Youth win historic climate lawsuit against Montana
By Dana Drugmand
A group of young people who sued Montana officials for failing to adequately address climate change have prevailed in what observers say is a historic legal challenge.
environment
“Polluter pays” debate heats up over toxic PFAS chemical cleanup plan
By Carey Gillam
As US regulators work to tackle the toxic threat posed by a class of widely used chemicals known as PFAS, debate is heating up over who could – and should – get hit with the cleanup costs.
Climate groups rally for stronger power plant emissions standards
By Shannon Kelleher
Environmental advocates rallied at the steps of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters on Tuesday, applauding the agency’s efforts to cut climate-harming pollution from power plants but saying its proposed standards don’t go far enough.
Native American tribe takes a stand to protect its natural resources
MAHNOMEN, Minn. – It’s been centuries since the White Earth tribe migrated west across North America, following an ancestral prophecy to go where “food grows on water.” One of seven Ojibwe bands in Minnesota, White Earth found that prophecy fulfilled along the many shallow clear lakes that lie in the state’s northern forests, where luminous green stalks of wild rice grow in abundance.
Aging Americans face deadly risk due to wide temperature swings, study warns
By Dana Drugmand
People over age 65 face a higher risk of dying when exposed to temperatures that swing far outside the seasonal average, findings that underscore an “urgent” need to mitigate climate change, according to new research.
In Montana, a landmark legal challenge over climate change
By Dana Drugmand
For 20-year-old college student Olivia Vesovich, climate change is not a future concern. It’s a current and near-daily crisis. “Climate change has impacted my ability to breathe,” Vesovich testified from the witness stand of a Montana courtroom last week.
PFAS contamination trial delayed as 3M negotiates sweeping settlement
By Shannon Kelleher and Carey Gillam
Chemical conglomerate 3M is working to settle claims that it is liable for knowingly contaminating the environment with toxic chemicals for decades, delaying what would have been a closely watched bellwether trial in South Carolina.
In Iowa, a tale of politics, power, and contaminated water
IOWA CITY, IOWA – Here in the heart of US farm country, the wretched quality of Iowa waterways is a well-known lament. Farm fields laden with synthetic fertilizers and manure produce bounties of over 2 billion bushels of corn each year, but those same fields also produce a torrent of run-off that contaminates virtually every mile of the state’s streams and rivers and every acre of lakes and ponds.
Postcard from California: “No one is safe” – state banning diesel trucks
By Bill Walker
Forty percent of all US imports of consumer goods come through the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Most of the merchandise is initially trucked to one of thousands of distribution center warehouses in the Inland Empire of San Bernardino and Riverside counties
Vast majority of global methane emissions go unregulated, says new study
By Grace van Deelen
Governments around the world are failing to effectively regulate and mitigate harmful emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with a climate warming potential more than 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide, according to research published Friday.