Nobody wants to see an accident involving flammable, corrosive or radioactive material. But understanding the rules put in place to prevent these accidents isn’t easy.
Power plants contribute a quarter of the United States’ climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
Howard C via Getty images
Fossil fuel power plants can avoid most emissions by capturing carbon dioxide and pumping it underground. But to be a climate solution, that carbon has to stay stored for thousands of years.
Poor communities of color have spent decades battling US industrial and agricultural pollution. A new EPA office is designed to support their struggle, but history suggests reason for caution.
HFCs keep refrigerators cool, but their leaks are warming the planet.
Jed Share/Kaoru Share via Getty Images
Are health risks from air pollution less serious than we think? Mainstream scientists call this a fringe view, but it’s getting high-level attention at the Environmental Protection Agency.
A Kosovo policeman directs cars in Pristina after the government banned traffic in response to extremely high fine particle pollution levels, Jan. 31, 2018.
AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu
The head of the World Health Organization calls air pollution ‘the new tobacco’ because it causes millions of preventable deaths yearly. Fine particle pollution is especially deadly.
Morning smog in New Delhi, India.
AP Photo/Manish Swarup
Air pollution could be the next battleground between California and the Trump administration, which is reviewing the Golden State’s special legal authority to regulate tailpipe emissions.
Customers line up to buy gasoline in San Jose, California, on March 15, 1974, during an Arab oil embargo. The crisis spurred enactment of the first U.S. vehicle fuel economy standards.
AP
Since the federal government started setting fuel economy standards, US-built cars have doubled their fuel efficiency, saving money for consumers and reducing pollution.
Fracking has led to an increase in truck traffic, one of the reasons for worsening trends on air quality in areas with oil and gas drilling.
AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
Cleaning up and reusing contaminated sites, known as brownfields, can create jobs and promote economic growth. But it also can drive gentrification that prices out low-income residents.
Fortunately, it’s not quite so gloomy.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Economic forces – alongside a moral imperative – are driving cities, states and companies to make changes to forestall climate change, regardless of the whims of the White House.
Cleanup at the GE Housatonic Superfund site in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2007. Years of PCB and industrial chemical use at GE’s Pittsfield facility and improper disposal led to extensive contamination around the town and down the entire length of the Housatonic River.
USACE/Flickr
President Trump’s budget would cut funding for Superfund, which cleans up the nation’s most toxic sites, by nearly one-third. An economist explains how Superfund cleanups benefit local communities.
The Flint water crisis was one of the few cases of environment-related social injustices that reached national attention in recent years.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Addressing social and health inequalities from pollution is no longer a priority at the EPA. What did the Office of Environmental Justice do and what will happen if it’s shut down?
Activists, federal workers and union representatives rallied for environmental protection policies at the EPA.
American Federation of Government Employees
The EPA served as a conduit between the federal government and at-risk communities. Communications scholars look at how environmental justice issues could be set back in scaled-down EPA.
The EPA seemed to think the benefits so outweighed the costs that the latter weren’t worth considering.
Cost benefit via www.shutterstock.com
Greenhouse emissions from the aviation industry are still largely unregulated. The prospect of regulations for US flights sounds like progress, but it won’t happen without an elusive international consensus.
Where do clean water rules begin and end?
Mr.TinDC
The EPA is seeking to clarify the reach of the landmark Clean Water Act to cover tributaries, yet people in agriculture and homeowners worry it will lead to onerous permitting.
Distinguished Professor of Practice, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration, and Director of the Regulatory Studies Center, George Washington University