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EPA's Carbon Pollution Standards Upheld
Today has turned into a better day for our planet—and our lungs. In a landmark decision, the D.C. federal appeals court upheld every single one of the EPA’s carbon pollution limits. These EPA protections are in response to the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, and are important parts of the agency’s efforts…
Read MoreMountain Hero Gets Help from Author Wendell Berry
Junior Walk is not a celebrity. He grew up in Whitesville, West Virginia, born into a family of coal miners and workers. When he was just a kid, the water in his family’s home became contaminated with coal slurry. Though it was blood-red and smelled like sulfur, Junior, who was just a child at the…
Read MoreChesapeake Settles $1.6 Million Pollution Case
After being sued by a group of families in Pennsylvania with methane-contaminated water, fracking giant Chesapeake agreed today to pay the families a $1.6 million settlement. What’s particularly noteworthy about this development is this: for perhaps the first time, the details of the case are being made public.
Read MoreProtection Of Oceans A Bright Spot At Rio+20
The news out of the Rio+20 Earth Summit has been bleak. World leaders, yet again caught in the headlights of financial crises and electoral cycles, fundamentally failed us and the planet. However, there is a bright spot—and it is blue. Both the formal Rio text and the voluntary, on-the-ground and on the water commitments nations…
Read MoreVictories For East Coast Forage Fish
A special thank you goes out to the thousands of Earthjustice supporters who took action over the last few months by writing to the fishery management councils. Your voices made a huge difference.
Read MoreFriday Finds: An Oceanic-Sized Miracle
Mexican government saves miracle reef Cabo Pulmo, an ecological treasure and the jewel of California, recently received a stay of execution after the Mexican government announced its decision to cancel a mega-resort development project near the reef in Baja California Sur, reports the LA Times. The cancelled Cabo Cortes resort development was by far the…
Read MoreTr-Ash Talk: Two Years is Too Long
Although the EPA’s proposed coal ash rule was published two years ago, a final rule is nowhere in sight. Two years is more than enough time for the EPA to decide on a set of reasonable, health-protective standards for the country’s second largest industrial waste. The EPA blames the delay on 450,000 public comments. However,…
Read MoreA Community Being Poisoned from Within
Last year, the EPA proposed an air rule that would finally limit the amount of cancer-causing chemicals residents in Mossville, Louisiana would have to breathe from the polyvinyl chloride plant nearby. So it came as a blow when the EPA released a final rule that imposes weaker limits at the CertainTeed plant in Mossville—a facility…
Read MoreSoot Gets Editorial Ink
The historical significance of the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently proposed new limits on fine particle pollution, colloquially called soot, wasn’t lost on a number of editorial pages.
Read MoreDeadly Air Bill Voted Down in Senate
There are some straight spines left in the U.S. Senate, which today voted down a resolution from Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) that would have effectively exempted coal-fired power plants—the nation’s worst air polluters—from Clean Air Act controls that limit mercury and other toxic emissions. This is a critical victory in the decades-long effort to protect…
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