The Trump administration announced a flurry of measures to target PFAS contamination, but it stayed mum on whether it intends to uphold a Biden-era rule requiring utilities to remove the “forever chemicals” from the tap water of hundreds of millions of Americans. “I have long been concerned about PFAS and the efforts to help states and communities dealing with legacy …
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Climate Change, Once a Big Issue, Fades From Canada’s Election
The melting Arctic icecap. Record-smashing wildfires across several provinces. A country that, on average, is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. And yet, as Canadians go to the polls Monday, climate change isn’t even among the top 10 issues for voters, according to recent polling. “That’s just not what this election is about,” said Jessica …
Read More »The Trump Administration Wants Seafloor Mining. What Does That Mean?
Life at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean is slow, dark and quiet. Strange creatures glitter and glow. Oxygen seeps mysteriously from lumpy, metallic rocks. There is little to disturb these deep-ocean denizens. “There’s weird life down here,” said Bethany Orcutt, a geomicrobiologist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Research in the deep sea is incredibly difficult given the extreme …
Read More »Trump Takes a Major Step Toward Seabed Mining in International Waters
President Trump has ordered the U.S. government to take a major step toward mining vast tracts of the ocean floor, a move that nearly every other nation in the world considers off limits to this kind of industrial activity. The executive order, signed Thursday, would circumvent a decades-old international treaty that every major coastal nation except the United States has …
Read More »How Trump Might Unwittingly Cut Emissions From Online Shopping
Fast-fashion giants like Shein and Temu have been doing booming business in the United States in recent years, in part because of a tariff exemption that’s helped to keep prices low on packages shipped from China. Now, President Trump has ordered the loophole closed as part of new tariffs, starting with packages from China and Hong Kong. It could have …
Read More »To Fight Federal Job Cuts, Energy Experts and States Try a New Argument
President Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda will be undermined by steep cuts to federal agencies that are said to be planned by the Trump administration, scientists, lawmakers and energy executives warned on Monday. Pleas from numerous quarters have streamed into the inboxes of cabinet secretaries, asking them to salvage various divisions of government agencies. Federal officials face a deadline today to …
Read More »White House Plan Calls for NOAA Research Programs to Be Dismantled
Trump administration officials are recommending the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times and several people with knowledge of the situation. The proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA, one of the world’s …
Read More »Trump’s New Way to Kill Regulations: Because I Say So
President Trump this week directed 10 federal agencies — including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — to implement a novel procedure to scrap a wide array of longstanding energy and environmental regulations. He told agencies that oversee everything from gas pipelines to power plants to insert “sunset” provisions that would cause regulations to …
Read More »New Pact Would Require Ships to Cut Emissions or Pay a Fee
Amid the turmoil over global trade, countries around the world reached a remarkable, though modest, agreement Friday to reduce the climate pollution that comes from shipping those goods worldwide — with what is essentially a tax, no less. A draft accord reached in London under the auspices of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, would require every ship …
Read More »Funding for National Climate Assessment Is Cut
The Trump administration has cut funding and staffing at the program that oversees the federal government’s premier report on how global warming is affecting the country, raising concerns among scientists that the assessment is now in jeopardy. Congress requires the federal government to produce the report, formally known as the National Climate Assessment, every four years. It analyzes the effects …
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