Air Pollution
After a Decade, Federal Officials Tighten Guidelines on Air Pollution
As a child, Stephanie Lovinsky-Desir remembers being taken from doctor to doctor by her parents as they searched desperately for a way to manage her asthma. She wondered then if there was something in the air that made it difficult for her to breathe. Today, Lovinsky-Desir is a pediatric pulmonologist, using her childhood experience with […]
Read MoreNOAA Climate Scientists Cruise Washington and Baltimore for Hotspots—of Greenhouse Gases and Air Pollutants
On a clear and crisp morning, with the sun beating down, Xenrong Ren and Phillip Stratton looked over plans for the day and fiddled with the gadgets installed in a black SUV parked outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland. “Today we’re going to do […]
Read MoreEarly retirement for Indonesian coal plants could cut CO2, boost jobs, analysis says
JAKARTA — Indonesia’s plan to retire its coal-fired power plants and replace them with renewable energy by 2050 is not only feasible, but, when environmental costs are considered, will be less costly than relying on coal to power the Indonesian economy, according to a new analysis. Indonesia is often dubbed as the last bastion for […]
A New Shell Plant in Pennsylvania Will Soon Become the State’s Second Largest Emitter of Volatile Organic Chemicals
This article originally appeared in StateImpact Pennsylvania and is published here as part of content-sharing agreement. Shell’s ethane cracker is scheduled to come online soon, producing up to 1.6 million metric tons of plastic pellets a year. The plant will produce this plastic by processing ethane, a component of the natural gas found in the Marcellus and […]
Read MoreIn revising its criminal code, Indonesia risks unraveling environmental laws
JAKARTA — An ambitious and long-anticipated plan by Indonesian lawmakers to revise the country’s criminal code, inherited from the Dutch colonial era, could make it much more difficult to prosecute polluting companies, experts warn. The latest draft of the revised penal code, known as the RKUHP, was only recently made publicly available after an uproar […]
As Jakarta chokes on toxic air, Indonesian government stalls on taking action
JAKARTA — Jakarta’s recent episode of world-beating air pollution has highlighted what activists describe as belligerent inaction by the Indonesian government to address the source of the problem, even in the face of a ruling by the nation’s top court ordering it to act. On June 20, readings for PM2.5, a class of airborne pollutants […]
How much does air travel warm the planet? New study gives a figure
When Milan Klöwer spoke to Mongabay, he was fresh off the train in Germany. As a postdoctoral researcher and climate scientist at the University of Oxford, Klöwer said he does his best to avoid flying in planes — one of the worst climate change culprits. “We’re climate scientists and we try to also lower our […]
Mongabay’s top Amazon stories from 2021
The world’s greatest tropical rainforest continued to come under pressure in 2021, due largely to the policies of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Deforestation rates hit a 15-year-high, while fires flared up again, combining to turn Brazil’s portion of the Amazon into a net carbon source for the first time ever. But the rainforest as a […]