Water & Oceans

"Southwestern states are bracing for many of their streams to lose federal safeguards under the EPA’s proposal to lift Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and waterways across the US. New Mexico, Arizona, California, and other arid states face the brunt of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal because it explicitly excludes streams that only run when it rains—one of the most common kinds of waterways in the desert Southwest."

"For the past eight years, one of the primary objectives of the annual negotiations has been to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the temperatures in the late 1800s. ... But that goal is no longer plausible, scientists say. Humanity has not cut planet-warming pollution quickly enough, and the planet will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, likely in the next decade, according to a recent United Nations report."

"The plan from the Interior Department is one of the president’s most significant steps yet to increase domestic fossil fuel production."

"The Trump administration on Thursday announced a plan to allow new oil and gas drilling across nearly 1.3 billion acres of U.S. coastal waters, including a remote region off Alaska in the northern Arctic where drilling has never before taken place.

The plan is one of President Trump’s most significant steps yet to increase the production of fossil fuels, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet.

"Despite the Makah Tribe’s success in getting a waiver to carry out their exclusive treaty right for whaling, the permitting process that had dragged on for over 20 years has now been effectively delayed  another year and a half – because of bogged-down federal bureaucracy. The Makah Tribe is the only one in the Lower 48 that has an exclusive treaty right to whaling."

"A draft of a much-anticipated report on reforms to the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been whittled down in size, with recommendations compiled by a council appointed by the president slashed and amended by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s office, according to three people familiar with the developments."

"To many locals, the Los Angeles River — hugged by concrete embankments and heavy vehicle traffic — hardly seems like a river at all. ... But when Doug Rosenberg came upon a shopping cart tipped over in the river's shallow waters back in 2020, he saw the potential to meet nature halfway."

"Insurance premiums are rising fast in the parts of the United States most exposed to climate-related disasters like wildfires and hurricanes. New research shows that, as insurance has sharply pushed up the cost of owning a home, the price shock is starting to reverberate through the broader real estate market."

"As the federal government considers fast-tracking Wind West Atlantic Energy, residents hope for economic transformation, while some worry about impacts to seafood industry and marine ecosystems"

"Trump’s anti-climate agenda could result in 1.3 million more deaths globally, analysis finds. Most of the people expected to suffer these temperature-related deaths live in poor countries in Africa and South Asia that are least prepared to cope with the increasing heat from climate change."

"New advances in environmental science are providing a detailed understanding of the human costs of the Trump administration’s approach to climate change.

"Ecuadorians on Sunday rejected their president’s attempt to rewrite the constitution, a move that would likely have doomed the world’s only constitutional recognition of the rights of nature."