"The Justice Department opened an investigation against the city of Houston on Friday to determine whether complaints of illegal dumping — including dead bodies and animals — in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods amount to civil rights violations."
"If President Joe Biden declares a national climate emergency, the Pentagon is likely to get a sudden influx of money to start working on its long list of resilience and adaptation projects, observers say."
"The oil and gas industry has delivered $2.8bn (£2.3bn) a day in pure profit for the last 50 years, a new analysis has revealed." "Vast sums provide power to ‘buy every politician’ and delay action on climate crisis, says expert".
"Texas is on a roll—an energy use roll, that is. This week, amid sweltering temperatures, the power demand on the state’s grid soared to an all-time high on Wednesday, reaching 80,000 megawatts of demand. This marks the eleventh time this demand record has been broken this year alone."
A new World Trade Organization agreement to limit global overfishing may yield important stories for environmental journalists, as billions of people around the world rely on already heavily exploited fish stocks as their main source of protein. This Backgrounder offers details on the pact and how it tries to address the problem, while providing resources for your reporting.
Qatar — the world’s highest carbon emitter on a per capita basis — made big promises in its winning bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. But will they deliver? Doha-based journalism professor Craig LaMay writes that while sports megaevent hosts face increasing pressure to address environmental concerns, critical coverage of their follow-through is challenging, especially in countries with no free press or public right to government information.
"Environmental criminals in the Brazilian Amazon destroyed public rainforests equal the size of El Salvador over the past six years, yet the Federal Police — the Brazilian version of the FBI — carried out only seven operations aimed at this massive loss, according to a new study."
"Against the backdrop of a hemispheric heat wave, the president used executive authority to help the vulnerable endure broiling temperatures, but did little to address the changing climate driving them."
"Trump-era political appointees attempted to tamper with the science underpinning an EPA decision for a popular weedkiller now under scrutiny by the Biden administration, according to sources within the agency."
"The U.S. Postal Service pledged Wednesday to electrify at least 40 percent of its new delivery fleet, an increase that climate activists hailed as a major step toward reducing the government’s environmental footprint."
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