Today's Top 5

Trump Moves Decisively to Wipe Out Obama's Climate Legacy

President Trump will take the most significant step yet in obliterating his predecessor’s environmental record Tuesday, instructing federal regulators to rewrite key rules curbing U.S. carbon emissions. The sweeping executive order also seeks to lift a moratorium on federal coal leasing and remove the requirement that federal officials consider the impact of climate change when making decisions. The order sends an unmistakable signal that just as President Barack Obama sought to weave climate considerations into every aspect of the federal government, Trump is hoping to rip that approach out by its roots. - Washington Post

When Is It Time To Retreat From Climate Change?

While managed retreat is not always the right choice for communities threatened by climate change,  it may be the right choice more often than we’re willing to admit. Well more than a hundred million people are expected to face displacement by rising seas before the end of the century. - The New Yorker

Lamar Smith, Unbound, Lays Out Political Strategy at Climate Doubters Conference

Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX) rarely expresses his true feelings in public. But speaking yesterday to a like-minded crowd of climate change doubters and skeptics, the chairman of the science committee in the U.S. House of Representatives acknowledged that the committee is now a tool to advance his political agenda rather than a forum to examine important issues facing the U.S. research community. - Science

Villagers Vote To Ban Massive Gold Mining Project in Colombia

 Residents of a town in central Colombia sent a clear message on Sunday to the powers that be that they don’t want a large-scale mining operation in their backyard. In an almost unanimous vote of 6,165 of 6,296 voters (about 98 percent), inhabitants of the Colombian municipality of Cajamarca voted against one of the world’s largest planned gold mines. Dubbed La Colosa, the open-pit mine is a project of world’s third largest gold producer, AngloGold Ashanti. - Mongabay

Deal Ups Flow of Funding For Flint Water Fallout

Michigan will spend an additional $47 million to help ensure safe drinking water in Flint by replacing lead pipes and providing free bottled water under a proposed settlement announced Monday. The money is in addition to $40 million previously budgeted to address Flint’s widespread lead-contamination crisis. The state also will set aside $10 million to cover unexpected costs, bringing the total to $97 million. - The Detroit News

Today's Top 5

Trump to Sign Executive Order Undoing Obama's Clean Power Plan

Donald Trump will on Tuesday sign an executive order to unravel Barack Obama’s plan to curb global warming, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said on Sunday, claiming the move would be “pro-growth and pro-environment”. - The Guardian

Trump Megadonors Also Back Group That Casts Doubt On Climate Science

The Mercers’ attendance at the two-day Heartland conference offered a telling sign of the low-profile family’s priorities: With Trump in office, the influential financiers appear intent on putting muscle behind the fight to roll back environmental regulations, a central focus of the new administration. - Washington Post

Drought and War Heighten Threat of Not Just One Famine, But Four

For the first time since anyone can remember, there is a very real possibility of four famines — in Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria and Yemen — breaking out at once, endangering more than 20 million lives. International aid officials say they are facing one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II. And they are determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. - The New York Times

'Human Fingerprint' Found on Global Extreme Weather

The fingerprint of human-caused climate change has been found on heatwaves, droughts and floods across the world, according to scientists. The discovery indicates that the impacts of global warming are already being felt by society and adds further urgency to the need to cut carbon emissions. A key factor is the fast-melting Arctic, which is now strongly linked to extreme weather across Europe, Asia and north America. - The Guardian

In California, Salt Taints Soil, Threatening Food Security

In much of California’s flat, sunny San Joaquin Valley, canals deliver the irrigation water that has made the state an agricultural powerhouse, supplying one-third of vegetables and two-thirds of fruit and nuts eaten in the United States. But along the west side of the valley, some fields are sprouting not crops, but solar panels. The water that made this agricultural land productive also spelled its doom. Because most water contains salt, irrigating adds salt to soil over time, especially in arid and semi-arid places with little rainfall and poor drainage. - Environmental Health News

Today's Top 5

Trump Repeal of Climate Rules Means Paris Target Now Out of Reach

The U.S. would have had to ramp up its climate ambitions to help slow global warming to the 2 degrees C goal, but under Trump, it's going in the opposite direction. - InsideClimate News

Republican Green Group Attempts to Temper Trump on Climate Change

President Donald Trump's outspoken doubts about climate change and his administration's efforts to roll back regulation to combat it have stirred a sleepy faction in U.S. politics: the Republican environmental movement. The various groups represent conservatives, Catholics and the younger generation of Republicans who, unlike Trump, not only recognize the science of climate change but want to see their party wrest the initiative from Democrats and lead efforts to combat global warming. - Reuters

Union Chief Strikes Back at 'Insanity' of Trump Budget Cuts to EPA

John O’Grady, head of the employees’ union at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rips into the Trump administration for its budget-slashing proposal that he says is aimed at destroying the agency that safeguards the nation’s air and water. - Yale Environment 360

India Gives Ganges, Yamuna Rivers Same Rights as a Human

Two of India's most iconic rivers, considered sacred by nearly a billion Hindus in the country, have been given the status of living entities to save them from further harm caused by widespread pollution. The High Court in the northern state of Uttarakhand ruled Monday that the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers be accorded the status of living human entities, meaning that if anyone harms or pollutes either river, the law would view it as no different from harming a person. - Associated Press

We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species. Is It Worth the Cost? 

With enough determination, money and smarts, scientists just might revive the woolly mammoth, or some version of it, by splicing genes from ancient mammoths into Asian elephant DNA. The ultimate dream is to generate a sustainable population of mammoths that can once again roam the tundra. But here’s a sad irony to ponder: What if that dream came at the expense of today’s Asian and African elephants, whose numbers are quickly dwindling because of habitat loss and poaching? - The New York Times

Today's Top 5

Bad News for the Bad-News Agency

As President Donald Trump raises the axe on U.S. medical research funding, scientists across the Atlantic are trembling, too. The World Health Organization’s cancer agency, the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), has long been a prime purveyor of bad news. Now, with big business blasting it as fake news and Republicans in total control, U.S. funding crucial for IARC’s work is under threat. - Politico

Climate Change Financing Dropped From G20 Draft Statement

Opposition from the United States, Saudi Arabia and others has forced Germany to drop a reference to financing programs to combat climate change from the draft communique at a G20 finance and central bankers meeting. - Reuters

Green Energy In a Coal State: The Struggle to Bring Solar to West Virginia

Local entrepreneurs want to replace disappearing coal jobs with employment in solar – but that’s a tough move in a state that lacks the solar-friendly regulations of places like California. - The Guardian

As Drought Sweeps Kenya, Herders Invade Farms and Old Wounds Are Opened

Thousands of herders are fleeing their traditional grazing lands as a biting drought engulfs east Africa, and their animals have swept through farms and conservation areas. Many of the herders have committed acts of shocking violence, and dozens of families have been displaced. - The Guardian

Grassland Lab Species Loss Raises Alarm

Scientists in California who turned a patch of natural grassland into a laboratory have established a subtle link between flowering times and the mix of species in an ecosystem – indicating that global warming could change planetary biology and disrupt ecosystems in hitherto unsuspected ways. - Climate News Network

Today's Top 5

Dark Future Seen For Environment As Trump's EPA Begins Radical Shakeup

America’s environmental laws are undergoing the most radical shakeup since the 1970s. Rules around climate change, water pollution and vehicle fuel standards are all in the process of being redrawn. Coal, oil and gas companies are being ushered onto public land and waters. Areas of scientific research are set to be sidelined. - The Guardian

Struggling With Japan's Nuclear Waste, Six Years After Fukushima Disaster

Six years after the largest nuclear disaster in a quarter-century, Japanese officials have still not solved a basic problem: what to do with an ever-growing pile of radioactive waste. Each form of waste at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where three reactors melted down after an earthquake and a tsunami on March 11, 2011, presents its own challenges. - The New York Times

Shell CEO Warns of Disappearing Public Patience On Carbon Emissions

Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden offered a fretful and grim assessment Thursday of a dangerous disconnect between his industry and the public. "I do think trust has been eroded to the point where it starts to become a serious issue for our long term future," he said at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. Van Beurden touted the company's work on low-carbon energy and push for carbon taxes, but emphasized that the transition of the global energy system that's now dominated by fossil fuels is a decades-long endeavor, while the public's in a different place. "Societal acceptance of the energy system as we have it is just disappearing," he said, adding Shell needs an "almost activist" approach itself on engaging with the public and policymakers on energy transition. - Axios

The US Has One Inspector For Each 5,000 Miles of Pipeline

There are 2.7 million miles of pipeline snaked across the US. Some of the pipes carry hazardous chemicals, others carry crude oil, and still others carry highly pressurized natural gas. And when it comes to safety, all of them are under the care of 528 government inspectors. That’s more than 5,000 miles of pipeline or more than twice the length of the United States, per inspector. - Quartz

EPA's Environmental Justice Head Resigns After 24 Years. He Wants To Explain Why.

The resignation of Mustafa Ali comes as the Trump administration considers layoffs and budget cuts at the EPA that, if enacted, would eliminate the environmental justice budget and cut funding to grants for pollution cleanup. Ali, a founder of the program in 1992 who has worked there since, told Mother Jones he resigned because he was concerned the administration's proposals to roll back its environmental justice work would disproportionately affect vulnerable communities. "That is something that I could not be a part of," Ali says. - Mother Jones

Today's Top 5

Study: Climate Change May Hurt Nation's Agricultural Productivity

The agriculture sector needs to ramp up its response to climate change, especially in the Midwest, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers at the University of Maryland used climate projections and historical trends in agricultural productivity to predict how changes in temperature and rainfall will impact food production. - Iowa Public Radio

UN Experts Denounce 'Myth' That Pesticides Necessary to Feed the World

The idea that pesticides are essential to feed a fast-growing global population is a myth, according to UN food and pollution experts. A new report, being presented to the UN human rights council on Wednesday, is severely critical of the global corporations that manufacture pesticides, accusing them of the “systematic denial of harms”, “aggressive, unethical marketing tactics” and heavy lobbying of governments which has “obstructed reforms and paralyzed global pesticide restrictions." - The Guardian

The White House Was On the Same Page As Exxon Mobile on Monday. Literally.

Some might even call it a mind meld. In a news release, ExxonMobil highlighted the oil giant’s plan to spend $20 billion over 10 years, build 11 chemical and natural-gas projects and create 45,000 jobs. Within the same hour, the White House put out its own statement claiming credit for the expansion and adding, “The spirit of optimism sweeping the country is already boosting job growth, and it is only the beginning.” One full paragraph appeared nearly identically word for word in each release. Another sentence appeared almost verbatim elsewhere. - Washington Post

Grim State of Environment Report Warns Climate Impacts Could be Irreversible

To be released on Tuesday by Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg, the five-yearly dossier says Australia lacks overarching national policies that establish "a clear vision" for protecting and managing the environment, including climate change, between now and 2050. A summary provided to Fairfax Media warns of increasing pressures from coal mining, the coal-seam gas industry, habitat degradation, land-use change and invasive species. - Sydney Morning Herald

Pipeline Owner Reaches Milestone In Iowa: 28 Spills Since 2000

The company whose pipeline dumped more than 46,000 gallons of diesel on northern Iowa farmland in January has had more spills than any other pipeline operator in the state over the past 16 years, according to a Des Moines Register analysis. Magellan Midstream Partners pipelines leaked 27 times in Iowa between 2000 and 2016, spewing tens of thousands of gallons of hazardous products, according to Iowa Department of Natural Resources data. Magellan's spills are nearly double the 14 of Enterprise Products Offering, the second most frequent offender. - USA Today

Today's Top 5

White House Proposes Steep Budget Cuts To Leading Climate Change Agency

The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post. The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas. - Washington Post

Just Racist: EPA Cuts Will Hit Minority Communities Hardest

Planned cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency are set to fall heaviest upon communities of color across the US that already suffer disproportionately from toxic pollution, green groups have warned. Donald Trump’s administration is proposing a 25% reduction in the EPA’s $8.1bn budget, eliminating nearly 3,000 jobs and several programs including the agency’s environmental justice office. Funding for the cleanup of lead, marine pollution, tribal lands and the Great Lakes region faces severe cuts, while climate initiatives are earmarked for a 70% budget reduction. - The Guardian

EPA To Pull Back On Fuel-Efficiency Standards For Autos In Future Years

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce its intent to withdraw final determination on strict fuel-efficiency standards for future cars and light trucks, the latest signal by the Trump administration that it is charting a new course on climate change. Two associations representing the world’s biggest automakers last week asked EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to reconsider the standards for model years 2022 to 2025, which would require the nation’s car and light-truck fleet to average 54.5 miles per gallon by the end of that period. - Washington Post

Appeals Court Rules for Oil Companies, Against Levee Authority, In Louisiana Wetlands Case

A federal appeals court refused Friday (March 3) to revive the east bank levee authority's controversial lawsuit charging oil and gas companies with threatening hurricane levees by digging exploration and production canals through Louisiana's coastal wetlands. It was the latest setback to the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East's four-year effort to make the companies pay for environmental damage inflicted decades ago. - New Orleans Times Picayune

Air Pollution Leads To More Drug Resistant Bacteria

Black carbon found in air pollution can increase the resistance of bacteria that cause respiratory disease, research has found. The discover could lead to a greater understanding of the effects of air pollution on human health, according to the lead scientist of the University of Leicester study. - Press Association