The bubonic plague is back, this time with three confirmed cases in New Mexico. The state is an ideal habitat for the disease, due to its “buffet of possible rodent hosts.” 

A paper in Science concluded climate disruption will impoverish Southern, Central, and Mid-Atlantic America, and enrich the Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes, and New England. "If we continue on the current path, our analysis indicates it may result in the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the country's history," the study’s lead author told Reuters. For every degree of warming, a region will lose roughly 1.2% of its GDP. 

Runaways from salmon hatcheries are competing with wild salmon for oxygen. 

A heat wave killed so many dairy cows in California’s Central Valley that the local rendering plant stopped picking up carcasses. The state’s California Dairy Quality Assurance Program issued an emergency advisory for dealing with “extensively decomposed deadstock.” 

The EPA cannot delay implementing an Obama-era rule requiring oil and gas companies to search for and fix methane leaks in their equipment, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday. Previously, a similar rule narrowly survived an attempt at repeal in the Senate. 

Tesla’s first mid-priced electric car, the Model 3, will begin rolling off the assembly line this week, completing another stage of Elon Musk’s Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan. The much-hyped Model 3 will be priced around $35,000, versus the $70,000+ cost of earlier models, and its success (or lack thereof) is expected to make or break the company.

Volvo announced that all the new car models it introduces from 2019 onward will be either hybrids or powered solely by batteries. The company’s existing car models will still have combustion engines, but it plans to phase out cars powered solely by gasoline or diesel by 2024. While the strategy has risks, Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson, told the New York Times, “a much bigger risk would be to stick with internal combustion engines.” A day later, France announced that the country intends to end the sale of gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040. 

The EPA has paid more than twice as much on a personal security detail for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt than it did for Pruitt’s predecessors, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy. Several EPA agents who previously investigated and prosecuted environmental crimes have been reassigned to serve as Pruitt’s 24/7 bodyguards.

TigerSwan, the private security company hired by Energy Transfer Partners to guard the Dakota Access Pipeline, announced that it is no longer operating in North Dakota. Last week, North Dakota's Private Investigative and Security Board asked a state judge to block TigerSwan from patrolling the pipeline, and to fine the company for operating without a license. The Board knew TigerSwan was unlicensed last September, but the company has come under particular criticism since a trove of leaked documents revealed that the firm was using surveillance technology and tactics developed for counterterrorism on Standing Rock protesters. 

A trail camera photographed a new pack of wolf pups in Northern California. The pups are the grandbabies of the legendary OR7, who in 2011 became the first known wild wolf to set foot in California after the species was declared extinct in the 1920s. Another OR7 descendent was recently the first confirmed wild wolf seen in Nevada in almost 100 years. 

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