"The Biden administration has finalized a major rule change that raises the bar for real estate developers who want newly built homes to qualify for U.S. government-backed loans, laying the groundwork for a massive overhaul in the way Americans build houses."
"The polarization of politics means that rules are imposed, gutted and restored with each election. Experts say that’s bad for the economy."
Hundreds of hydropower dams in the United States will see their licenses expiring in the next decade, generating years-long federal relicensing processes. That prospect calls for close local and regional coverage of the complicated balance between renewable energy needs with negative environmental impacts. The latest TipSheet explains the licensing process and the dam backstory, along with a dozen story ideas and reporting resources.
Fast fashion’s lack of sustainability has long been the subject of news media coverage. But now the realities of climate change mean that fashion reporting must be reimagined to include the lived environmental and human rights realities of workers making what we wear, writes contributor Yessenia Funes in the new Voices of Environmental Justice column. Ideas and resources for getting past simplistic fashion industry narratives.
"The cicadas are coming; billions of them." 'The noise is actually kind of deafening. It sounds like 100 chainsaws being used at the same time,' said Jim Louderman, a collections assistant in the Field Museum's Insect Division."
"The Biden administration hopes its new rules will withstand an onslaught of legal and political opposition."
"The Biden administration has finalized standards for federal buildings that will eliminate onsite fossil fuel usage for new projects by the end of the decade, the Energy Department confirmed Wednesday."
"The Department of Energy created a one-stop shop for federal permitting, helping transmission developers avoid the lengthy patchwork of regulatory approvals that has slowed major projects. The program makes the department the lead agency in permitting and finalizes a yearslong, multiadministration effort to coordinate the work of at least nine agencies with a hand in permitting power lines."
"Federal regulators have discovered fragments of bird flu virus in roughly 20 percent of retail milk samples tested in a nationally representative study, the Food and Drug Administration said in an online update on Thursday." "There is no evidence that the milk is unsafe to drink, scientists say. But the survey result strongly hints that the outbreak may be widespread."
"Dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before moving across state lines under a federal order to be issued Wednesday, as evidence mounts the virus is more widespread than feared among cows in the United States."
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