Getting Interior to Respond to Your FOIA Requests Just Got a Lot Harder
Shawn Thew—Pool/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. In his latest attempt to make the Interior Department’s activities less transparent, Ryan Zinke shifted responsibility for handling public records requests from a career employee to a political appointee with a long history working for conservative megadonors Charles and David Koch. The order, signed…
This Year’s UN Climate Talks—Brought to You by Coal?
Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. KATOWICE, POLAND—There’s a specter hanging over the COP24 climate talks, that happened last week in the small city of Katowice, Poland. It’s not the goalpost-moving report that the…
This Cross-Border Town Has Faced Toxic Pollution for Years. Now Its Residents Are Fighting Back.
Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last September, Paloma Aguirre spent the day collecting bits of trash and tires in the Tijuana River Valley, which straddles the US-Mexico border south of San…
Trump Uses Paris Protests as an Opportunity to Blast International Climate Agreement
Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. French police clashed with “yellow vest” protesters in Paris on Saturday as country-wide demonstrations of President Emanuel Macron’s leadership and economic policies continued for the fourth consecutive weekend. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country, and nearly1,000 protesters…
Climate Policy That Ignores Class Doesn’t Work
France’s gas tax was was far less ambitious. Revenues from the levy, which would have raised prices by 24 cents a gallon on diesel and 12 cents a gallon on unleaded gas, were intended to pay down the country’s growing budget deficit. “A carbon tax should not be the leading force in any initiative.” “A…
This is Why Democrats Are Letting a Senator From Coal Country Oversee the Energy Industry
Ernesto Hernandez Fonte/US Navy via Getty Images Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. In a strange twist of fate, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who once fired a shotgun at a climate bill, is expecting to be promoted to a leadership position in a key Senate committee that conducts environmental oversight. Progressive environmental groups have pressured Minority…