God Said to Make the Desert Bloom, and Mormons Are Using Biblical Amounts of Water to Do It
bozhdb/Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Utah is one of the driest states in the country, but you couldn’t tell by how much water its residents are using. The average American uses between 80 and 100 gallons a day. In Utah, each individual consumes approximately 248 gallons of water a day. …
Rich Nations Aren’t Following Through on Their Paris Climate Pledges
Xinhua/ZUMA This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Finance for poor countries to help them reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and deal with climate change is lagging behind the promises of rich countries, an Oxfam report finds. While taxpayer-funded finance has increased, and the private sector has stepped…
“Holy Shit. This is Dangerous:” Nixon, a Soviet Bomb Test, and a Top-Secret Climate Study
dzika_mrowka/iStock/Getty Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. This story was originally published by Undark and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. On March 23, 1971, the Soviet Union set off three Hiroshima-scale nuclear blasts deep underground in a remote region some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, ripping a massive crater in the…
House Republicans on Scott Pruitt: We’re With Him
Ron Sachs/CNP/ZUMA Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. One of the reasons Scott Pruitt has probably survived this long at the Environmental Protection Agency is that he still has key Republican support in Congress. It was clear Thursday that House Republicans were still willing to defend him, when Pruitt appeared before…
The World’s Coolest Rainbow Appeared Over California This Week
M. Jimenez Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. A flame-like streak of colorful clouds appeared in the sky over Pinnacles National Park in central California on Tuesday. A man running in the park spotted the “fire rainbow” and sent pictures to the Bay Area division of the National Weather Service, which tweeted the eye-catching…
This Might Be Scott Pruitt’s Most Destructive Move Yet
AP Photo/Susan Walsh Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters. Adopting a strategy successfully employed by the tobacco industry, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a sweeping new regulation that would restrict the kinds of scientific studies the agency can use in developing its regulations. The EPA administrator, who has come under fire from both…