Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund The Environmental Protection Agency is charged with protecting human health and the environment – it says so right in the mission statement on its “About EPA” web page. It even gets a bit specific: “EPA’s purpose is to ensure that all Americans are protected from significant risks to […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund In his 2018 State of the State agenda unveiled this week, and in his live address today in the Capitol in Albany, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to significantly ramp up energy efficiency in the state and tackle a host of important environmental issues—from toxic PCBs polluting the […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund In the movie A Christmas Story, all Ralphie wants for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB Gun. Christmas morning comes and all the presents are opened but Ralphie doesn’t get his wish. But wait, his dad says, what’s that hidden behind the desk? It’s the BB Gun! The […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Wurzer/Getty Images The marine equivalent of a mass jailbreak took place on August 20. Hundreds of thousands of Washington State–farmed Atlantic salmon were accidentally released into the Salish Sea after their underwater net pens collapsed at a salmon farm near Cypress Island. The potential victims: local wild fish, […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund In an advance State of the State proposal released yesterday, Governor Cuomo committed to proposing “a comprehensive and far reaching energy efficiency initiative by Earth Day, April 22,” including a new 2025 energy efficiency savings target. This promise is an important first step to transforming the state into […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund California’s ambitious climate policies are clearing the air, cleaning up the state’s electricity supply, and getting cleaner vehicles onto the roads. But California’s residential and commercial buildings today are responsible for similar levels of climate pollution as all in-state power plants, mostly from natural gas used in furnaces […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund The state’s electric customers may be forced to pay a bigger utility bill to keep something they already have. Salem Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey Peretz Partensky/Flickr The New Jersey legislature is expected to begin voting this week to give Chris Christie—the governor with the nation’s lowest […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund The Boundary Waters is a special wild-place. An interconnected system of lakes, rivers, smaller tributaries, and wetlands, spanning over a million acres along the northern edge of Minnesota, it has been kept pristine thanks to its wilderness designation. Formally known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Sean Locke/Stocksy You shun Styrofoam tableware, buy organic oranges, and even get your kids to eat leafy greens. But are you doing all you can to protect your children from toxic chemicals that may lurk inside their favorite foods? “When it comes to pesticides, preservatives, and other toxic […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund How to secure funds to rescue and rehabilitate New York City’s beleaguered subway, bus and commuter rail system is among the most important policy issues facing the nation’s largest city in 2018. And rightly so. NRDC has long advocated for some form of congestion pricing as a New York public transit funding […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund The New York State Health Department has issued a new waiver that will allow New York City to continue to avoid having to filter its Catskill and Delaware drinking water supplies—staving off, at least for now, the multi-billion dollar costs of filtering the primary water supply for more […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund * Based upon Dr. Wallinga’s blog first posted at MomsRising.org A powerful, multibillion dollar industry bets the farm on routinely using important human antibiotics where they’re not needed. Care to hazard a guess on that industry’s reaction when the world’s most respected health agency calls out this practice […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Needless to say, it was a very strange year. In the world of toxic chemicals, there were disappointing setbacks but also several significant advances. On balance, there is reason for some (guarded) optimism heading into 2018. The chemical industry takeover of EPA’s toxics office is projected to continue, […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Co-written by New York Program Assistant, Jhena Vigrass Climate March 2017 As 2017 comes to a close, we are taking a look at all that this year has brought us. While there have been setbacks on the national scale, this was a landmark year for our advocacy efforts […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Welcome to a special end-of-year Trump v. Earth column, in which onEarth assesses the damage to the agencies that protect our environment after one year of President Trump. Stop Pruitt rally to oppose the EPA administrator nomination, February 2017 Lorie Shaull As a candidate for president, Donald Trump made exaggerated […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Part of NRDC’s 2017 year-end retrospective in hopes of informing changes to come Many regions of the United States have overbuilt and retained too many power plants, which can be detrimental to their owners, consumers, clean alternatives like wind and solar power, and flexible resources like energy storage […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund Part of NRDC’s Series Reviewing 2017 Energy & Climate Developments While Virginia’s state legislature hangs in the balance, one outcome is clear for 2017: this is the year Virginia jumped into the race for a cleaner energy future. The year started badly, as the Trump Administration pushed a […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund In a huge step for elephant conservation this week, China finalized its near-total ivory ban, closing the world’s largest domestic ivory market. At the beginning of the year, China announced it would close its ivory market by December 31, 2017. By March 31, it had closed roughly one-third […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund “Clean up the grid. Electrify everything.” That’s a brief summary of what Southern California Edison and a growing number of U.S. electric utilities are aiming for to decarbonize the power and transportation sectors in a mighty one-two punch. Some may worry that charging hundreds of thousands—and then millions—of […]
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund A year ago, the Future Energy Jobs Act (FEJA) passed Illinois’s House and Senate with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Governor Bruce Rauner. The landmark energy law gained strong support from both sides of the political aisle because the Act secured Illinois’ position as a […]