement by investigating companies for pollution, hazardous …
Read More »Science Data May Soon Vanish From Government Websites.
Amid the torrent of executive orders signed by President Trump were directives that affect the language on government web pages and the public’s access to government data touching on climate change, the environment, energy and public health. In the past two months, hundreds of terabytes of digital resources analyzing data have been taken off government websites, and more are feared …
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