Environmental Glance
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Thursday he's asking President Trump to shrink “a handful” of national monuments that previous presidents designated to protect land and water.
In a formal report he’s sending to Trump on Thursday, Zinke will not ask the president to eliminate any of the 27 protected areas that were under review since an April executive order, he told The Associated Press.
He did not specify the changes he is recommending in the AP interview. But he said any areas removed from national monuments would remain under federal control and public access would either stay the same or improve.
Interior recommends Trump shrink national monuments
Thawing Alaska permafrost alarms scientists
As the planet's temperatures continue what appears to be a steady march upward, scientists in northern Alaska are watching the ground beneath them melt away.
Now, a group of researchers is taking core samples of the ground to better understand what the effects of this process could be, according to The New York Times.
Much of the permafrost that blankets Alaska and other similarly cold northern regions of the planet is slowly thawing, changing the landscape and affecting the ecosystem in a number of ways.
Monsanto attempts takedown of agency linking its weedkiller to cancer
Monsanto is on the attack.
In its fight to keep its blockbuster weedkiller glyphosate on the European market, the American agrichemical giant has spent the last six months fighting accusations that it suppressed negative findings or even ghostwrote key research about whether the herbicide causes cancer.
Now the company is opening a new front with evidence it says debunks the only appraisal by a major world body to label glyphosate as carcinogenic.
Trump administration halts research on mountaintop removal coal mining
The Trump administration has ordered researchers to stop work on an independent evaluation of potential health effects from mountaintop removal coal mining.
The Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) last year, under then-President Barack Obama, had commissioned the research into the possible connections between certain health risks and living near current or former surface mining sites in Appalachia.
But the agency sent a letter Friday to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which it had contracted to do the independent review, asking it to stop its work immediately.
TVNL Comment: This is an outrage. People are dying so that others can profit. Donald Trump is an evil influence on this country and the world.
Greenpeace activists arrested after Barents Sea protest
Activists from the environmental group Greenpeace said they were able to disrupt operations at a Statoil rig drilling for oil in the Barents Sea.
A handful of Greenpeace activists left the Arctic Sunrise protest vessel on inflatable boats and kayaks to protest against drilling above the Arctic Circle. The group targeted a Statoil operation at its Korpfjell well, which the environmental group said was the northernmost drilling target to date.
The activists halted the operation of the rig, and after several hours of demanding an end to the drilling in the Arctic, the Norwegian Coast Guard interfered with the peaceful protest, arresting the Arctic Sunrise ship, the activists and crew members," the advocacy group said in a statement.
EPA to rewrite toxic waste limits for power plants
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to rewrite limits on toxic waste from power plants, the agency said in a court filing this week.
Agency officials in April delayed compliance deadlines for the rule, a 2015 directive from the Obama administration that set limits on toxic water pollution from certain coal-fired power plants.
The agency said this week that it would rewrite the limits on pollution from bottom ash, scrubbers and coal gasification plants, signaling a new deregulatory push for the fossil fuel sector.
Emergency teams battle to contain oil spill off Kuwait
Emergency workers battled on Sunday to contain an oil spill near a joint Kuwaiti-Saudi oilfield in the Gulf.
No official reports were available on the source or size of the leak in the waters off Kuwait's southern coast, near the joint Kuwaiti-Saudi offshore Al-Khafji oilfield.
"Emergency oil teams are still struggling to put an oil spill near Kuwait's southern Ras Al-Zour area under control," said Kuwait Petroleum Corporation spokesman Talal al-Khaled in a statement carried by the official KUNA news agency.
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