Environmental Glance
A House panel passed four GOP-backed bills Thursday to amend the Endangered Species Act (ESA), making compliance easier for industries, states and landowners.
The Natural Resources Committee’s bills would give priority to science submitted by state and local governments when federal officials decide whether to protect species, require the Interior Department to consider conservation actions that could happen in the future when making ESA decisions and let Interior prioritize or discharge petitions for species protections under some circumstances.
Taken as a whole, the bills would represent the biggest changes to the ESA in decades.
Republicans on the panel, led by Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), said the changes would make the ESA work better for industry and landowners, as well as the imperiled species themselves.
More than 1.5 million people were ordered to evacuate their homes along the U.S. southeast coast as Hurricane Florence, the most powerful to menace the Carolinas in nearly three decades, barreled closer on Tuesday.
Puerto Rico's governor raised the island's official death toll from Hurricane Maria from 64 to 2,975 on Tuesday after an independent study found that the number of people who succumbed in the desperate, sweltering months after the storm had been severely undercounted.
Puerto Rico has conceded that Hurricane Maria killed more than 1,400 people on the island last year and not just the 64 in the official death toll.
The adoption of clean energies to power electric grids won't be sufficient to meet the Paris climate targets established by the United Nations.
