"The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) inspector general said this week it will investigate Administrator Scott Pruitt’s April meeting with a coal mining industry group."
"More than 200 countries signed a U.N. resolution in Nairobi on Wednesday to eliminate plastic pollution in the sea, a move some delegates hoped would pave the way to a legally binding treaty."
"Republicans have little room for dissension as they debate a plan to overhaul the nation’s tax system, and the Senate wooed Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski by including a provision that allows oil exploration in a portion of Alaska’s North Slope. That doesn’t sit well with some moderate House Republicans, including Miami Rep. Carlos Curbelo."
"A top Volkswagen official in the United States was sentenced on Wednesday to seven years in prison for his role in the German automaker’s decade-long scheme to cheat on diesel emissions tests."
The Society of Environmental Journalists has joined other journalism and open-government groups in urging the Federal Communications Commission not to end its established net neutrality rule. When an internet service provider also owns a news outlet, then they can give their own news content an advantage if the net is not neutral. This will tend to push out smaller news media companies and increase concentration in the news industry. (Image by Darmokand)
“It would pretty much blow up the tax equity market for wind.”
"Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Tuesday called on President Trump to shrink a total of four national monuments and change the way six other land and marine sites are managed, a sweeping overhaul of how protected areas are maintained in the United States."
How the U.S. economy uses energy has huge impacts on the environment. So this week's TipSheet helps journalists understand the economy-energy-environment nexus, detailing nine top trends to watch on fossil fuels and alternative energy in 2018. Plus, a list of helpful sources for tracking energy markets.
Purges of EPA science panels by Administrator Scott Pruitt are just one among many moves in an ongoing dispute over the integrity of the environmental sciences in government policymaking. The latest Issue Backgrounder takes a deep dive with a briefing on five likely battles ahead for the coming year.
"Leslie Martinez heard the floodwaters before she saw them. ... After all, Ms. Martinez recalled, the home builder had assured her that 'flooding was not even a possibility' when she and her husband purchased the house in this suburban enclave north of Houston in 2011. They would never have bought here otherwise. Flood insurance, of course, was neither required nor needed."
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