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Page Updated:
June 2, 2023

• • Administration Bans Drilling
  Around Native American Cultural Site

  The Interior Department Will Withdraw Public Lands Around Chaco Canyon from New Oil and Gas Leasing for 20 Years
  
  

  June 2, 2023 - The Biden administration took action on Friday to block new oil and gas leasing on federal land around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, one of the nation’s oldest and most culturally significant Native American sites.

  Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced that her agency would withdraw public lands within a 10-mile radius of Chaco Canyon and the area around it, known as Chaco Culture National Historical Park, from access to new oil and gas leasing for 20 years, following through on a 2021 pledge by President Biden to protect the area from drilling. The move will not affect existing oil and gas leases on the land or drilling on private property within the 10-mile radius.

• • Dying to Protect the Brazilian Rainforest

  Their Fight in Not Over
  
  

  June 1, 2023 - Three assassins walked into a bar deep in the Brazilian Amazon one night last October. Beers flowed, tongues loosened and the men were overheard bragging about their latest job. “We’re looking for this Orlando bloke. We’ve come to kill him,” one of the inebriated hitmen is said to have declared, according to a tipoff conveyed to their target.

  The Orlando in question was Orlando Possuelo, one of the Indigenous defenders who has been seeking to carry on the work of his colleague Bruno Pereira since Pereira was killed along with the British journalist Dom Phillips near the Javari valley Indigenous territory last June.

• • More Threats to the Amazon

  The Mafia May Want
  a Piece of the Action
  
  

  June 1, 2023 - The rapid advance of organized crime groups in the Brazilian Amazon risks turning the region into a vast, conflict-stricken hinterland plagued by heavily armed “criminal insurgents”, a former senior federal police chief has warned.

  Alexandre Saraiva, who worked in the Amazon from 2011 to 2021, said he feared the growing footprint of drug-trafficking mafias in the region could spawn a situation similar to the decades-long drug conflict in Rio de Janeiro, where the police’s battle with drug gangs and paramilitaries has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

• • Ithaca Bets on Heat Pumps in Mobile Homes

  The First to Tackle the Energy Woes of Affordable Housing
  
  

  May 26, 2023 -Technically, Holly Hutchinson lives in Ithaca, New York, a university town in the Fingers Lakes region in the north-central part of the state. But she also lives at an important intersection between two national crises: affordable housing and the race to stave off climate disaster.

  She can tell you from experience that the housing dilemma is pushing more Americans into mobile homes; she lives in one herself.

• • Highways Have Sliced Through City After City

  Can the U.S. Undo the Damage?
  
  

  May 25, 2023 -Anthony Roberts set out to walk to a convenience store on the opposite side of a busy highway in Kansas City, Mo., one afternoon. It wasn’t an easy trip.

  Mr. Roberts’s journey is a small example of the lasting consequences stemming from the construction of highways slicing through urban neighborhoods in cities around the country. Completed in 2001 after being in the works for decades, the highway in Kansas City, U.S. 71, displaced thousands of residents and cut off predominantly Black neighborhoods from grocery stores, health care and jobs.

• • Fossil Fuel Companies Should Pay for ‘Climate Reparations

  $5.4 Trillion Sounds About Right
  
  

  May 19, 2023 - One of the most contentious climate policy debates revolves, unsurprisingly, around money. Who should pay the monumental sums needed to protect against extreme weather and transition to clean energy, particularly because the damage has been caused by fossil fuel pollution from the rich, while the costs will be borne disproportionately by the poor?

  Add to that a disparity in time: Older people have enjoyed the benefits of burning fossil fuels. The youth and unborn will suffer the harms.

• •  $11B to Fund Rural Renewable Energy

  Will Help Bring Affordable Clean Energy to Rural Communities Throughout the US
  
  

  May 17, 2023 - Rural electric cooperatives, renewable energy companies and electric utilities will be able to apply for funding through two programs, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a media briefing on Monday.

  Vilsack said it was the largest single federal investment in rural electrification since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act in 1936 as part of the New Deal.

• • The 'Skeletons' in Big Oil's Closet

  There’s Growing Evidence that Fossil Fuel Companies Knew Their Product Would Harm the Climate
  
  

  May 16, 2023 - The legal headaches for Big Oil are spreading. The latest company to land in court is Eni, the Italian giant.

  Today, we talk about lawsuits against oil companies and how the sheer volume and complexity of cases around the world may lead to change.

• • California’s Electric Vehicle Program

  The Good and the Bad
  
  

  May 12, 2023 -A worldwide gearshift from fossil fuel–powered cars to electric vehicles could significantly reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that humans emit to the atmosphere. But current strategies for vehicle electrification can also shift some pollution to communities already suffering under higher economic, health and environmental burdens, researchers warn.

• • Shell Refinery Unit Had a
  History of Malfunctions Before Fire

  No Fines or Citations from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
  
  

  May 9, 2023 -The units at a Houston-area Shell refinery that caught fire this weekend repeatedly malfunctioned in recent years without recourse from Texas regulators.

  Since the start of 2022, the British oil giant reported at least four malfunctions at one olefins unit in its Deer Park petrochemical refinery that had resulted in thousands of pounds of illegal pollution but no fines or citations. Olefins units—the heart of petrochemical complexes—separate hydrocarbons into the components of plastics.

• • Maryland's Gradual Transition
  to Zero-Emissions Trucks and Buses

  Underserved Communities
  Would Benefit Most
  
  

  May 2, 2023 -In a significant step toward eliminating toxic air pollution, Maryland lawmakers have approved a measure requiring that, year by year, manufacturers ensure that zero-emissions vehicles make up a growing share of the trucks and buses sold in the state.

• • City of Seattle Settles “Rights of Nature” Case

  Agrees to Create Fish Passage Through Skagit River Dams
  
  

  May 2, 2023 -On April 19, 2023, the City of Seattle settled one of the first “rights of nature” cases filed in the United States. That case, brought in 2022 by the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, with salmon as a plaintiff, sought a declaratory judgment recognizing the legal rights of salmon and declaring that the lack of fish passage measures at the City’s dams harmed the Tribe’s culture and traditions, religion, and Treaty rights.

  At the time of settlement, the case was pending within the Sauk-Suiattle Tribal Court of Appeals, with an April 30 deadline looming for Seattle to submit its application for renewal of its federal license to operate its hydroelectricity generating dams on the Skagit River.

• •East Africa’s Drought

  Climate Change Made
  That 100x More Likely
  
  

  Apr. 27, 2023 -Two and a half years of meager rain have shriveled crops, killed livestock and brought the Horn of Africa, one of the world’s poorest regions, to famine’s brink. Millions of people have faced food and water shortages. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, seeking relief. A below-normal forecast for the current rainy season means the suffering could continue.

  Click now to read all about it.

• • Buringang River Pollution Makes Living Unbearable

  Water Treatment Facilities in General Are Non-Existent
  
  

  Apr. 26, 2023 - Click now to watch this two-minute video on what is happening to a river in Bangladesh

• • A Supreme Loss For Fossil Fuel Companies

  Court Declines to Hear Appeals
  From Fossil Fuel Companies
  in Climate Change Lawsuits
  
  

  Apr. 25, 2023 -The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear five appeals from the fossil fuel industry seeking to move climate change lawsuits it faces to the federal courts. The decision opens the door for Baltimore and other cities, states and counties to pursue their claims for damages from climate-related extreme weather events, flooding and sea-level rise in state courts.

• • Experts Hail Decision to Let US Climate Lawsuits Advance

  A Supreme Court Decision
  
  

  Apr. 25, 2023 - The decision, climate experts and advocates said, felt “like a dam breaking” after years of legal delays to the growing wave of climate lawsuits facing major oil companies.

  Without weighing in on the merits of the cases, the supreme court on Monday rebuffed an appeal by major oil companies that want to face the litigation in federal courts, rather than in state courts, which are seen as more favorable to plaintiffs.

• • Can Biden Repair His Damaged
  Climate and Environmental Justice Image?

  The President Unveiled a Slew
  of New Efforts Aimed to
  Bolster His Environmental Record
  
  

  Apr. 25, 2023 -Biden also faces grim approval ratings, driven in part by a series of legal blows and controversial administration decisions that threaten to derail his ambitious environmental agenda.

  Among thw efforts to repair the damages is a new executive order that would create a White House Office of Environmental Justice.

• • ‘Green Colonialism’ Defined

  Indigenous World Leaders Warn Over West’s Climate Strategy
  
  

  Apr. 23, 2023 - World Indigenous leaders meeting this week at an annual UN summit have warned that the west’s climate strategy risks the exploitation of Indigenous territories, resources and people.

  New and emerging threats about the transition to a greener economy, including mineral mining, were at the forefront of debate as hundreds of Indigenous chiefs, presidents, chairmen and delegates gathered at the 22nd United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

• • Climate Activists Rally at Illinois Capitol

  Urging Lawmakers to Pass 9 Climate and Environmental Bills
  
  

  Apr. 21, 2023 - Hundreds of environmental activists rallied at the Illinois State Capitol, urging legislators to support bills that advance environmental justice and protection and that address climate change. Advocates also delivered a letter to the governor’s office demanding tighter vehicle emissions rules.

• • Biden to Sign Order Prioritizing ‘Environmental Justice’

  Isn't It About Time?
  
  

  Apr. 21, 2023 -The White House said it wants to ensure that poverty, race and ethnic status do not lead to worse exposure to pollution and environmental harm. Biden is trying to draw a contrast between his agenda and that of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

  GOP lawmakers have called for less regulation of oil production to lower energy prices, while the Biden administration says the GOP policies would give benefits to highly profitable oil companies and surrender the renewable energy sector to the Chinese.

• • The Price Paid to Clean Up the BP Oil Spill

  This Participating Are Sick
  - and Want Justice
  
  

  Apr. 20, 2023 - Thirteen years ago, they helped clean up BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest ever in US waters. They rushed toward the toxic oil to save the place they loved, joining forces with more than 33,000 others to clean up our coastlines. Now, they have active lawsuits against BP, saying the company made them sick.

  Click now for the whole story.

• • DOE Offers $3B Loan to Create Solar and Storage VPPs

  Project Hestia Will Focus on Households in Disadvantaged Communities Across the USA
  
  

  Apr. 20, 2023 -The U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced a conditional commitment to Sunnova Energy Corp’s Project Hestia for an up to $3 billion partial loan guarantee to make distributed energy resources (DERs), including rooftop solar, battery storage, and virtual power plant (VPP)-ready software available to more American homeowners.

• • Nearly 1 in 5 Americans Live in
  Communities With Harmful Air Quality

  Western USA Most Affected,
  As Are People of Color
  
  

  Apr. 19, 2023 - Roughly one in five Americans lives in counties that have high, unhealthy daily levels of pollution from manufacturing soot, vehicle exhaust and other fine particles, according to a new report from the American Lung Association.

  The findings, part of the lung association’s annual “State of the Air” report, also indicated that more people are residing in such high-pollution areas nationwide than at any other time in the past decade.

• • CPUC Approves Rules for Its $200
  Million Microgrid Incentive Program

  Applies to Well-
  Known California Utilities
  
  
  

  Apr. 11, 2023 -The California Public Utilities Commission approved rules for its $200 million Microgrid Incentive Program (MIP) for Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).

  The program is intended to support the development of community microgrids in disadvantaged and vulnerable communities, as well as tribal communities, that have experienced and are likely to experience power outages.

• • Limiting Toxic Air Pollutants
  From Chemical and Plastics Plants

  The EPA Announces New Rules
  
  
  

  Apr. 6, 2023 -The EPA administrator used the smokestacks of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” as the backdrop on Thursday to announce new rules aimed at reducing harmful, toxic emissions from chemical and plastics plants across the country.

  “For generations, our most vulnerable communities have unjustly borne the burden of breathing unsafe, polluted air,” said Michael S. Regan, the nation’s top environmental regulator,

• • The Most at Risk From California Oil & Gas Drilling

  Look at the Research
  
  
  

  Apr. 5, 2023 -Even as fossil fuel extraction declined in the state, low-income, Black and Hispanic residents continued to face disproportionate risks from living near wells, and Black residents were exposed to the most intensive operations.

• • What Happens to Climate Migrants After the Dust Settles?

  Climate Migrants Struggle After Short-Term Help Fades
  
  

  Apr. 3, 2023 -When Hurricane Katrina hit the Louisiana Gulf Coast in 2005, it funneled more than 200,000 evacuees into Houston at once. The city mobilized, setting up emergency shelters and providing other kinds of immediate relief.

  But in the months and years that followed, the tens of thousands of evacuees who decided to stay in Houston struggled to rebuild their lives. Many had difficulty securing permanent affordable housing and establishing financial stability. The health sector also struggled to keep up with increased demand for services.

• • When a Black Enclave Is Built by Big Oil

  This Is the Result

  Apr. 3, 2023, (CAPITAL B) -When Tara Bettis is at her home in Beaumont, Texas, the 57-year-old doesn’t need a clock to know what time it is. Her body instinctively knows based on the pitches of whistles and bells ringing from her neighbor’s property: a massive, land-gobbling oil refinery and chemical plant owned by ExxonMobil.

• • Can Nations Be Sued for Weak Climate Action?

  We’ll Soon Get an Answer
  
  

  Mar. 29, 2023 -A tiny Pacific island nation has pulled off the kind of diplomatic win that can elude global superpowers.

  On Wednesday, Vanuatu, population 300,000, rallied countries to ask the world’s highest court to weigh in on a high-stakes question: Can countries be sued under international law for failing to slow down climate change?

• • UN Adopts Climate Justice Landmark Resolution

  Hailed as ‘Win For Climate
  Justice of Epic Proportions’
  
  

  Mar. 29, 2023 -A UN resolution was adopted on Wednesday that should make it easier to hold polluting countries legally accountable for failing to tackle the climate emergency, in a vote which was hailed as a historic victory for climate justice.

  Click now for the rest of the story.

• • Addressing the Bronx Pollution Issue

  M.T.A. Plans to Use
  Congestion Pricing Funds
  
  

  Mar. 28, 2023 -Ever since the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (M.T.A.) unveiled an ambitious vehicle tolling program last year, critics have been dismayed by evidence that some of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods could end up with dirtier air from all the diverted traffic.

  Now, the M.T.A. is considering spending at least $130 million it raises from tolling to help address the potential impact to those neighborhoods.

• • The Amazon’s Largest Isolated Tribe Is Dying

  Illegal Mines Have Fueled a Humanitarian Crisis For the Yanomami Indigenous Group
  
  

  Mar. 25, 2023 -The illegal tin mine was so remote that, for three years, the massive gash it cut into the Amazon rainforest had gone largely ignored.

  So when three mysterious helicopters suddenly hovered overhead, unannounced, the miners living there scrambled into the forest.

• • Cleaner Air Helps Everyone

  Especially Black Communities
  
  

  Mar. 24, 2023 -The Environmental Protection Agency is considering new standards for the maximum amount of fine particulate matter, tiny specks about one-thirtieth the diameter of a human hair that can penetrate the lungs, in outdoor air. A recent study examined how the benefits of stricter limits would be distributed across American society.

  Implementing stricter limits on fine particulate matter could reduce mortality rates by up to 7% for Black and low-income Americans over 65 who are already exposed to some of the dirtiest air in the US.

• • Imagining Environmental
  Justice for a ‘Sacrifice Zone’

  As the D.O.E. Pushes New Technologies, Concerns and Opportunities Manifest In the "Birth Place Of Steel"
  
  

  Mar. 27, 2023 -The DOE’s newly formed Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations [OCED] last year announced a funding process for a national buildout of four regional hydrogen [H2] hubs, in an attempt to decarbonize heavy industries like steelmaking. A hub in this region would more than likely make “blue” hydrogen using fracked natural gas. Local leaders and industrial titans like U.S. Steel, Shell and Norway-based gas giant Equinor have pledged to collectively advance the project.

  North Braddock Residents for Our Future responded with concern.

• • Louisiana ‘Cancer Alley’ Residents Sue Over Zoning

  But Will
  Conservative Judges Agree?
  
  

  Mar. 21, 2023 -Making the case that their local government was built on a culture of white supremacy, Black residents of St. James Parish in the heart of Louisiana’s “cancer alley” have filed a federal lawsuit claiming land-use and zoning policies illegally concentrated more than a dozen polluting industrial plants where they live.

  The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans traces Black history since European settlement in the 1700s through the legacy of slavery and post-Civil War racism, to assert that parish government officials intentionally directed industry toward Black residents and away from white residents.

• • Peru Could Strip Isolated Indigenous
  People of Land and Protections

  A Debate in Peru’s Congress Seeks to Reevaluate Every Indigenous Reserve for Isolated Peoples
  
  

  Mar. 16, 2023 -The bill would shift decision-making power into the hands of regional governments and include economic interests in the evaluation process, changes which human rights and environmental experts call legally flawed and a human rights violation.

• • Texas Town Went Four Years Without Safe Drinking Water

  State Regulators Allowed
  That to Happen
  
  

  Mar. 16, 2023 -It all began simply enough: A boil water notice was issued. A state inspection followed. A list of violations arrived. It’s a well-known pattern in small Texas towns that struggle to maintain their water systems.

  But there was nothing simple about Toyah’s water woes, which were years in the making and remain unresolved. A boil water notice issued in June 2018 is still in effect. In the shadow of the country’s most prosperous oil and gas fields, the residents of Toyah, many low-income and Hispanic, have gone nearly five years without safe drinking water.

• • Reshaping Indigenous Water Rights in the Southwest

  The Supreme Court Will Decide

  Mar. 15, 2023, (CIVIL EATS) -After 50 years, the government hasn’t developed water infrastructure owed to a Navajo Nation farm. Now the Supreme Court is set to weigh in on the government’s water obligations to tribes.



• • An Oil Rush Threatens
  Natural Splendors Across East Africa

  A Multibillion-Dollar Oil Drilling and Pipeline Project is Displacing Thousands of People In Uganda and Tanzania, While Ravaging Pristine Habitats
  
  

  Mar. 14, 2023 -Under dense forest canopy sheltering elephants, rare birds and colobus monkeys, roaring bulldozers and excavators shatter the idyll, toppling ancient trees and carving roads to reach Uganda’s newest source of riches: Oil.

• • Indonesia’s Indonesia’s New Capital Takes Shape

  Risks to Wider Borneo
  Come into Focus
  
  

  Mar. 8, 2023 -Indonesia’s plan to build its new capital city on an expiring logging concession in eastern Borneo has sparked concerns among environmental and human rights observers about the larger eco-social impacts to the rest of the island.

  The administration of President Joko Widodo, who made the decision and will leave office next year, has made glowing promises of a green and sustainable development: claiming minimal forest clearance, respect for Indigenous and local communities’ rights, and a net-zero carbon emission design.

• • Collagen Craze Drives
  Deforestation and Rights Abuses

  An Investigation has Linked Collagen Powder to Violence Against the Indigenous in Brazilian forests

  Mar. 6, 2023, (THE BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM) -The stench arrives before the lorries do. They are carrying skins that were stripped from cattle carcasses days ago. Flies are everywhere.

  The lorries’ destination is Amparo, a small industrial town in São Paulo state, southeastern Brazil. Here, Rousselot, a company owned by the Texan business Darling Ingredients, extracts collagen – the active ingredient in health supplements at the centre of a global wellness craze.

• • Lithium Mine In Nevada Stirs Controversy

  Opponents Say the Project Was Rushed in the Name of the Green Transition
  
  

  Mar. 3, 2023 -Construction began this week on an open-pit mine at the largest lithium deposit in the United States, even as tribes and environmental groups continue a years-long effort to block the project.

  Lithium Americas Corp. announced that it began construction on the Thacker Pass lithium project in Humboldt County, Nevada, after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request Wednesday by mine opponents to block work.

• • Austrian Children Take
  Government to Court Over Climate

  Protecting Constitutional Rights
  
  

  Feb. 21, 2023 -A dozen minors filed a lawsuit with Austria’s top court Tuesday seeking to force the government to ensure their constitutional rights are protected by taking tougher action against climate change.

  A lawyer for the group said the case submitted to the Constitutional Court is modeled on a similar lawsuit in Germany that prompted the government there to set new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions two years ago.

• • Recent Books About Climate and Environmental Justice

  These 12 Books Argue That the Only Sustainable Future is a Fair and Equitable One
  
  

  Feb. 20, 2023 -In observance of Black History Month, Yale Climate Connections is following up its January bookshelf on climate advocacy with a selection of new titles on climate and environmental justice.

  Together, these books make the case that climate action can only win widespread and durable support if it is just. Inequities of the past and the present must be addressed by policies and programs offered for a sustainable future.

• • How Scotland Pays Back for Malawi Climate Damage

  Part of the Malawi Community Was Washed Away by Flood Waters
  
  

  Feb. 20, 2023 -Scotland is one of the first countries in the world to stump up cash for "loss and damage" caused by climate change in poorer countries.

  When torrential rains came to the village of Mambundungu in Malawi, people's homes were washed away but that was not the worst of it.

  The flood waters were infested with crocodiles. Children were carried away by them. It was terrifying.

• • Addressing the Bronx Pollution Issue

  M.T.A. Plans to Use
  Congestion Pricing Funds
  
  

  Mar. 28, 2023 -Ever since the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (M.T.A.) unveiled an ambitious vehicle tolling program last year, critics have been dismayed by evidence that some of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods could end up with dirtier air from all the diverted traffic.

  Now, the M.T.A. is considering spending at least $130 million it raises from tolling to help address the potential impact to those neighborhoods.