"Democrats on the U.S. Senate's environment panel on Wednesday asked President-elect Donald Trump's choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency to disclose his ties to the energy industry ahead of his confirmation hearing early next year."
"President Barack Obama designated two national monuments Wednesday at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land in the U.S. West, marking the administration's latest move to protect environmentally sensitive areas in its final days."
"Miners huddled around them to stay warm through the long, cold nights in the Klondike gold rush of the 1800s. Artists have enshrined them in paintings and tourist curios. For many people in America’s far north, the old-fashioned wood stove — crackling and radiant, and usually cast-iron black — is as Alaskan as it gets. But many Alaskans also see their home state as a natural wonderland, where the expectation of bracingly pristine air is just as deeply ingrained."
"The livelihood of the Nenets people who live along the northern stretches of the Yenisei, Russia’s longest river, depends on two pursuits: fishing and reindeer herding. But locals have said both of those activities are under threat from an oil terminal due to be built on the Tanalau cape, near where the river empties into the Arctic Ocean."
"It seems increasingly likely that the Trump administration would either alter, or attempt to stop using entirely, an Obama-era metric known as the 'social cost of carbon' in its federal rule-making processes. And that could have have major effects on the way environmental policies are written (or unwritten) in the coming years."
"President-elect Donald Trump’s landing team at the Environmental Protection Agency includes some of the Obama administration’s biggest foes on climate and energy policy. But what appears to be absent from the nine members of the EPA transition team is any background in chemicals, pesticides, water pollution, and other policy areas where the agency enforces environmental laws to control contamination and protect public health."
"Texas is among several states grappling with a surge of abandoned drilling sites and dwindling funds to clean them up."
"The Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has established a hotline for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employees to report political meddling. There’s currently concern among NOAA scientists about who Trump’s pick to head the agency will be."
"New Mexico has given its approval to resume operations at the nation's only permanent nuclear waste disposal site after state inspectors found the facility safe to reopen for the first time since a radiation leak there nearly three years ago, officials said on Thursday."
"The Energy Department said Wednesday it is offering a conditional, $2 billion loan guarantee to capture and store carbon dioxide at a planned Louisiana methanol plant, the latest element of President Obama’s strategy to slow global warming."
