Oil and gas companies are not doing enough to decrease the release of methane gases, a main source of planet-heating emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a new report released Monday.
In 2020, the fuel industries emitted about 5% of all global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, the IEA report said.
The energy sector is the second-largest emitter of methane worldwide, following agriculture, according to the IEA’s Methane Tracker. The agency noted that methane emissions have decreased by 10% in the past year, but added it is mostly because of a decrease in economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Photo Credit: AP
Category: News Archive
Environmental advocates have largely been critical of President Trump, but some still offer praise for the Trump EPA’s attention to toxic sites.
The Trump administration has also touted its successes in deleting Superfund sites, which allows those areas to begin revitalization efforts and apply for grants to bolster economic growth.
Under the leadership of former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and current chief Andrew Wheeler, the agency prioritized Superfund delistings as well as partial delistings. Pruitt, in particular, said Superfund cleanups would be a focus of his EPA when he took the reins in 2017. After Pruitt’s departure in July 2018, Wheeler continued to emphasize the Trump administration’s “renewed focus” on Superfund.
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Photo credit: Claudine Hellmuth/E&E News(illustration); Francis Chung/E&E News(Wheeler); Gage Skidmore/Flickr(Pruitt); markzvo/wikipedia(Superfund sign)
“Prevention is the cure for child/teen cancer.” This is the welcoming statement on a website called ‘TheReasonsWhy.Us‘, where families affected by childhood cancers can sign up for a landmark new study into the potential environmental causes.
The study is a joint project between Texas Children’s Hospital, part of the world’s largest medical center, and The Oliver Foundation, founded by the parents of a 12-year-old boy who died 36 hours after he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, one week after the onset of headaches.
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IN SOME WAYS, they couldn’t be more different. Gerica Cammack is a Black woman from Alabama; Floyd Kimball is a white man from rural Idaho. Yet they’re facing a similar ordeal. They’re both single parents, forced by difficult circumstances to live in government-subsidized housing surrounded by pollution that is, or could be, poisoning their children. Like tens of thousands of people across the country, they live near, or on, some of the most toxic places in the nation. And the government has failed to protect them.
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Photo credit: Andi Rice for The Intercept
Political officials at EPA have overruled the agency’s career scientists to weaken a major health assessment for a toxic chemical contaminating the drinking water of an estimated 860,000 Americans, according to four sources with knowledge of the changes.
The changes to the safety assessment for the chemical PFBS, part of a class of “forever chemicals” called PFAS, is the latest example of the Trump administration’s tailoring of science to align with its political agenda, and another in a series of eleventh-hour steps the administration has taken to hamstring President-elect Joe Biden’s ability to support aggressive environmental regulations.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images
Rick Snyder, the former governor of Michigan who oversaw the state when a water crisis devastated the city of Flint, has been charged with two counts of willful neglect of duty, according to court records.
The charges are misdemeanors punishable by imprisonment of up to one year or a maximum fine of $1,000.
Prosecutors in Michigan will report their findings in a wide-ranging investigation into the water crisis on Thursday, officials said, a long-awaited announcement that is also expected to include charges against several other officials and top advisers to Mr. Snyder.
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Photo credit: Brittany Greeson for The New York Times
Former Michigan governor Rick Snyder, his health director and other ex-officials have been told they’re being charged after a new investigation of the Flint water scandal, which devastated the majority Black city with lead-contaminated water and was blamed for a deadly outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in 2014-15, the Associated Press has learned.
Two people with knowledge of the planned prosecution told the AP on Tuesday that the attorney general’s office has informed defense lawyers about indictments in Flint and told them to expect initial court appearances soon. They spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
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Photo credit: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday finalized a rule that would allow future greenhouse gas limits only on power plants, sidestepping oversight over the oil and gas industry, iron and steel manufacturers and other polluting industries.
The new rule from the EPA argues that only sectors whose pollution accounts for more than 3 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are “considered to contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.”
The rule is a direct response to a 2017 executive order from President Trump that asked agencies to “immediately review existing regulations that potentially burden the development or use of domestically produced energy resources.”
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Green groups on Monday filed a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent a new rule limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) use of certain studies from taking effect.
The lawsuit takes aim at the EPA’s Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule, also known as the “secret science” rule, which restricts the use of studies that don’t make their underlying data public.
The agency has billed the rule as a transparency measure, though its opponents argue that it will prevent consideration of important public health studies that can’t publish their data for reasons such as privacy.
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Photo credit: istock