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Environmental advocates cheer Delaware River Basin Commission’s ban on fracking
By: Lisa Scheid, The Reading Eagle March 1, 2021 A decision last week by the Delaware River Basin Commission would ban fracking through the Delaware River watershed, including Berks County. There had been a temporary moratorium instituted in 2010, but that was recently challenged in court. The ban is also likely to face legal challenges. Also last week, the commission voted unanimously to develop regulations for the management of drilling wastewater coming into the watershed and for water being taken out of the watershed for use in drilling operations. The proposed wastewater regulations are to be available by Sept. 30. Hydraulic fracturing, called fracking,…
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Gov. Cooper nominates Dionne Delli-Gatti, another EDF alum, to lead Department of Environmental Quality
By: Lisa Sorg, NC Policy Watch February 16, 2021 Dionne Delli-Gatti, who previously worked as for the Environmental Defense Fund, is Gov. Roy Cooper’s pick to head the NC Department of Environmental Quality, his office announced today. Delli-Gatti was EDF’s director of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs and Southeast Climate and Clean Energy Initiatives. Former DEQ Secretary Michael Regan, now on his way to becoming EPA administrator, had also worked for EDF, focusing on clean energy. According to her EDF bio, Delli-Gatti “focused on maintaining North Carolina’s position as a clean energy leader and on promoting clean energy goals in other…
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Activists See Biden’s Day One Focus on Environmental Justice as a Critical Campaign Promise Kept
By: Kristoffer Tigue, Agya K. Aning, Judy Fahys, Katie Surma – Inside Climate News January 24, 2021 Catherine Flowers remembers the moment she realized the environmental justice movement had entered a new era of acceptance and recognition. It came last spring, the environmental justice activist said, when then-candidate Joe Biden snatched the Democratic nomination from Sen. Bernie Sanders and shortly afterward announced the creation of a joint task force to shape climate change policy. “He talked about environmental justice,” said Flowers, recalling her sense of amazement. “He also mentioned ‘cancer alley.’ I’ve never heard a president mention ‘cancer alley’ before,” she said, referring…
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U.S. Disaster Costs Doubled in 2020, Reflecting Costs of Climate Change
By: Christopher Flavelle, The New York Times January 7, 2021 WASHINGTON — Hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters across the United States caused $95 billion in damage last year, according to new data, almost double the amount in 2019 and the third-highest losses since 2010. The new figures, reported Thursday morning by Munich Re, a company that provides insurance to other insurance companies, are the latest signal of the growing cost of climate change. They reflect a year marked by a record number of named Atlantic storms, as well as the largest wildfires ever…
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How the Department of Defense could help win the war on climate change
By: Eric Wolff, Politico January 4, 2020 President-elect Joe Biden has warned that climate change will pose future threats for the U.S. military as it worsens unrest in volatile regions and creates new dangers to its facilities from rising seas, powerful storms and harsh droughts. But the Defense Department also offers a silver lining on climate change for the new president: a huge appetite for clean energy sources and a massive budget to help accelerate the development of new technologies needed to curb…
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Biden Interior nominee discusses environmental injustice with tribal leaders
By: Justin Coleman, The Hill December 28, 2020 Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) discussed environmental injustice with tribal leaders on Monday in her first meeting after being named President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of the Interior. In the meeting, Haaland committed to “fully” honoring the U.S.’s treaty obligations to tribal nations and working with leaders to address the “disproportionate harm” Native Americans face “from long-running environmental injustices” and climate change. Haaland, if confirmed, would become the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. The New Mexico lawmaker told leaders at the meeting that she plans…
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The North Carolina hog industry’s answer to pollution: a $500m pipeline project
By: Michael Sainato, The Guardian December 11, 2020 Elsie Herring of Duplin county, North Carolina, lives in the house her late mother grew up in, but for the past several decades her home has been subjected to pollution from nearby industrial hog farms. “We have to deal with whether it’s safe to go outside. It’s a terrible thing to open the door and face that waste. It makes you want to throw up. It takes your breath away, it makes your eyes…
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United We Grow – Collaboration for Racial Justice & Environmental Justice
Image caption: 1982, Warren County residents protested a planned toxic landfill in their mostly African American community, considered to be the first “spark” of the national Environmental Justice Movement. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) Featured article from our latest edition of Clean Currents, Clean Water for NC’s quarterly newsletter providing updates on our program work and ways to get involved with the Environmental Justice movement in North Carolina Sign up to receive a paper copy of our Newsletter or an e-Newsletter to your inbox! From the sharp rise in unemployment to the global pandemic impacting us…
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What the Negative Price of Oil Is Telling Us
By: Neil Irwin, The New York Times April 21, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic has caused a series of mind-bending distortions across world financial markets, but Monday featured the most bizarre one yet: The benchmark price for crude oil in the United States fell to negative $37.63. That means that if you happened to be in a position to take delivery of 1,000 barrels of oil in Cushing, Okla., in the month of May — the quantity quoted in the relevant futures contract — you could have been paid a cool $37,630 to do so. (That…
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What to watch in the Appalachian Trail ACP fight
By: Niina Farah, E&E News October 7, 2019 Parties on either side of a newly picked Supreme Court case on the Atlantic Coast pipeline see starkly different consequences of justices weighing in on the legal conflict. The high court agreed last Friday to hear an appeal of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the Forest Service could not authorize the pipeline to cross hundreds of feet beneath the Appalachian Trail (Greenwire, Oct. 4). Critics of the 4th Circuit decision — the pipeline developers, a coalition of states and other industry groups — see a ruling by…
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