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"Texas is crisscrossed by thousands of miles of freeways, but a Houston-area county is suing the state to stop one of them being expanded, arguing the air pollution and displacement will primarily harm minority communities."
"Conservatives have long argued against regulating fossil fuel production for the climate’s sake, claiming that doing so would interfere with the holy free market. A new study shows that’s a total fairy tale because the invisible hand isn’t responsible for dirty fuels’ market dominance—implicit government subsidies are. The findings show those subsidies total in the billions each year."
"The world stands on the cusp of a massive shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity, but many are worried that the transition won't be fair. Already, electric cars and efficient heating technologies are showing up disproportionately in wealthy neighborhoods. The U.S. faced a very similar problem almost a century ago with electricity, the energy revolution of that time. Most cities had been electrified by the 1930s, but many rural areas had not, because private electric companies saw little profit in string wires down lonely country roads."
"Just before the Trump administration headed out the door, a federal agency this past December cleared the way for a private company to begin pumping groundwater from under the Mojave Trails National Monument in Southern California."
"At a normal tide on a normal day on the Southern California coast, ankle-high waves glide over a narrow strip of gold sand. On one side sits the largest body of water in the world. On the other, a row of houses with a cumulative value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, propped on water-stained stilts.
Property value ebbs and flows, but when it comes to coastal real estate "the trend lines are pretty clear," says California state Sen. Ben Allen, squinting in the sun. "And they're not pretty."
"Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana violated a state hunting requirement last month when he trapped and killed a wolf near Yellowstone National Park without first taking a mandated trapper education course, state officials said on Tuesday."
"President Biden’s economic advisers are pulling together a sweeping $3 trillion package to boost the economy, reduce carbon emissions and narrow economic inequality, beginning with a giant infrastructure plan that may be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich."
"A Honduran Indigenous activist who helped led a fight against the construction of a dam has been killed, authorities said Monday."
"The Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to former President Obama’s designation of a national monument 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass."
"The Interior Department has reversed a Trump administration decision determining that a portion of the Missouri River was under the jurisdiction of the state of North Dakota rather than a Native American reservation."
"When a special team of EPA inspectors first showed up at an industrial plant belching carcinogens on the worn outskirts of Birmingham, Ala., in 2011, their findings of flagrant regulatory violations were later deemed serious enough to warrant a referral to the Justice Department."
"Federal regulators finished an environmental study of America's first major offshore wind farm in the summer of 2019, according to documents newly obtained by E&E News through a Freedom of Information Act request. But the review was never made public, and the timing of its completion raises fresh questions about whether the Trump administration interfered with Vineyard Wind's pursuit of federal approval."
"The White House has withdrawn its nomination of Elizabeth Klein to become the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, as the Biden administration faced push back from Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, sources familiar with the situation said Monday."
"Australian authorities issued fresh flood warnings and evacuation orders on Tuesday as torrential rains again pummelled several parts of the country, sweeping away homes, roads and livestock in the worst downpour in more than half a century."
"Environmentalists say Trump’s EPA bent rules to speed its restart. Now, they want President Biden to address what they call a textbook case of environmental injustice."
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