ENVIRONMENT

The Texas Railroad Commission has rejected the proposal twice over water contamination concerns, but locals are dismayed that the commissioners keep giving the developer more chances to alter its application.

As clean water runs short, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities is struggling to balance the needs of creating jobs and protecting the environment, and the population of over 4 million feels the strain.

Solar developers in India fear that a tax meant to encourage Indian manufacture of solar components will slow down the installation of solar power this year.

Competing priorities, outsized demands and the federal government's retreat from a threatened deadline all combined to thwart a voluntary deal last summer on how to drastically cut water use from the parched Colorado River.

Self-proclaimed “forest defenders” in Atlanta are calling for a more thorough investigation into the death of a protester who was killed by authorities after officials said the activist shot a trooper.

Hundreds of climate activists have blocked one of the main roads into The Hague, defying attempts to prevent their protest that have sparked concerns about restrictions on the right to demonstrate.

In Oregon, mass timber is increasingly being viewed as a construction material that could help the state build more affordable homes and revive rural logging towns.

The world is trying to switch from electricity produced by burning fossil fuels to cleaner wind and solar power, but some people have worried that there aren't enough rare earth minerals to make the green electricity switch.

Ten Filipino men who worked for a major offshore oil industry employer under federally granted visas claim in a federal lawsuit they were treated like prisoners at a company bunkhouse and that some of them were abandoned there when Hurricane Ida struck the Louisiana Gulf Coast in August 2021.

For more than 100 years, people came to the remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to work in coal mines.

Authorities said three people were dead and at least one missing as record levels of rainfall pounded New Zealand’s largest city, causing widespread disruption.

For the second time this month, House Republicans have advanced a measure to restrict presidential use of the nation’s emergency oil stockpile — a proposal that has already drawn a White House veto threat.

The manufacture of “green steel” moved a step closer Friday as Massachusetts-based Boston Metal announced a $120 million investment to help it produce steel that is far less damaging to the climate than traditional steel.

The U.S. government is offering more money to find a solution for storing or disposing of spent nuclear fuel from the nation's commercial nuclear power plants.

Hundreds of climate and environmental groups from around the world released a letter Thursday that decried the nomination of an oil executive to oversee the United Nations climate negotiations at COP28.

A proposed settlement between New Jersey and the current owner of a notoriously polluted industrial site is drawing fire from residents of Toms River, where memories of children getting cancer at elevated rates are still a fresh source of pain.

Public water agencies in California will be getting more water from the state because of recent heavy rain.

The Tanzanian government is ramping up its seizure of livestock from Indigenous Maasai herders in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area to clear way for safari tourism and trophy hunting, a report released Thursday said.

Social life in the Norwegian village of Longyearbyen — hemmed in by mountains, a glacier and a fjord on a remote Arctic island — has long revolved around its only church.

A bill introduced in the Colorado legislature would create a $2 million pilot program to use cameras, likely with artificial intelligence technology, in high-risk locations to help identify fires before they burn out of control.

A Texas Tribune analysis of state data found that at least 268 people in Texas were killed by heat last year, and a large portion of those deaths were likely migrants who died after crossing the border.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has discussed South Africa’s transition from its heavy reliance on coal to greener energy sources during talks with the country’s finance minister.

The Biden administration is temporarily delaying legal protections for two imperiled species after getting pushback from congressional Republicans.

The federal government is reinstating restrictions on road-building and logging on the country’s largest national forest in southeast Alaska.

Tesla says it intends to invest $3.6 billion to expand manufacturing capabilities in Nevada and is confident growing software-related profits will keep margins higher than any other automaker.

Puerto Rico privatized its electricity production on Wednesday.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is trying to delay new tax credits for electric vehicles, a key feature of President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law.

The former leader of Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency is criticizing the government's plan to use satellites to monitor oil spills in the South American nation’s waters.

Heavy, wet snow — part of a storm system that spawned tornadoes in the Houston area — has covered roads, vehicles, houses and buildings from central and northern Indiana into much of southeastern Michigan.

Commenting on the EPA’s proposed new rule to reduce methane leaks nationally, environmentalists said Texas regulators are hesitant to address emissions of the climate super-pollutant.

Frigid winter weather has gripped East Asia for the second straight day, causing several deaths and multiple injuries in Japan and a scramble for flights out of South Korea’s resort island of Jeju following delays by snowstorms.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says the world is closer to Armageddon than it has ever been.

Oil drilling has begun in a Chinese-operated field in Uganda and the East African country expects to start production by 2025.

A prominent environmental group says it is suing the German government over failure to meet its own climate targets.

A report by the United Nations shows growing numbers of people in Asia lack enough to eat as food insecurity rises with higher prices and worsening poverty.

Brazilian police plan to indict a Colombian fish trader as mastermind behind the killings of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, on June 5, 2022.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will study whether to toughen regulation of large livestock farms that pollute waterways.

The U.S. government has denied a request from a group of environmental organizations to immediately apply proposed ship-speed restrictions in an effort to save a vanishing species of whale.

A Native American tribe in South Dakota says several of its members died when December storms buried their reservation in snow and left them stranded.

A snow storm packing strong winds has wreaked traffic chaos on a key highway in Slovenia and has left parts of the country temporarily without electricity.

President Joe Biden persuaded Democrats in Congress to provide hundreds of billions of dollars to fight climate change.

For six years, farmer Pravinbhai Parmar in west India has been using solar power for irrigation.

Environmentalists, Indigenous people and voters sympathetic to their causes were important to Luiz Inácio da Silva's election to a third term as Brazil's president.

Lawmakers in at least two states that have seen recent attacks to electrical infrastructure are proposing new legislation to improve security around substations and increase the penalties for damaging utility equipment.

Tons of waste dumped in poorly regulated riverside landfills or directly into the waterways that flow across three countries end up accumulating in the Drina River in eastern Bosnia during wet weather.

A polar bear attack that killed a mother and her 1-year-old son in far western Alaska this week underscores the risks of living alongside the world's largest land carnivores and has renewed interest in prevention programs known as bear patrols.

As California begins to dry out from its recent deluges, one stark reality is coming into focus: Only 230,000 homes and other buildings are insured against flooding in a state with about 39 million residents.

Power brokers have wrapped up the World Economic Forum’s annual conclave in the Swiss town of Davos as worries about the war in Ukraine, a warming planet and a cooling global economy dominated discussions about the world’s ills.

Vice President Kamala Harris and two cabinet secretaries celebrated the start of construction of a new high-capacity power transmission line between Arizona and California.

Officials in Alaska say a mother and her 1-year-old boy were killed by a polar bear this week as she walked about 150 yards from a school to a health clinic.

Any cuts in funding in next week's spending announcement will hit poorest people hardest, warn experts.

Actor Tom Bateman recalls how he overcame his claustrophobia in Ron Howard's film Thirteen Lives.

Maggie Rogers on reclaiming her sexuality, and why she left pop music to study divinity at Harvard.

The police watchdog focused on behaviour by mostly PCs based at Charing Cross Police station.

It is "time we left our throwaway culture behind once and for all", the environment secretary says.

Bad candidates probably cost the GOP the Senate in 2010 and 2012. With extreme and baggage-laden candidates emerging again, could we see a repeat? Perhaps, but it's not as likely.

Award-winning singer Iona Fyfe says she was propositioned by a man from a well-known band when she was 20.

Video training for parents could improve communication with their infants, a small study suggests.

More than year into Covid-19, do people in your dreams wear masks or socially distance?

They made Resident Evil weird again.

There are still few places where our homeless can go," Salvation Army Major David Yardley said at the group's downtown center. Blistering temperatures can endanger health, and can lead to heat exhaustion, heat stroke and even death. The daily high temperatures in Phoenix were forecast to hit 110 degrees (43C) or very close to it during the extreme heat warning in effect through Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters said. The cooling stations in metro Phoenix open when the weather service declares extreme heat warnings They were also open for a string of days during an extreme heat warning in late April. In metro Las Vegas, where an excessive heat warning is in effect until Friday evening, four heat relief stations were open.

A U.S. appeals court on Thursday turned down a request by the Trump administration and energy industry groups to revive a permit program for new oil and gas pipelines that had been canceled by a lower court. The case originated with a challenge to the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. but has affected oil and gas pipeline proposals across the nation. Backed by numerous states and industry groups, attorneys for the government argued the cancellation would delay construction of pipelines needed to deliver fuel to power plants and other destinations. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an emergency request to block Morris' ruling. They said in a one-page decision that the government, states and industry groups had not demonstrated sufficient harm to their interests to justify reviving the program while the case is still pending.

An Indian man selling earthen pots beneath a bridge drinks water in Ahmedabad, India, Thursday, May 28, 2020. Cyclone Amphan, a massive super storm that crossed the unusually warm Bay of Bengal last week, sucked up huge amounts of moisture, leaving dry, hot winds to form a heat wave over parts of central and northern India. Gurjar, a top official of Indias Locust Warning Organization, said his 50-person team was scrambling to stop the swarms before breeding can take place during Indias monsoons, which begin in July. Indian environmental journalist Joydeep Gupta said that the perfect storm of pandemic, heat and locusts show India must go green. Its building coping abilities of the very poor to be able to deal with stress after stress after stress, she said.

A juvenile black bear roams through Fort Myers, Fla., Tuesday morning, May 26, 2020. A black bear roaming around a Florida city proved no match for the doughnuts that lured the animal into a humane trap. Wildlife officials say bears tend to move more in the spring in search of mates and, as always, food. Brown said the bear was relocated to a state-managed wildlife area. Authorities estimate there are about 4,000 black bears in Florida.

DENVER Nearly two dozen states and several cities on Wednesday filed a legal challenge to the Trump administrations rollback of Obama-era mileage standards, saying science backed up the old regulations developed with the help of the nation's car makers. The new mileage standards require automakers to achieve 1.5% annual increases in fuel efficiency. The Obama-era standards called for 5% annual increases and were seen as the government's most forceful initiative against climate-changing fossil fuel emissions. The states and cities claim the rule violates the Clean Air Act, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Opponents claim dirtier air from the rollback will kill and injure more people than the rollback claims to save in roadway accidents.

A U.S. judge has dealt another blow to the Trump administration's efforts to increase domestic oil and gas output from public lands, saying officials failed to protect habitat for a declining bird species when it issued energy leases on hundreds of square miles. The judge canceled energy leases on more than 470 square miles (1,200 square kilometers) of public land in Montana and Wyoming. But the latest ruling, handed down Friday, appears to go further and strike at the administration's broader energy policies. Their numbers have plummeted due to energy development, disease and other factors. Western Energy Alliance President Kathleen Sgamma noted that some of the cancelled leases had been sold before the Trump administration's policies went into full effect.

Circuit Court of Appeals said state courts are the proper forum for the lawsuits alleging that Big Oil promoted petroleum as environmentally responsible when producers knew it was causing damage. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)LOS ANGELES Big Oil lost a pair of court battles Tuesday that could lead to trials in lawsuits by California cities and counties seeking damages for the impact of climate change. The oil companies strategy is to keep the light from shining on their own behavior. Oil companies got the cases transferred to San Francisco federal court, where two judges reached different conclusions. The companies had argued that federal law controls fossil fuel production, and Congress has encouraged oil and gas development.

Visitors to Yellowstone National Park often leave common sense and situational awareness at home, as those examples in the past year show. Were out there.Other national parks that have reopened include Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina, where park officials urge visitors to arrive early at popular spots. We're expecting there to be less people on the trails than being open all day, said Grand Canyon spokesperson Lily Daniels. A lot of it is self-governance.That's not a good idea, said former Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger in an opinion piece Friday in The Arizona Republic. No ones an expert at reopening national parks in a pandemic, Sholly said.

In this Friday, May 15, 2020 photo, Joel Johnson rides his new bicycle on a bike path at Crissy Field near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Johnson hadn't owned a bicycle since he was 15, but soon after the coronavirus pandemic led to a shelter in place order in San Francisco, he bought a bike to avoid crowded public trains and buses. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)SAN FRANCISCO Joel Johnson hadnt owned a bicycle since he was 15, but the pandemic changed all that. San Francisco soon followed, closing sections of twelve streets in a city that already has a robust network of bike lanes. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, an advocacy and education group, has seen demand for its classes on city biking now online jump from 30 participants to more than 100, Executive Director Brian Wiedenmeier said.

Acting under an earlier order in the case, the administration in February released an analysis that said the decision to resume coal sales would make little difference over time in greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, a contention critics said was flawed. Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued the administration only considered emissions from a handful of leases and failed to capture the cumulative, long-term impact of the coal program. Yet critics of the coal program note that some lease sales have continued and say the administrations moves could open tens of thousands of acres of public lands to new mining. The coal program is overseen by the U.S. If those mines are to continue operating, they will need to keep expanding onto federal lands, he said.

This Aug. 1, 2018, aerial photo made available by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection shows Grayton Beach State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. The squeak,' squeak, 'squeak of the sand when you walk in it.It's a large reason the beach was picked as the best in the United States by Stephen Dr. Beach Leatherman, a coastal scientist and professor at Florida International University, who has been ranking the nation's beaches for 30 years. Grayton Beach State Park won the list's top spot even without a smoking ban based on its sheer beauty. I have caught lots of fish at Grayton Beach State Park, Cherry said.

BRUSSELS The European Commission unveiled plans Wednesday to protect biodiversity across the 27-nation bloc while building a more sustainable food system, insisting on the need to both reduce the use of pesticides and promote organic farming. The commission also wants to plant at least 3 extra billion trees over the next ten years. The use of antimicrobials, which include antibiotics, should also be reduced by 50% for fish and animal farming. The commission also estimates that investing in organic farming will help create 10-20% more jobs per hectare than traditional farming. Farmers alone must not bear the brunt of the costs of further environmental and climate protection," said COPA president Joachim Rukwied.

(Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)WASHINGTON Democrats on Wednesday blasted the Trump administration's moves to roll back environmental regulations during the coronavirus crisis, with one senator saying a "pandemic of pollution'' has been released. Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the EPA remains open for business" and "at work meeting our mission of protecting human health and the environment.'' While the rest of the country works around the clock to combat and overcome this deadly respiratory pandemic, the Trump EPA has been spearheading a pandemic of pollution, Carper said. An EPA spokeswoman disputed Democrats claims that the temporary enforcement waiver allows companies to openly exceed pollution limits. He said that Trump's EPA has saved U.S. businesses more than $5 billion in regulatory costs.

The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. The world cut its daily carbon dioxide emissions by 17% at the peak of the pandemic shutdown last month, a new study found. For a week in April, the United States cut its carbon dioxide levels by about one-third. The study was carried out by Global Carbon Project, a consortium of international scientists that produces the authoritative annual estimate of carbon dioxide emissions. By contrast, the study found that drastic reductions in air travel only accounted for 10% of the overall pollution drop.

FILE - In this May 18, 1980, file photo, Mount St. Helens sends a plume of ash, smoke and debris skyward as it erupts. May 18, 2020, is the 40th anniversary of the eruption that killed more than 50 people and blasted more than 1,300 feet off the mountain's peak. (AP Photo/Jack Smith, File)COUGAR, Wash. The coronavirus outbreak disrupted what had been big plans to mark the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. And Mount St. Helens may not be done yet. The first of a series of small explosions on Oct. 1 shot volcanic ash and gases into the air.

FILE - In this April 5, 2020 file photo, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks at the National Palace in Mexico City. Industry associations said it will affect 28 solar and wind projects that were ready to go online, and 16 more under construction, with a total of $6.4 billion in investments, much of it from foreign firms. Mexico also has been slow to build supplementary plants for the times when wind or sun power naturally decreases. But the situation really hit crisis levels when the pandemic caused a huge drop in electricity demand as factories closed. There was literally nowhere for the fuel oil to go if the state-run plants didn't burn it, and no money to subsidize the unused power plants.

FILE - In this Wednesday, May 13, 2020, file, photo beachgoers walk and exercise on the beach in Malibu, Calif. Phil Murphy issued guidance Thursday to officials in shore towns on reopening beaches, directing them to set occupancy limits and spacing requirements. Free public beaches opened a few weeks ago. Public health officials were concerned large gatherings could allow the virus to spread. Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine, said it was sensible to start reopening beaches and see how it goes.