Climate Health

North Carolina gets great clean air news

Great clean air news out of North Carolina today – the Sierra Club and four of our key allies are announcing a settlement that will retire 1,600-megawatts of dirty coal power. North Carolina has long been a clean air leader, from passing the landmark Clean Smokestacks Act a decade ago, which requires all coal plants […]

Critical List: ‘Super fracking’; pollution threatens Lake Titicaca

Natural gas companies are looking into "super fracking," which uses larger, deeper cracks and draws power from our planet’s yellow sun.

West Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and Ohioans are all hoping that Shell will choose to build a petrochemical refinery in their state, because the plant promises jobs.

Maybe it's time to abandon Ulysses S. Grant's laws for federal land, which dictate that hard-rock mining is the best use for any plot.

Monsanto won’t have to clean up dioxin in West Virginia

West Virginia continues to win the game of exposing human beings to extremely hazardous conditions in exchange for working-class pay, then telling them to deal with it when they get sick. The latest example of this behavior doesn't even have to do with coal, but with Monsanto and Agent Orange.

For 30 years, the Monsanto plant in a town called Nitro (named after the chemicals produced there! For real!) produced a defoliant ingredient that would later be used in Agent Orange. But the herbicides made in Nitro were contaminated with dioxin, which meant that Nitro residents were exposed to the toxic chemical beginning in the late 1940s. Dioxin has been connected to every bad health impact imaginable—for adults, problems like cancer and immune suppression, and for kids, problems like birth defects and learning disabilities. And now, because of the way West Virginia law works, the most that the citizens of Nitro can ask from the company is that it covers the cost of medical testing fees.

Mexico City’s move: Take this dump and close it!

One of the world's largest dumps won't be belching greenhouse gases any more, thanks to Mexico City's closing of the vast Bordo Poniente Landfill.

Critical List: Toxic chemicals on the rise; baby seals in trouble

The EPA may retest water in Dimock, Pa., where residents have linked polluted water to fracking operations. In its first round of testing the town's water, the EPA declared it safe.

GM is fixing up the Volt in order to avoid in real-life battery fires like the ones that started during testing.

As winter sea ice disappears in the Arctic, fewer baby harp seals are making it.

The amount of toxic chemicals shunted into the environment went up 16 percent between 2009 and 2010, according a new EPA report.

Photos: What America looked like before the EPA

In 1972, the year-old EPA had photographers traverse the country to document the (often dire) state of the environment. This project, Documerica, was "the visual echo of the mission of the EPA," according to one photographer. Now, 40 years later, archive specialist Jerry Simmons has unearthed the photos and put them online at the National Archives website and on Flickr. It's a time capsule of life before the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

Your car commute helps cause tornadoes

Just like humans, East Coast tornadoes work extra hours during the week and take it easier on the weekends. According to a new study, tornadoes and hailstorms are less likely to occur on a Saturday or Sunday. That’s because hail and tornadoes thrive on pollution, which is higher towards the middle of the week.

The study looked at summertime storm activity and found above-average rates of storms mid-week and below-average rates on weekends. It turns out that this is because moisture likes pollutants.

Critical List: E.U. court OKs airline carbon emission scheme; climate change kills frankincense

The E.U.'s version of the Supreme Court decided that it's totally cool for the E.U. to require flights originating elsewhere to participate in its carbon-emissions trading plans. Later today, the EPA will announce new regulations for power plants that limit mercury and other emissions. Climate change: also killing Christmas. Okay, just the production of frankincense, […]

Three cheers for new mercury pollution standards

New mercury pollution standards: something everyone should celebrate.Environmentalists and public health advocates have a reason to stand up and cheer: Finalized rules to cut down on mercury air pollution are set to be announced today by the EPA. But economists can also feel good about this holiday-season gift of clean air: Two decades of agency […]

Erin Brockovich on her novel, Occupy Wall Street, and saving the world

Erin Brockovich.In the decade or so since her life was immortalized in the Oscar-winning Julia Roberts flick, Erin Brockovich, the real Brockovich has continued her environmental crusade. (To refresh your memory: Brockovich is the working mom who, as a file clerk in a California law firm, stumbled upon records that eventually forced Pacific Gas and […]