Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the selection of the California Office of Planning and Research’s Strategic Growth Council to receive $200,000 for trainings to communities to address air quality and COVID-19 – the respiratory disease shown to disproportionately impact individuals exposed to higher levels of air pollution.
“EPA is working to improve the environment and public health conditions of low-income and minority communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the COVD-19 pandemic,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator John Busterud. This grant assistance will provide meaningful tools for those Californians in the greatest of need.”
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Day: November 17, 2020
The 2020 hurricane season, which brought destructive storms from Central America to the Gulf Coast of the United States and beyond, has proved to be one for the record books.
The storms began before the hurricane season officially kicked off, with the formation of Tropical Storm Albert in mid-May, two weeks before the official start of the Atlantic season on June 1.
In August, midway through the six-month season, scientists upgraded their outlook to say 2020 would be “one of the most active seasons,” and said they expected up to 25 named storms by the time it was over. By November, even that upgraded expectation was exceeded: There have now been 30 named storms — 13 of them hurricanes — breaking a record set in 2005, when 28 storms grew strong enough to be named. Fifteen that year became hurricanes.
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Photo credit: Marco Bello/Reuters
The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies in a last-minute push to achieve its long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
That sets up a potential sale of leases just before Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, leaving the new administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has opposed drilling in the refuge, to try to reverse them after the fact.
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Photo credit: Christopher Miller for The New York Times