Today's Top Posts

EPA Chief Doubts Consensus View On Climate Change

Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Thursday that carbon dioxide was not a primary contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with the established scientific consensus on climate change. - New York Times

EPA Environmental Justice Official Resigns, Implores Pruitt To Protect Vulnerable Communities

Mustafa Ali, a senior adviser and assistant associate administrator at the agency, worked to alleviate the impact of air, water and industrial pollution on poverty-stricken towns and neighborhoods during nearly a quarter century with the EPA. He helped found the environmental justice office, then the environmental equity office, in 1992, during the presidency of President George H.W. Bush. Ali leaves the EPA as Pruitt, who took office Feb. 17, prepares to implement deep cuts in the agency's budget and staff. An internal memo obtained by multiple news outlets on March 1 called for a complete dismantling of the office of environmental justice and elimination of a number of grant programs that address low-income and minority communities. A story in the Oregonian reported that funding for the office would decrease 78 percent, from $6.7 million to $1.5 million. - InsideClimate News

Great Barrier Reef Bleached For Unprecedented Second Year Running

A repeat of mass bleaching compounds fears for the survival of already-stressed coral, whose recovery since 2016 has been challenged by stubbornly high sea surface temperatures, including through winter. - The Guardian

Six Years After Fukushima, Woman and Children Still Suffer Most

The Japanese government is trying to get back to normality after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, but the crisis is far from over for women and children, says Greenpeace. Thousands of mothers have sued the authorities. - Deutsche Welle

Thousands Forced To Move As Drought Hits Somali Pastoralists Hard

Puntland is on the edge of famine, according to aid agencies working in this semi-autonomous state in Somalia's arid north. Between 20,000 and 27,000 nomadic pastoralists have been forced to travel hundreds of miles to reach coastal regions of Puntland where there was a flash of rain in December last year. There has been no rain since. The displacement has forced families to separate, leaving women, children and the elderly to find help in makeshift displacement camps on the edges of towns where water-borne diseases are spreading and living conditions are dire. The Horn of Africa is in the midst of the harshest and most prolonged drought in decades. - Al Jazeera

Today's Top 5 Trending: Honduras Activists, Coal Exec Sentenced, Antarctic Ice Sheet Predictions, Coral Die-Offs, Flint Lawsuit

Why Is Honduras the World's Deadliest Country for Environmental Activists? 

My story today on the environmental as an important battleground for human rights, and why Honduras has become so dangerous for indigenous and environmental activists. - The Guardian

Coal Exec Gets Maximum Sentence in West Virginia Mining Disaster

Former Massey Energy Co. CEO Don Blankenship, who rose from humble beginnings in Mingo County to become the wealthy and powerful chief executive of one of the region’s largest coal producers, will serve one year in prison and pay a $250,000 fine for a mine safety criminal conspiracy, a judge decided Wednesday. - Charleston Gazette

Antarctica in the Year 2500

A new scientific study predicts varying scenarios in which climate change could cause the West Antarctic ice sheet to melt in the coming decades and centuries. If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced significantly, seas around the world could rise to potentially catastrophic levels before 2100. This graphic shows what could happen by 2500. - Los Angeles Times

Scientists Blame El Nino, Warming for 'Gruesome' Coral Death

Kiritimati is where El Nino, along with global warming, has done the most damage to corals in the past two years, experts said. While dramatic images of unprecedented total bleaching on Australia's Great Barrier Reef are stunning the world, thousands of miles to the east conditions are somehow even worse. - Associated Press

Michigan Claims Immunity in Flint Class Action Lawsuit

Attorneys for the state and Gov. Rick Snyder are asking a judge to dismiss one of several class action lawsuits filed on behalf of Flint residents over the city’s ongoing water contamination crisis, claiming immunity in federal court. A motion filed Monday with U.S. District Judge John Corbett O’Meara argues the federal court does not have jurisdiction to hear the case and that plaintiff claims against Snyder are “not viable.” - Detroit News

Today's Top 5 Trending: Canadian Mining Abuses, Ocean Garbage, Idaho Lead Woes, Melting Ice Caps, Clinton and Greenpeace

Guatemalan Woman's Claim Puts Focus On Canadian Firms' Conduct Abroad

For a long time, Margarita Caal did not talk about what happened that afternoon. None of the women in this tiny village high in the hills of eastern Guatemala did, not even to each other. But that day, Caal said, the men who had come to evict her from land they said belonged to a Canadian mining company also took turns raping her. After that, they dragged her from her home and set it ablaze. - New York Times

How Bad Is Ocean Garbage, Really? 

Plenty of studies have sounded alarm bells about the state of marine debris; in a paper published in February in the journal Ecology, researchers set out to determine how many of those perceived risks are real. In 83 percent of cases, the perceived dangers of ocean trash were proven true.  - The Atlantic

Like Flint, Idaho Knows Lead Poisoning

The lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., has Idaho environmental authorities taking extra steps to ensure such an event can’t happen here. Jerri Henry, who runs the drinking water program for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, saw what happened in Flint and asked herself: “Are we doing enough?” Idaho Statesman

These Ice Cap Images Show Arctic's Rapid Change

 NASA’s Earth Observatory gathered satellite imagery of two well-studied ice caps on Canada’s Ellesmere Island located north of the Arctic Circle to illustrate the ice’s disappearing act. The imagery captured in 2004 and 2015 shows a major decline in ice cover. When you add an outline of where the ice caps once stretched during a 1959 survey, the decline becomes even more notable. Freakishly warm temperatures in the Arctic this winter — which were up to 20°F above normal in some areas — will likely to hasten their decline and eventual demise. - Climate Central

Usually Calm, Clinton Loses Cool Over Greenpeace Fossil Fuel Question

A question about Clinton's record on accepting donations from the fossil fuel industry tipped the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in this year’s election over the edge. - Reuters

Today's Top 5 Trending

What Will Be the Health Impact of California's Methane Leak?

One big unknown clouds the aftermath of the Los Angeles County methane disaster: the health effects for thousands of people living nearby who were exposed to the gas while it leaked for three and a half months. - InsideClimate News

As Mozambique's Rivers Dry Up, So Does Hope of a Harvest

As southern Africa grapples with devastating drought, maize fields lie empty, the soil is like sand and water must be shared between cattle and people. - The Guardian

Zika Outbreak Could Be Omen of Global Warming Threat

The global public health emergency involving deformed babies emerged in 2015, the hottest year in the historical record, with an outbreak in Brazil of a disease transmitted by heat-loving mosquitoes. Can that be a coincidence? - New York Times

Moving Beyond the Autobahn: Germany's New Bike Highways

With the recent opening of a “bike highway,” Germany is taking the lead in Europe by starting to build a network of wide, dedicated bicycle thoroughfares designed to lure increasing numbers of commuters out of their cars and onto two wheels. - Yale Environment 360

What Scalia's Death Means for Environment and Climate

Here's what Antonin Scalia's legacy on environment reveals about the importance of the next Supreme Court on the EPA Clean Power Plan and other matters. - US News and World Report

Today's Top 5 Trending

El Niño Causing Global Food Crisis, UN Warns

Severe droughts and floods triggered by one of the strongest El Niño weather events ever recorded have left nearly 100 million people in southern Africa, Asia and Latin America facing food and water shortages and vulnerable to diseases including Zika, UN bodies, international aid agencies and governments have said. - The Guardian

Pacific Nations Desperate for Climate Action

New Zealand climate scientists have echoed desperate cries from small Pacific nations in the firing line of rising seas. Representatives from 17 Pacific states, including Kiribati President Anote Tong, have been meeting leaders and experts in Wellington this week as part of Victoria University's Pacific Climate Change Conference. - New Zealand Herald

Global Warming in Overdrive: Hottest January Ever Recorded

January was the globe's most unusually warm month ever recorded, and the past three months have been the most unusually warm three-month period on record as well, according to new findings from NASA. - Mashable

Experts Call On Feds to Re-Evaluate World's Most Heavily Used Herbicide

U.S. and European health officials need to take a fresh look at assumptions about the safety and health impacts of glyphosate herbicides, according to a group of health scientists worried about the chemicals’ explosive worldwide growth. - Environmental Health News

Six Things I Would Ask Presidential Candidates About Food and Farming 

Slow-motion ecological crises haunt the country's main farming regions, and diet-related maladies generate massive burdens on the US health care system. Over the next three frantic weeks—with five debates and more than two dozen primaries—the two major-party candidates may well emerge. If Tom Philpott were a debate moderator or a reporter on the trail, here are some questions he would ask them. - Mother Jones