Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund The President’s Budget, revealed today, proposes a whopping 21% funding cut to USDA. Until a more detailed draft is released in May, we don’t know which programs are most at risk. But we can be sure that this level of gouging would have a negative impact on rural […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Paul Domenick/Flickr When President Trump announced that the person slated to head the EPA was, in fact, the same person whose mission appeared to be to gut the EPA, we all cringed. And yet, during his nomination hearing, then-Attorney General Pruitt confirmed that in the context of the […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Kana Okada As the days get longer and early flowers poke up through the ground, giving your home a thorough spring cleaning is a satisfying opportunity to mirror the renewal that’s taking place outdoors. Alas, keeping your home spic and span—and healthy—isn’t so straightforward. Because we don’t submit […]
Published by The New York Times Science & Environment At least six people have been killed in wildfires burning across four states, including three ranch hands trying to save cattle in the Texas Panhandle. Read the full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/us/wildfires-midwest-prairie-texas.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund One could see President Trump’s handling of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline as one of several early tests of his supposed negotiating prowess: could he get a foreign corporation wanting to build an oil pipeline across America to use American steel for the pipe? Forget possible legal […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Welcome to our weekly Trump v. Earth column, in which onEarth reviews the environment-related shenanigans of President Trump and his allies. Trump delivers his first address to a joint session of Congress. Chris Kleponis/SIPA/Newscom Climate Change Ignorer President Trump gave his first address to Congress on Tuesday. The first half […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Colombian organization seeks to save seed species, Guatemala and UK Space Agency team up to fight deforestation, jobs in renewable energy sector are on the rise February 24 – March 2, 2017 Climate Change Record breaking temperatures during recent years have left much of Mexico in a troubling […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund President Trump may have set some kind of record on Tuesday making eight false statements about a single rule in the span of just a few minutes. While signing an executive order he said was aimed at “the elimination” of the Clean Water Rule—which protects wetlands and streams […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Today, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to begin repealing the Clean Water Rule, a landmark measure many years in the making. Likewise, new EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt recently told Fox News that he plans to go […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Tree moss growing in southeastern Portland, Oregon Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA/Newscom Orthotrichum lyellii is the hero of this story. You’ve probably met it before: a tuft of green with soft tassels of leaves, stuck to a tree trunk or possibly a rock. Unlike plants with roots, this moss […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Kids can die from superbugs, just as adults do. But a new study last week was among the first I’d seen to dive more deeply and specifically into how this superbug crisis threatens your kids. The study’s findings, which the author called “ominous”, appeared in the Journal of the […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a list of 12 antibiotic-resistant bacteria that pose the greatest threat to human health. On it? A bunch of bacteria that have become resistant to modern antibiotics used to treat people who get sick from them including several bacteria resistant to […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Welcome to our weekly Trump v. Earth column, in which onEarth reviews the environment-related shenanigans of President Trump and his allies. Polluters hail Pruitt. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Scott Pruitt’s confirmation a week ago with fanfare—really, really strange fanfare. The agency’s press release featured gleeful quotes from some […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund AIRS instrument on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft shows high carbon dioxide concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio/NASA/JPL AIRS Project Record floods. Raging storms. Deadly heat. Climate change manifests itself in myriad ways, and it’s the ultimate equalizer: a challenge faced by every living […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Today, a pre-eminent think tank in the United Kingdom, Chatham House, issued a seminal report challenging a fundamental assumption underlying European renewable energy policy: that burning forest biomass to produce electricity is “carbon neutral.” The report Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate, finds […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund We depend on electric power like we do the air. Without electricity our society could not function. For something so important, we all benefit from learning a bit more about why the electrical system works so well, how electricity moves through the grid, and how wind and solar […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Y Nakanishi/Flickr The African penguin, sometimes called the “jackass penguin” for the way its squawks resemble donkey brays, hasn’t had the best century. People have gathered their eggs for supper and disturbed their nest sites to scrape up guano for use in fertilizers. Oil disasters, like the MV […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Block Island, the first U.S. offshore wind farm Dennis Schroeder/NREL The winds whipping across Lake Erie can average up to 16 miles per hour. And about seven to ten miles northwest of Cleveland, there’s a pilot project in the works to capture them. The offshore wind farm would […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund The is the first of a six part blog series examining issues relating to Canada’s boreal forest, including 1) threats to the Forestry Stewardship Council, 2) the deteriorating condition of Canada’s threatened woodland caribou population, 3) the state of forestry in Canada’s boreal forest, 4) the need for […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund New York City’s 2016 break-through law that established a five cent fee on single use plastic (and paper) grocery bags so as to encourage shoppers to switch to reusables has been toppled in Albany. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed an ill-advised state bill preempting NYC’s plastic […]