California Activists Redouble Efforts to Hold the Oil Industry Accountable on Neighborhood Drilling

By all appearances, California environmental justice leaders should be taking a victory lap to celebrate recent laws and policies designed to rein in oil industry pollution and profiteering.  On Tuesday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors officially approved an ordinance, unanimously passed in September, to prohibit new oil and gas wells and phase out […]

Read More

Outdated EPA Standards Allow Oil Refineries to Pollute Waterways

Neighbors of refineries can see the glowing flares and visible plumes of air pollution rising into the sky. But water pollution often happens at ground level, or below, out of sight for both local residents and environmental regulators.  In a new report, the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project tallied toxic discharges of unregulated pollutants self-reported by […]

Read More

Locals fight to save ‘a piece of the sea’ in Venezuela’s Andes

lagoonWhen Nelly Flores looks out over the Urao Lagoon, she smiles and asks me: “Do you know what those dots moving in the water are?” Mosquitoes, I guess. Nelly shakes her head and her smile widens. “No. They’re not mosquitoes. They’re, they’re … baby fish. What are they called?” She picks up her cellphone to […]

Read More

NOAA 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 More

‘Bizarre’ newly classified scorpionfly shines light on Nepal’s insect diversity

Lulilan obscurus is a newly discovered scorpionfly from Nepal. Image courtesy of Rainer WillmannKATHMANDU–  When German professor Jochen Martens and his associate W. Schawaller visited subtropical forests in Nepal in 1988, they collected samples of different insects found in eastern Nepal, including a “bizarre” one that had a long tail with a pincer resembling that of scorpions.  Martens, who paid several visits to Nepal along with his associates between […]

Read More

Who Were the Worst Climate Polluters in the US in 2021?

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions climbed by 4.1 percent from major industrial sources in 2021, according to new data recently released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The increase is the largest year-on-year rise in emissions tallied across more than a decade of reporting and comes at a time when global climate pollution must quickly be […]

Read More

Texas’ Environmental Regulators Need to Get Tougher on Polluters, Group of Lawmakers Says

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality needs to improve how it holds frequent polluters accountable, a state review of the agency’s effectiveness has found. A commission that looks at how state agencies perform their duties recommended Thursday that the Legislature require the TCEQ to focus enforcement procedures on repeat violators and big offenders. That recommendation […]

Read More