Today, with six days remaining in the Trump administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a final rule eliminating 3.4 million acres of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl in Washington state, Oregon, and California. This decision comes one month after the Service announced that the species should be uplisted from threatened to endangered, but the agency is too busy to provide these desperately needed protections.
HONOLULU, HAWAI’I-- Today Earthjustice filed two lawsuits in the District of Hawai’i in response to the outgoing administration’s most recent attacks on the Endangered Species Act, the law that serves as the last safety net for animals and plants facing extinction. Toward the end of last month, the Trump administration issued two new regulations that strip vital protections from federal lands and other areas that the best available science indicates are necessary for the conservation of threatened and endangered species.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, a report based on findings from NASA, NOAA, the United Kingdom’s Met Office, and Berkeley Earth was released showing that 2020’s temperatures rivaled those of the hottest year on Earth — the “super” El Niño year 2016. Last year’s temperatures breached this record without a boost from a heat-circulating El Niño event, revealing a sharp acceleration of global warming. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States experienced 22 billion-dollar disasters, the most ever, fueled by the dry conditions in the West and the above average heat across the country in 2020. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which President-elect Biden has said he will immediately rejoin after Donald Trump’s unprecedented exit from the global pact, set a more firm limit of “well below” 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Scientists have made clear that warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius could cause severe, irreversible damage to the planet, including the loss of most of the globe’s coral reefs, increasing risks of a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer and further destabilization of the polar ice sheets, locking in large-scale sea-level rise.
Today, news broke that the Port of Cork has cut ties with United States firm NextDecade and dropped the Cork LNG terminal project.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Today six environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s rule that removed Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the lower-48 states except for a small population of Mexican gray wolves in Arizona and New Mexico. The U.S.
Hoy, todos los demócratas y 10 republicanos de la Cámara de Representantes votaron a favor de someter a Donald Trump a un juicio político (“impeachment”) por segunda vez.
Washington, DC -- Today, every single House Democrat and 10 Republicans voted to impeach Donald Trump for the second time. Following last week’s attack on our democracy, the Sierra Club called for Trump’s removal from office and the expulsion of any member of Congress complicit.
Today, the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management released a proposal to undermine conservation protections in the California Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP). The proposed rollback will make the land more accessible to mining and development interests, and its reopening is widely objected to by conservation and community groups, including California Energy Commissioner Douglas. The original management plan was a result of 8 years of negotiations by over 50 stakeholders that included dozens of public meetings and thousands of comments; it carefully balances conservation, recreation, and renewable energy development on more than 10.5 million acres of California Desert public lands.
ALBANY, NY - Today, on the third day of 2021 State of the State addresses, Governor Cuomo announced several pieces of a bold vision to make New York a national renewable energy economic and jobs powerhouse and rapidly decarbonize the state’s electric sector.
WASHINGTON, DC- Days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, the National Highway and Safety Administration (NHTSA) will issue an interim final rule on Thursday to delay stiffer penalties for new cars and trucks that violate minimum fuel-economy standards. Under the Obama Administration, NHTSA had adjusted the fines for inflation–from $5.50 to $14.00—for the first time in nearly two decades, making the increase applicable to model year 2019 vehicles.