Read the full story in the Washington Post.
In Bridgeton and elsewhere, others are asking similar questions with various degrees of hope and hesitation. In his previous role as Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt had long-standing ties to oil and gas companies and a litigious history fighting the EPA. And although he has called the federal Superfund program “vital” and a “cornerstone” of the EPA’s mission, the Trump administration has proposed slashing its funding by 30 percent.
Read the full story from the Washington Post.
As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt defended massive proposed budget cuts to a House subcommittee Thursday, experts from the nation’s top science organization voiced their support for one of the programs slated for elimination.
A report released Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences — and prepared at the request of the EPA — argues that the agency’s Science to Achieve Results, or STAR, program, which provides millions of dollars in funding for scientific research each year, has contributed to important benefits for the environment and the public health. And it recommends that the agency continue to use it.
Read the full story from National Geographic.
New UNESCO Biosphere Reserves protect sites across the world, while the U.S. and Bulgaria withdraw sites from the well-known program.
Read the full story from West Virginia University.
Researchers at West Virginia University have long studied emissions from diesel vehicles to provide independent data about emissions performance both in the laboratory and on the road, as well as provide technology demonstration, other research and design support.
The most recent study from WVU’s Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions measured oxides of nitrogen emissions, or NOx, from five Fiat Chrysler vehicles in real-world and laboratory tests.
Read the full story from the CBC.
There was such a thing as a free lunch at Olympic Plaza in Calgary on Thursday.
Food that would otherwise have been thrown out was used to serve hundreds in the first Feeding the 5,000 event, aimed at raising awareness around waste.
Listen to the podcast at Governing.
Ginger Spencer is an unapologetic trash talker.
As public works director for Phoenix, she oversees all things waste for the nation’s fifth-largest city.
It may be a smelly job, but it’s certainly not small. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton wants to make the city the most sustainable in the world and to achieve zero waste by 2050. To get there, it’s largely up to Spencer.
A south Phoenix native, Spencer has been a passionate public servant in her hometown for two decades. As she explains in our interview, the federal level is for people who want to write policy, the local level is for people who want to make policy happen.
Listen to the latest episode of “The 23%: Conversations With Women in Government” below. You can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, and check out our archives.
Read the full story at FiveThirtyEight.
With gardens a-sprouting, a warm, wet winter behind us,1 and a hotter-than-average summer for much of the country ahead, we decided to look at whether and how climate change was affecting what plants can grow around the country. The easy data solution — or so it seemed — was to look at a series of maps dedicated to showing Americans what plants can survive in their neck of the woods. These are called plant hardiness zone maps, and they’ve been produced since the 1960s by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But then we noticed something weird. The USDA’s website specifically asks people not to use these maps to document climate change. Meanwhile, it looked as if other parts of the federal government were doing exactly that in reports such as the National Climate Assessment.
So what gives? It turns out, the government produces two hardiness zone maps — one made by the USDA and one made by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Both divide the country into segments, each of which represents a 10-degree increment of the average annual minimum temperature. But the underlying data used to build out the zones is different. Those differences are driven by the agencies’ goals, and they affect what the different maps are intended to be used for.
Read the full story from NPR.
A lot of people think of Sarah Bergmann as the “Honeybee Lady,” and that really annoys her.
It’s an attribution that might make sense at first glance, given that Bergmann is the celebrated creator of what’s called the Pollinator Pathway project. So, pollinators, honeybees — what’s the problem?
Well, spend a little time with Bergmann and you’ll see that the issue she’s trying to address with the Pollinator Pathway is way bigger than honeybees and their current colony collapse disorder troubles. In fact, for Bergmann, the honeybees are actually part of a much bigger problem she’s trying to solve. And that much bigger problem is nothing less than how to design the planet in a human-dominated age.
Read the full story from PBS.
Four Democratic senators are sharply criticizing a conservative think tank’s efforts to bring climate change skepticism into the nation’s public schools as “industry funded” and “possibly fraudulent” and demanding to know whether federal education officials have been in contact with the group.
Read the full story in the Los Angeles Times.
Environmentalists aren’t the only ones outraged over President Trump’s decision to have the U.S. walk away from the Paris accord on global warming. Health experts are pretty dismayed as well.
Environmental News Bits 