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Page Updated:
May 18, 2025

• • In a Landmark PFAS Payout, 3M to Pay New Jersey $450 Million

  The Deal Will Send Hundreds of Millions Toward Cleaning Up Water Polluted By “Forever Chemicals,” Checking On People’s Health and Fixing Damage to Land And Rivers
  
  

  May 13, 2025 -In a historic settlement, chemical giant 3M has agreed to pay up to $450 million to New Jersey to resolve claims over its role in decades-long contamination from toxic “forever chemicals,” just days before a scheduled trial that would have been the first in the country to determine environmental PFAS liability to a state.

  The settlement, announced by New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin and the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, is among the largest ever secured by the state for natural resource damages. It stems from 3M’s supply of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as PFAS, to the DuPont Chambers Works facility in Salem County, a site now operated by Chemours.

• • Michigan Researcher’s Work on Air Pollution and Racial Inequities
  Caught in Funding Freeze at National Science Foundation

  A Doctoral Candidate Examining Air Pollution Effects in mostly Black and Latino Neighborhoods in Detroit was Among the Wave of Researchers Who've Had Federal Funds Halted
  
  

  May 6, 2025 -For two years, Ember McCoy has been researching air quality and the gaps in data collection in neighborhoods in Southwest Detroit where mostly Black and Latino residents live. The project, part of McCoy’s doctorate work at University of Michigan, is suddenly at risk.

  The National Science Foundation, a major funder across the world for basic research, was ordered by the Trump administration in recent weeks to stop funding and awarding grants.

• • EPA Funding Cuts Target Disadvantaged Communities

  In its Bid to Resist a Court Order to Unfreeze Grants, the Trump Administration Reveals a Laser Focus On Eliminating Environmental Justice Aid
  
  

  May 1, 2025 -As the nation marked the 55th anniversary of the environmental movement on Earth Day, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin declared a renewed commitment to “clean air, land and water for all Americans.”

  But as he spoke, the EPA was choking off the funds that had promised to bring clean drinking water to a rural Black community in Maryland, to farmworkers in California and to tribal villages in Alaska

• • Man Accused of Hacking Climate Groups
  Can Be Sent to U.S., Judge Says

  A London Court Approved the Extradition of Amit Forlit, Who Ran Companies that Allegedly Stole Information on Behalf of a Lobbying Firm Hired by Exxon
  
  

  Apr. 30, 2025 -An English court on Wednesday approved the extradition of an Israeli man charged by New York prosecutors with running a “hacking-for-hire” operation that targeted environmental groups.

  Prosecutors say that companies run by the man, Amit Forlit, 57, earned at least $16 million by hacking more than 100 victims and stealing confidential information on behalf of a lobbying firm working for a major oil company.

• • Scientists Say They Can Calculate the
  Cost of Oil Giants’ Role in Global Warming

  Climate Advocates Hope this Sort of Model Could Result in Court Rulings that Make Polluters Pay
  
  

  Apr. 24, 2025 -Oil and gas companies are facing hundreds of lawsuits around the world testing whether they can be held responsible for their role in causing climate change. Now, two scientists say they’ve built a tool that can calculate how much damage each company’s planet-warming pollution has caused — and how much money they could be forced to pay if they’re successfully sued.

• • New Study Could Bolster Climate Laws to Make Polluters Pay

  Vermont was the First State to Try to Hold Polluters Accountable for Climate Disasters
  
  

  Apr. 23, 2025 -In 2023, the Winooski River in Vermont spilled its banks, kissing the green truss bridge that spanned it. River water poured onto the floors of several state buildings. Up to nine inches of rain fell within 48 hours, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

  A year later, Vermont enacted the Climate Change Superfund Act, which holds oil and gas companies financially responsible for climate damage in the state. Similar legislation passed in New York in 2024 and is pending in California, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

• • Virginia College Students Want More Climate Action on Earth Day

  Students at Five Universities Rallied To Address The Climate Crisis and Demand that Their Schools Do More to Reduce Carbon Emissions
  
  

  Apr. 23, 2025 -In the middle of Monroe Park, the central gathering spot for students at Virginia Commonwealth University, Carolyn Hindle, a third-year student graduating early and studying political science, called out the school’s president on Earth Day, sunny and bustling.

  “Hey, Michael Rao, climate justice now,” Hindle said in front of about 20 students chanting it back. “Hey, Michael Rao, climate justice now.”

• • National Science Foundation Terminates
  Hundreds of Active Research Awards

  The Agency Targeted Grants Focused on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, as Well as Research on Misinformation
  
  

  Apr. 22, 2025 -Casey Fiesler, an information science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, learned late on Friday evening that one of the three grants she had been awarded by the National Science Foundation was being terminated.

  “It was a total surprise,” Dr. Fiesler said. “This is the one that I thought was totally safe.”

• • Texas Oil Drillers Can Bury Toxic Waste
  on Private Property Without Telling the Landowner

  A New Bill Seeks to Change That
  
  

  Apr. 15, 2025 -A bill in the Texas Legislature would require oil and gas drillers to notify landowners before burying toxic waste on their property.

  In addition, House Bill 4572 would strengthen other regulations for reserve pits, where oil and gas companies permanently bury waste next to drilling sites. The Texas House Energy Resources Committee heard testimony on the bill Monday.

• • Texas Oil Drillers Can Bury Toxic Waste
  on Private Property Without Telling the Landowner

  A New Bill Seeks to Change That
  
  

  Apr. 15, 2025 -A bill in the Texas Legislature would require oil and gas drillers to notify landowners before burying toxic waste on their property.

  In addition, House Bill 4572 would strengthen other regulations for reserve pits, where oil and gas companies permanently bury waste next to drilling sites. The Texas House Energy Resources Committee heard testimony on the bill Monday. The bill builds on a rule-making the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the oil and gas industry, completed late last year to update the state’s oilfield waste regulations.

• • Mass Firings Hit Regulators Overseeing Self-Driving Cars

  Including Teslas - How Convenient for Elon Musk
  
  

  Apr. 10, 2025 -On Valentine’s Day, as most Americans were swapping cards and chocolates, an email arrived at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It wasn’t sweet.

  Roughly 30 staff members were told they were out of a job. Many of them worked in the agency’s newly minted Office of Vehicle Automation Safety — the group directly responsible for scrutinizing the promises and perils of self-driving cars.

• • Rural Human Rights Defenders Face Serious and Growing Risks

  Communities Likely Face Violence, Surveillance and Harassment
  
  

  Apr. 7, 2025 -When a gold mine in rural Liberia spewed three million gallons of cyanide-laced wastewater into soil and groundwater in 2016, affected Indigenous communities’ calls for accountability went largely unanswered.

  Locals protested the Turkish company responsible and criticized its officials for failing to clean up the toxic mess.

• • Chevron to pay $740 Million to Restore Louisiana's Coast

  As Reported by
  the Associated Press
  
  

  Apr. 4, 2025 -Chevron (CVX.N), opens new tab was ordered to pay $740 million to restore damages the oil and gas major caused to southeast Louisiana's coastal wetlands, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

  The ruling — delivered by a jury — awarded $575 million for land loss compensation, $161 million to compensate for contamination and $8 million for abandoned equipment, the report added.

• • Entire Staff Is Fired at Office That
  Helps Poorer Americans Pay for Heating

  The Move Threatens to Paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program
  
  

  Apr. 2, 2025 -The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills.

  The firings threaten to paralyze the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was created by Congress in 1981 and helps to offset high utility bills for roughly 6.2 million people from Maine to Texas during frigid winters and hot summers.

• • In the Australian Outback, Climate Change Widens the Racial Divide

  In the Scorching Australian Opal Mining Town of Coober Pedy, White People Live in cool “Dugouts” While Their Aboriginal Neighbors Suffer Above, Often Without AC
  
  

  Mar. 19, 2025 -From her front door, Sonya Crombie can see the sandstone hills where White men carved up the land in search of opal and then stayed, turning their mines into elaborate underground homes insulated from the desert heat.

  But when Crombie’s air conditioner broke in November just as the scorching summer was about to set in, the ailing 60-year-old Aboriginal woman had no tunnel in which to take refuge. As the temperature in her state-run house topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Crombie struggled to breathe. Emergency workers flew her 500 miles to a hospital.

• • EPA Plans to Close Environmental Justice Offices

  Leaving Communities to Face Pollution Alone
  
  

  Mar. 13, 2025 -Yesterday, news broke that a memo from Lee Zeldin, the new administrator of the EPA, directed the agency to eliminate all offices that focus on environmental justice.

  These offices, part of each of EPA’s 10 regional offices, worked to solve environmental issues facing (often low-income and minority) communities that have been disproportionately burdened by pollution, such as residents of so-called Cancer Alley, those without access to clean drinking water, and people in air pollution hotspots.

• • Climate Groups Were Counting on $20 Billion

  Trump Won’t Let Them Access It
  
  

  Mar. 4, 2025 -Two weeks after their bank accounts were frozen amid a swirl of investigations by the Trump administration, nonprofit organizations that were supposed to receive $20 billion to help curb climate change are still unable to withdraw money, raising concerns about their ability to pay staff.

  The accounts were frozen by Citibank, which holds the money, after Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, suggested there was potential fraud and the F.B.I. and Department of Justice launched investigations.

• • A Lawsuit Against Greenpeace Is Meant to Bankrupt It, But...

  Environmental Groups Warning
  
  

  Feb. 21, 2025 -Next week, not far from where thousands of Indigenous and environmental activists gathered in North Dakota nine years ago in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, one of the most consequential trials to emerge from that conflict is set to begin.

  The case, filed by pipeline developer Energy Transfer, accuses Greenpeace of defaming the company while funding and supporting some protesters who damaged its property.

• • Climate and Environmental Justice
  Programs Stalled by Trump Freeze

  Despite Court Orders
  
  

  Feb. 16, 2025 -President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal funding shows little sign of thawing for climate, energy and environmental justice programs.

  Despite two federal court orders directing the administration to resume distributing federal grants and loans, at least $19 billion in Environmental Protection Agency funding to thousands of state and local governments and nonprofits remained on hold as of Feb. 14, said environmental and legal advocates who are tracking the issue.

• • Data Scientists Restore a Climate
  Justice Tool Taken Down by Trump

  ‘Canary in a Coal Mine’
  Desalination Far More Accessible
  
  

  Feb. 4, 2025 -One day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a digital mapping tool used by federal and state agencies to identify environmentally disadvantaged communities was taken offline. Within 48 hours, a coalition of data scientists known as the Public Environmental Data Project had resurrected a functional but unofficial copy of the tool on an independent domain.

  The Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) is one of more than 200 federally maintained resources that the data scientists have flagged as both critical to environmental justice work and at risk of disappearing under the new Trump administration.

• • Trump Targets Biden’s Environmental Justice Initiatives

  Activists Gear Up for Legal Fights
  
  

  Jan. 26, 2025 -Activists across the United States say they’re preparing to take the federal government to court after President Donald Trump unveiled a series of executive orders that seek to undo much of his predecessor’s climate and environmental justice legacy.

  The executive orders, which Trump signed just hours after his second term began, target some of President Joe Biden’s key accomplishments, including the Justice40 Initiative.

• • New York’s Congestion Pricing Issue

  Could Worsen Traffic
  in Poor Neighborhoods
  
  

  Jan. 25, 2025 -On a frigid, gray morning this month, a half-dozen community advocates stood on a street corner in the South Bronx, struggling to be heard over the roar of heavy trucks. New York had recently begun charging vehicles to enter the city’s central business district, becoming the first in the nation to try to reduce traffic with a congestion pricing program.

  Yet while the tolls are expected to speed commutes and help improve air quality in the region, they are also projected to worsen traffic and pollution in a handful of neighborhoods, including the South Bronx, one of the city’s poorest.

• • Farmworkers and Allies Stage Die-in at California Pesticide Hearing

  Farmworkers and Their Supporters
  Gave a Dramatic Display of the
  Lethal Consequences of Inaction
  
  

  Jan. 24, 2025 -esidents of farmworker communities and their allies packed into a Monterey County meeting room about 100 miles south of San Francisco last Thursday night with a message for state pesticide regulators: protect us from the cancer-causing fumigant 1,3-D.California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, or DPR, held the third of four hearings in Salinas, a major berry-growing region, to seek public comment on its proposed regulation of 1,3-dichloropropene, or 1,3-D, a fumigant used most intensively by strawberry growers.

• • Trump's Climate Pullback Endangers
  Crucial Funds for Poor Nations

  Withdrawing Much-Needed Support as Extreme Weather Worsens
  
  

  Jan. 22, 2025 -Trump's decision to exit the Paris Agreement and renege on the US International Climate Finance Plan puts in jeopardy much-needed financial assistance to help developing countries adapt to a warmer planet and curb carbon emissions.

  The moves, announced within hours of Trump taking office Monday, also risk derailing the commitment that all countries made at COP29 in November to triple annual climate finance to $300 billion by 2035.

• • World’s Climate Fight Needs Fundamental Reform

  Some States are Not
  Acting in Good Faith’
  
  

  Jan. 7, 2025 - he international effort to avert climate catastrophe has become mired by misinformation and bad faith actors, and must be fundamentally reformed, according to a leading UN climate expert.

  Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on climate change, said the annual UN climate summits and the consensus-based, state-driven process is dominated by powerful forces pushing false narratives and by tech fixes that divert attention from real, equitable solutions for the countries least responsible and most affected.

• • NY Gov Signs Law That Penalizes
  Companies for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

  Raising Funds to Pay For Some of the Damage Caused by Extreme Weather Events, Which Are Becoming More Frequent Because of the Fossil Fuel Combustion
  
  

  Dec. 26, 2024 - Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday signed a law that requires companies that are big fossil fuel polluters to help pay to repair damage caused by extreme weather, which is becoming more common because of greenhouse gas emissions.

  The legislation, called the Climate Change Superfund Act, mandates that the companies responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions buildup between 2000 and 2024 pay about $3 billion each year for 25 years.

• • Agricultural Poisons Tell a Tale of Two Californias

  The Golden Rule Doesn’t Apply in the Golden State when it Comes to Protecting Latino and Indigenous Farmworker Communities from Toxic Pesticides
  
  

  Dec. 20, 2024 -Esperanza was washing off the dirt and sweat from another grueling day in the strawberry fields when she felt a bump on her right breast. It reminded the 44-year-old mother of eight of the milk clumps that formed after she’d weaned her youngest. Except it didn’t go away.

  Esperanza, who is undocumented and asked not to use her last name to protect her identity, knew she should seek medical care after hearing PSAs on Spanish-language TV, she said through a translator.