"Joe Biden will nominate Pete Buttigieg to be his transportation secretary, the president-elect said in a statement on Tuesday, elevating the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to a top post in the federal government."
"President-elect Joseph R. Biden will nominate Jennifer M. Granholm, a former governor of Michigan and a longtime champion of renewable energy development, to be the next secretary of energy, according to four people close to the president-elect’s transition team."
"President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is expected to pick Gina McCarthy, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama and the architect of some of his most far-reaching regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, to serve as senior White House adviser on climate change, according to three people close to the Biden transition team."
"Trump administration officials are expected to say this week whether the monarch butterfly, a colorful and familiar backyard visitor now caught in a global extinction crisis, should receive federal designation as a threatened species."
"The northern spotted owl has lost 70 percent of its habitat to development and timber harvesting and could go extinct without added federal protection, the Trump administration announced Monday. But the owls won’t get it."
"World Trade Organization negotiators have failed to reach a deal by a year-end deadline to cut the subsidies that have helped decimate the world’s fish stocks, but will try again next year, the chairman of the talks said on Monday."
"A years-long international investigation has found ‘scientifically valid evidence’ the massive pits that store toxic waste in the oilsands are leaking, leaving Albertans wondering who’s going to clean them up".
"There are more than a trillion litres of toxic oilsands waste stored in tailings ponds near Alberta’s Athabasca River — and they’re leaking.
Yes, we now have “scientifically valid evidence” that the ponds meant to contain toxic fluids are leaking, according to a years-long probe backed by the governments of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
"The Yukon Water Board is asking the public to weigh in as the territory considers legislation to protect remaining undisturbed wetlands from small-scale gold mining in streams and riverbeds".
"The Indian River watershed, which used to provide “sweeping” wetland habitat south of Dawson City, Yukon, has been all but destroyed by placer mining, Darren Taylor, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation’s director of natural resources, told the territory’s water board during a recent virtual hearing.
"The Federal Emergency Management Agency is proposing to slash disaster aid to states by making it substantially harder for them to qualify for assistance after extreme weather events like floods, wildfires or storms."
"TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Over a lifetime on the industrial side of this university town, Antonia Brand has become accustomed to breathing bad air."
