Environmental Justice

"In pollution hotspots like western Pennsylvania — where petrochemical facilities are proliferating — local residents, distrustful of companies and government, are taking advantage of low-cost technologies to do their own monitoring of air, water, and noise pollution."

"For young children, any amount of lead exposure is bad. The element can damage children’s brains, stunt growth and cause developmental problems. Now, a new definition of lead poisoning will increase the number of U.S. children found to have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood."

"A Michigan city [Benton Harbor] that is urging residents not to drink tap water failed to timely warn people about high levels of lead and must make improvements at the water plant, federal regulators said Tuesday after an inspection revealed a variety of problems."

"Some of the world’s biggest financial institutions on Wednesday vowed to mobilize trillions of dollars to help shift the global economy toward cleaner energy as negotiators at the United Nations climate summit struggled with the question of how to pay for the enormous costs of climate change."

"From the urban sprawl of Houston to the riverways of Virginia, air pollution from industrial plants is elevating the cancer risk of an estimated quarter of a million Americans to a level the federal government considers unacceptable." "The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones” where residents breathe carcinogens. ProPublica reveals where these places are in a first-of-its-kind map and data analysis."

"A new, more stringent review of the environmental impacts of a massive proposed plastics plant along the Mississippi River in St. James Parish will likely take more than two years."

"Major funding to finance forest conservation projects is set to be announced at the UN climate summit next week. But some environmentalists contend the LEAF program could exclude the Indigenous people who have long protected the forests that the initiative aims to save."

"GLASGOW, Scotland — A crucial U.N. climate summit opened Sunday amid papal appeals for prayers and activists’ demands for action, kicking off two weeks of intense diplomatic negotiations by almost 200 countries aimed at slowing intensifying global warming and adapting to the climate damage already underway."

"Rural communities like Chapagua that have done least to stoke the climate crisis barely have time to recover from one disaster before another hits".