Brian Kahn, a senior science writer for Climate Central, tweeted images compiled from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration airborne imagery that show the monster storm’s impact.

This was Rockport after the hurricane hit.

Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed by the tropical storm.

Check out Kahn’s Twitter for more.

The EPA administrator’s latest ploy to justify regulatory rollbacks: ignore mountains of scientific evidence and tell the public that efforts to protect our health are bad for us. (Well, maybe this strategy is not exactly new.)

This time, Pruitt is saying that fuel economy standards are actually killing people. His argument is twofold: First, he contends that the rules force automakers to build lighter vehicles, which don’t hold up well in car accidents and could increase fatalities. Simulated crash testing does not support this Koch-backed theory, according to the California Air Resources Board.

Second, Pruitt says that higher fuel efficiency standards could drive up prices and discourage people from buying newer, safer vehicle models.

Why go to such great lengths to bring back dirtier cars and trucks? The Los Angeles Times reports that the Trump administration is building up a case to revoke California’s ability to set higher mileage standards than federal law, a provision included in the Clean Air Act.

Because it’s such a huge market, California influences worldwide auto standards. A State of the Global Air report recently found that air pollution led to 1 in 9 deaths worldwide and contributed to more than 6 million deaths in 2016. That’s well over four times the number of people who die in car accidents globally each year.

Plus, the American Lung Association’s State of the Air report released this week found that more than 40 percent of Americans live in counties with unhealthy levels of air pollution.

While East and West coast states are busy suing Big Oil and divesting massive retirement pensions, people in the middle of the country are also working on long-term solutions for their communities — with a little less fanfare.

We interviewed some of them for the Grist 50 2018, our list of rising stars drawing up solutions to humanity’s biggest challenges.

• Nebraskan Melissa Freelend decided it was time to bring renewables into her state’s energy mix, so she got herself elected to the board of directors of the biggest energy provider in the state.
• Juliana Pino escaped civil war in Colombia when she was just a kid. Now, she’s working to change discriminatory laws and fight for environmental justice in Illinois.
• In Chicago, police ticket bicyclists in African-American and Latino neighborhoods twice as often as in white neighborhoods. Olatunji Oboi Reed, a dedicated bike rider, is working to ensure that people can get around town without facing discrimination or racial profiling from police.
• Milwaukee has a lot of empty lots. It also has a sewage overflow problem. Justin Hegarty has a plan for both: He’s replacing vacant, concrete lots with gardens — green sponges that divert water from sewers.
• Devita Davison is using her evangelist background to advocate for homegrown businesses in Detroit. Her nonprofit, FoodLab Detroit, assisted 320 small businesses last year.

Looking for more fixers? We’ve got ’em.

Congressional Democrats have been keeping an eye on the embattled EPA administrator, and they aren’t happy with what they’ve seen. On Wednesday, New Mexico Senator Tom Udall and Florida Representative Kathy Castor introduced a resolution to kick Pruitt out.

It was signed by 131 representatives and 39 senators — the most senators to call for the removal of a cabinet official in U.S. history. If you need any inspiration for insults, the press release about the resolution has plenty. Udall called him “the emperor of the swamp.” Castor said: “There is a slime problem at the EPA — and it is coming from the administrator’s office.”

Pruitt’s pileup of scandals ranges from wasteful spending (private flights) to ethical transgressions (sidelining officials who question him). That’s not to mention the damage his policies pose to public health. He faces a total of nine investigations from Congress, the White House, and his own agency. One investigation concluded this week that Pruitt broke the law in buying a $43,000 soundproof phone booth.

The call to boot Pruitt lacks bipartisan support, as Lisa Friedman writes, so it probably won’t have the desired effect. Some Republicans have turned against Pruitt, including John Kelly, the White House chief of staff. Most prominent Republicans, including President Trump, reportedly stand behind him — for now.

The West Coast often dominates the climate conversation, with its mudslides and wildfires and lawsuits against big polluters. But the Northeast also seems to be taking climate change pretty seriously.

Don’t believe me? Even New Jersey, America’s trash can, is cleaning up its act. Here’s what’s going down on America’s right-hand flank:

• New Jersey is not only prepared to foil the Trump administration’s plans by banning offshore drilling — it also passed bills that require the state to get 50 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2030. That includes a pretty big subsidy for nuclear energy (if that frightens you, check out this piece).
• Five New England liberal arts colleges announced plans on Thursday to build a solar power facility in Maine. This is the first time a higher-ed alliance in New England has tackled a local solar project like this, but it follows a larger trend of universities picking up the slack on climate change.
• A new study shows that the nine Northeast states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a state-led cap-and-trade program, have created thousands of new jobs in renewables, cut costs, and sharply reduced emissions.

Climate action isn’t limited to America’s coasts, of course. Communities in Colorado recently announced plans to sue the pants off of Big Oil — just the sort of local climate action we’ve been waiting for.

On Monday, the island’s power utility boasted that it had restored electricity to 97 percent of customers. Two days later, the precarious electric grid collapsed, plunging the entire island into a blackout for the first time in seven months.

“Back to September 20th,” tweeted San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.

The outage, reportedly caused by a construction equipment accident, is the second to hit Puerto Rico recently. Last Thursday, a fallen tree took out power for 870,000 people. Such events have become a fact of life for Puerto Ricans, who are currently living through the second biggest electricity crisis in modern world history. Only the magnitude of electric grid damage by Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013, was worse.

The recovery effort continues to drag on, hampered by poor planning, rampant corruption, and logistical nightmares. So far, the hurricane has triggered more than a thousand deaths, a mental health crisis, and a mass exodus from the island.

Officials estimate that power will be restored in 24 to 36 hours. But it’s not coming back for everyone — tens of thousands of rural residents of eastern and central Puerto Rico have been waiting for their lights to turn back on since September.

And guess what? The next hurricane season is just six weeks away.

Remember those lawsuits California and New York filed against major oil producers for knowingly heating up the planet? Two counties in Colorado just teamed up with the city of Boulder to file a similar lawsuit of their own. The complaint alleges that oil companies contributed greenhouse gases to the atmosphere for decades while knowing the consequences.

Boulder, Boulder County, and San Miguel County are taking ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy (Canada’s biggest oil company) to court in an effort to hold them accountable for damages caused by extreme weather — events scientists have linked to increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Colorado has seen a 2 degree F increase on average over the past 30 years, making it the 20th fastest warming state in the U.S. since 1970.

This is the first time non-coastal communities have sued fossil fuel companies over climate change, but inland states have their own set of climate-related problems. The three plaintiffs in the lawsuit say their communities have endured wildfires and flash floods fueled by climate change. They want ExxonMobil and Suncor to pay millions for the damage and fork over additional money to fund climate adaptation initiatives.

“Plaintiffs have taken substantial steps to reduce their own GHG emissions,” the complaint says. Meanwhile, “Defendants have acted recklessly.” Watch out, Big Oil! Colorado isn’t pulling its punches.

This story has been updated.

Justin Trudeau, Alberta, and Kinder Morgan are on one side; British Columbia, First Nations, and environmental activists are on the other.

Alberta introduced legislation yesterday that B.C. officials say is retaliation against their opposition of the pipeline expansion, which would triple the amount of crude oil transported from the former to the latter. Kinder Morgan recently announced that it was stopping all nonessential spending on the project as a result of legal efforts and protests aimed at blocking it. If B.C. doesn’t back down by May 31, the company could scrap the project altogether. The Alberta bill allows the province’s energy minister to decide what fossil fuel products it exports, which could drive up gas prices in B.C.

Yet another battle was brewing in the courtroom. More than 200 anti-pipeline demonstrators have been arrested so far, including prominent political leaders Elizabeth May and Kennedy Stewart. A judge upped penalties for nearly two dozen protesters arrested alongside May and Kennedy from civil disobedience to potential criminal charges.

Amnesty International issued a statement in support of the activists: “Far too often, governments in Canada have overreacted to land rights protests and protests perceived to threaten favored resource development projects. It is clear that pipeline development is a high stakes issue for politicians. This means even greater vigilance is required to ensure that the right to protest is not sacrificed.” Fight on.

Substitute some scandals, and parts of this 35-year-old New York Times report on the EPA sound like they could have been written today. “Once noted for its efficiency and esprit,” it reads, “the agency is now demoralized and virtually inert, according to past and current officials of the agency, Congressmen of both parties and outside critics.”

The article was published at the height of controversy in the tenure of former EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch Burford — yes, she was Neil Gorsuch’s mother. Under President Reagan, she rolled back environmental protections and cut the agency’s budget, leading to a demoralized, understaffed agency. Sounds a lot like the EPA today, right?

The similarities with current Administrator Scott Pruitt don’t end there: Burford’s reign at the EPA was marked by ethical controversy. Her management of the Superfund program sparked a congressional investigation that stretched months. In the end, Burford withheld subpoenaed documents from the House and, held in contempt by Congress, she resigned.

This prompted some EPA employees to celebrate and start wearing T-shirts with the slogan “I Survived the Ice Queen’s Acid Reign.” Now there are calls to #BootPruitt, but it remains to be seen whether history will repeat itself.

And hey — the EPA rebuilt itself after 1983, so maybe there’s hope it will bounce back again.

The agency low-balled how much damage a Category 4 hurricane would leave behind in Puerto Rico, according to a Politico review of a recently released FEMA planning document. The 140-page plan from 2014 outlined how FEMA would respond to “the inevitable ‘big one’ that will test local, commonwealth, territorial, and Federal capabilities” in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The document reveals that FEMA intended to rely heavily on local authorities and the private sector in the event of a catastrophic hurricane. (To be fair, no one could have predicted the bizarre Whitefish fiasco.) Although FEMA often plays a supporting role to state efforts, it failed to take into account that Puerto Rico’s looming debt crisis and faltering infrastructure would severely limit the territory’s ability to bounce back on its own.

More than half a year after the storm, 50,000 people are still without electricity. The lackluster recovery effort is partly a result of FEMA’s decision not to take the lead in Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery, disaster-response experts say.

Take this as an illustration of just how much FEMA underestimated the potential for devastation: The plan predicted the agency would move from response to recovery mode after only one month — something it’s just recently started to do.