Read the full story in the Washington Post.
President-elect Joe Biden will choose to nominate Michael S. Regan, who heads the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, as the next Environmental Protection Agency administrator, according to two individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it has not yet been formally announced.
Regan, 44, would be the first Black man to run the EPA.
Read the full story from NPR.
Big Basin — and big swaths of California — are still recovering from historic wildfires that ravaged the state this year, displacing tens of thousands of people and wildlife, burning more than 4 million acres and killing at least 33 people. They also ripped across groves of giant, coastal, old-growth redwoods here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. And while these trees are incredibly resilient, there’s concern that even they may find it harder to rebound amid the mounting impacts of climate change.
Read the full story in The Hill.
China, the United Kingdom and the European Union all laid out goals to achieve greater emission reductions as part of the Paris climate accord over the weekend at what was likely the last United Nations climate summit without a U.S. presence.
The three powers all vowed to make greater emissions reductions by 2030 during the summit, which marked the fifth anniversary of the global climate accord.
Read the full story at Utility Dive.
President-elect Joe Biden is expected to nominate former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to lead the U.S. Department of Energy, Politico first reported. The news elicited cheers from clean energy advocates who say it is a sign the next administration will act aggressively on climate change and clean energy innovation.
Biden is also expected to nominate Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama, to a new position overseeing domestic climate policy. Former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has been selected to become Secretary of Transportation.
“The fact that we’ll have a new position overseeing national climate policy demonstrates that the incoming administration will pursue ambitious action,” Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp said in a statement.
Read the full story in the New York Times.
The biggest polluters are continuing to pollute, raising the risks of global warming. There are, however, new signs of a pivot to a green economy.
Read the full story in Wired.
Several years ago, Rachel Hodgdon, an expert in green buildings, was touring a new high school in DeKalb County, Georgia, when she asked teachers how they liked their new building. They loved it. The best part, they told her, was that they no longer went home each afternoon with the “2:30 headache.”
Hodgdon asked them what they meant. “They told me, ‘That’s the term we made up for how sick we feel after a full day at school,’” she says.
At the time, Hodgdon was the director of the Center for Green Schools. As she traveled to meet students and teachers who were moving out of older buildings and into more environmentally friendly ones, she was collecting all sorts of similar stories. Coughs disappeared. Attention improved. Absentee rates dropped.
Hodgdon had stumbled across an idea that architects and public health researchers were also beginning to recognize. Building improvements made in the name of sustainability—things like oversize windows and new, quieter HVAC systems—were benefiting the health of the people inside those buildings. The realization helped spur a movement in architecture generally called “healthy buildings.” Just as structures can be designed for the health of the planet, they can also be designed for the health of their inhabitants.
Read the full story in the Washington Post.
President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Brenda Mallory, a longtime expert in environmental law and regulation, to head the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, according to several people familiar with the decision who spoke anonymously because the appointment has not been publicly announced.
The nomination would place a veteran government official and conservation advocate in a key administration post, one who works closely with agencies to shape federal environmental and energy policy and to ensure individual communities have a voice in the construction of pipelines, roads and other potentially polluting projects.
Read the full story in Bloomberg.
The next president should make the U.S. adopt the gold standard for mandating climate-related financial disclosures.
Read the full story in Nature.
Nature speaks to old hands and first timers about the work they did to make their reviews sing.
Read the full story in Environmental Factor.
Global Environmental Health speakers discussed extreme weather, stress, heat’s impact on education, and the role of pediatricians.
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