Air

"A record-smashing heat wave sent temperatures in areas across the Bay Area well over 100 degrees Sunday, choking the region with the smoke of weeks’ worth of wildfires and putting more than 2 million customers under the threat of rolling blackouts as the state’s energy grid neared capacity."

"A U.S. appeals court on Monday overturned the Trump administration’s July 2019 rule that sought to suspend a regulation that more than doubled penalties for automakers failing to meet fuel efficiency requirements."

"Hurricane Laura rolled over a coast studded with refineries and chemical plants. Other storms have caused the release of toxic substances, often affecting poorer or minority communities."

"Hurricane Laura tore through a region that is home to dozens of major oil refineries, petrochemical plants and plastics facilities. Now, residents could be breathing dangerously polluted air from those sites, public health experts and local advocates say."

"“Routine flaring” from oil wells produces emissions that harm the climate and human health. Two states have proposed new rules to reduce it, just as the true scope of the problem emerges."

"In fresh evidence of a link between air pollution and vulnerability to COVID-19, Emory University researchers have tied a modest increase in nitrogen dioxide exposure to a markedly higher death rate from the virus-borne illness."

"Record setting conflagrations in California and Colorado have smothered residents of the two states with choking, stinging smoke. But the impact of that smoke is also being felt hundreds, even thousands, of miles away, and the health impacts may last for years after the flames subside."

"A Los Angeles utility said Wednesday that one of its natural gas plants is leaking globe-warming methane, prompting calls from environmentalists to abandon plans to extend the life of other California facilities like it."

"STOCKTON, Calif — Work began in the dark. At 4 a.m., Briseida Flores could make out a fire burning in the distance. Floodlights illuminated the fields. And shoulder to shoulder with dozens of others, Ms. Flores pushed into the rows of corn. Swiftly, they plucked. One after the other. First under the lights, then by the first rays of daylight."

"Shashawnda Campbell became an environmental activist at 15, when she learned that a company had proposed building the country's largest waste-to-energy incinerator less than a mile from her high school, in the Curtis Bay section of Baltimore."