A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
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By Amee Vanderpool. In the summer of 2021, the US House of Representatives passed the PFAS Action Act of 2021, which was a bipartisan piece of legislation that would have regulated toxic chemicals found in drinking water, as well as classifying those toxic chemicals as “hazardous substances,” in order to spark federal cleanup standards. Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are also known as “forever chemicals,” a group of chemicals used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water. PFAS co...
By Jonathan Levy Cooks love their gadgets, from countertop slow cookers to instant-read thermometers. Now, there's increasing interest in magnetic induction cooktops – surfaces that cook much faster than conventional stoves, without igniting a flame or heating an electric coil. Some of this attention is overdue: Induction has long been popular in Europe and Asia, and it is more energy-efficient than standard stoves. But recent studies have also raised concerns about indoor air emissions from g...
The world now has eight billion people, according to the United Nations. The milestone, reached late this year, comes at a time when climate change is increasingly disrupting life on Earth as we know it. Wildfires and droughts continue to rage in the American West. Floods are destroying towns. Heatwaves are making summers deadly. And the greenhouse gas emissions that worsen these disasters are increasing. Looking at the past year, hope springs eternal. We hope. Scientists are creating new ways for us to coexist with nature, from hacking the...
By: Linnea Harris. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and your calendar is probably filling up with holiday parties and festive gatherings. While a time for enjoying food and sharing gifts with loved ones, the holidays are also a disproportionately wasteful time; between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it’s estimated that Americans produce 25% more waste than any other time of the year. No matter what the occasion, here’s how to throw a holiday party that’s both festive and better for the planet. Get Cooking Instead of buying a plasticiz...
Earlier this week, Canada’s auditor general reported that Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), the federal department responsible for coordinating emergency management services to First Nations, failed to provide Indigenous communities with adequate resources to deal with climate disasters. According to the report, it’s likely that ISC is incurring “significant costs” to respond to climate emergencies that could have been mitigated or avoided. The report details how various shortcomings in the department have led to underfunding and underst...
By Chris Aadland. Underscore News and ICT Tribal nations and Native people are celebrating a decision made Thursday by federal regulators approving a plan for the largest dam removal plan in the country’s history. The move is considered a crucial step in saving dwindling salmon populations but also as a sign the federal government is serious about respecting treaty rights and Indigenous culture. “It’s a historic change and it’s really exciting,” said Amy Bowers Cordalis, a Yurok tribal citizen, attorney for the tribe and co-founder of a nonp...
US President Biden spoke at the 27th U.N. Climate Conference (COP27) where he affirmed his commitment to tackling the climate emergency through investments in clean energy investments, climate adaptation, and nature based solutions. President Biden reiterated the need to urgently transition away from fossil fuels and committed to meeting 2030 emissions targets, which must be realized through immediate and equitable administrative actions at home. In response, Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen issued the following statement: “We applaud t...
By Timothy Preso. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Pikuni Traditionalist Association (PTA), representing the cultural and religious interests of members of the Blackfeet Nation, appealed a recent court ruling that reinstated a federal oil and gas lease in the Blackfeet spiritual homeland — the Badger-Two Medicine region. The appeal, filed in Washington, D.C., seeks to protect the Badger-Two Medicine from the threat posed by an oil and gas lease that was illegally issued in the 1980s to a Louisiana-based company. The company, Solenex LLC, see...
By: Paige Bennett. A tense presidential election runoff in Brazil has led to a victory for left-wing candidate and former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva against the far-right incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro. But as of Monday, October 31, Bolsonaro has not conceded. Lula is scheduled to be inaugurated on January 1, 2023. In the initial election, Lula earned 48.4% of votes, and Bolsonaro received 43.2%. With neither party taking more than 50%, the election went into a runoff scheduled for October 30. In the runoff election, Lula won...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Monday, October 3, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for the case Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, deliberating what waterways and wetlands are protected under the Clean Water Act. The Supreme Court’s decision to hear Sackett v. EPA is another troubling sign that the new supermajority in the nation’s highest court is pursuing a deregulatory path. Based on an extraordinarily narrow reading of the law, the Sacketts and their industry allies asked the Court to strip protections from 45 milli...
By Avi Asher-Schapiro. LOS ANGELES, Sept 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The carbon footprint of the U.S. bitcoin industry is rising at breakneck speed, a report from environmental groups found on Friday, now rivaling the emissions of 6 million cars each year. The groups urged U.S. states to consider bans on new mining operations to help protect the planet. Emissions from the energy-hungry sector could undermine goals to tackle climate change, said Jeremy Fisher, an energy analyst with the non-profit Sierra Club and a co-author of the...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – On September 20th, Earthjustice, on behalf of environmental and health advocacy groups, sent a 60-day Notice of Intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the agency’s inaction to regulate harmful carcinogenic air emissions from ethylene oxide facilities as the law required. The Clean Air Act directs the EPA to review its ethylene oxide standards every eight years but the agency has repeatedly missed this deadline; first in 2014 and again in April 2022. The EPA admits the chemical is 60 times more tox...
More than 500 square miles large and ringed by Rocky Mountains, the decommissioned nuclear sit among production site is considered one of the most contaminated places in North America. Here, wildlife, vision quest sites and burial grounds lie side-by-side with signs reading “warning hazardous area” and towering nuclear reactors, some of which date back to the second world war. From Gable Mountain where young men would fast and pray to Locke Island, where an Indigenous village once stood. Then there’s the towering White Bluffs, where the Yakim...
By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes. Reprinted with permission from EcoWatch. Environmental organizations Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic have conducted one of the most ambitious voluntary research projects to examine the size of the plastic waste problem in the UK. The results of The Big Plastic Count show that UK households dispose of close to an estimated 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging every year, while recycling only 12 percent of single-use packaging, reported The Independent. Most of the plastic waste came from packaging for food and...
By Olivia Rosane. The Supreme Court has restricted the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fight the climate crisis. In a 6 to 3 ruling on Thursday, the nation’s highest court ruled that the Clean Air Agency does not empower the EPA to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants without prior Congressional approval. Yet the decision comes on the heels of a global sweep of early heat waves that have made the necessity of climate action ever more apparent. “Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not hav...
By: Olivia Rosane. A federal court ruled Friday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must reconsider whether glyphosate – the active ingredient in Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller – poses a health risk to humans and endangered species. Environmental groups had challenged the Trump administration’s 2020 interim registration for the chemical, which concluded that it did not cause cancer in humans or harm wildlife. “Today’s decision gives voice to those who suffer from glyphosate’s cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Center for Food S...
By Paige Bennett. Reprinted with permission from EcoWatch. The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program recommends that consumers avoid eating any lobster or snow crab caught in the U.S. and Canada, as commercial fishing has put the endangered North Atlantic right whales at further risk of extinction. There are about 70 reproductively active females left of the species, as reported by NRDC, and fewer than 340 North Atlantic right whales exist. From 2015 to 2019, there was an average decline of 31 deaths and critical injuries per year. T...
By Olivia Rosane. Fifty years ago, the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act with the goal of ensuring “fishable, swimmable” water across the U.S. by 1983. Now, a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) finds the country has fallen far short of that goal. In fact, about half of the nation’s lakes and rivers are too polluted for swimming, fishing or drinking. “The Clean Water Act should be celebrated on its 50th birthday for making America’s waterways significantly cleaner,” EIP Executive Director Eric Schaeffer said in a press rel...
President Biden signed an executive order directing the Justice Department, Treasury and other agencies to study the legal, economic, and environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin mining on March 9. Reports are due in 180-days. New York is currently home to the most crypto mining in the country at 20%, where advocates have been pushing the Governor for months to impose a moratorium until the state can properly assess the environmental impact. Greenidge Generation in Dresden, NY is the test case for the rapidly growing Bitcoin...
An extraordinary number of people in the U.S. of adult age by 2015 were exposed to dangerous lead levels when they were children, new research has found. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimated that about 170 million adults in the U.S. have been exposed to over 5 micrograms per deciliter, which is over the CDC’s blood lead reference level of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter. Americans born before 1996 could be at risk of lead-related health problems in the future, including faster brain a...
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to consider an appeal by Energy Transfer, the Dallas-based operator of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), over a 2020 ruling requiring an environmental review of the oil pipeline, The Guardian reported. The lawsuit was brought by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who — along with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the Yankton Sioux Tribe — has opposed the pipeline for years. The decision by the Supreme Court means that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must continue to conduct the env...
By Cristen Hemingway Jaynes. Pharmaceutical drugs have polluted the world’s rivers and pose “a global threat to environmental and human health,” according to a new study by the University of York. The most extensive global study to date found that among the most polluted rivers were those in Bolivia, Pakistan and Ethiopia, while rivers in the Amazon rainforest, Iceland and Norway were those with the least amounts of drug pollution, BBC News reported. The study, “Pharmaceutical pollution of the world’s rivers,” in which 127 researchers...
By Olivia Rosane. The National Butterfly Center in Texas that stood up to former President Donald Trump’s border wall is now shuttering indefinitely because of harassment from right-wing conspiracy theorists. The 100-acre nature preserve in Mission, Texas has been in an ongoing legal battle with the former Trump administration and non-profit We Build a Wall in order to prevent wall construction on its doorstep, as HuffPost reported. Because of this, it has been targeted by right-wing groups that have falsely accused the center of being i...
By Olivia Rosane. The world’s oceans reached record temperatures in 2021, despite a La Niña event that typically has a cooling influence. The new record was announced in a study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences Tuesday. This is the sixth year in a row that the ocean heat record has been broken, The Guardian reported. “The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change,” study co-author and National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Kevin...
Although President Biden’s Build Back Better package is in limbo, the president is incorporating climate action and environmental justice into government decision-making. Critics say he should be doing more. President Joe Biden’s first year in office, which began with the launch of the most ambitious climate action plan of any administration, ended with its derailment due to harsh political reality in late December. Up against a Senate that gives outsized power to members from sparsely populated states such as West Virginia, who are allied wit...
