The EPA wants to allow oil and gas drillers to pump their wastewater directly into rivers and streams used for drinking water. 

Reservoirs on the Colorado River are under 47 percent of their capacity, a new low for the river system that provides drinking water to 40 million people.

At least 35 people in the Florida Panhandle die in Hurricane Michael, and more than 155,000 are without power. At Tyndall Air Force Base, up to 22 F-22 Raptors—each of which cost $330 million—may have been destroyed. 

West Virginia’s Pinnacle Mine closes, idling 400 workers.  

The White House will not pursue Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to bail out the coal and nuclear industries in the name of “national security.”

Scottish Power becomes the first major UK energy provider to generate 100 percent of its electricity from wind.

Three Nebraska farmers plead guilty to fraudulently marketing nonorganic corn and soybeans as certified organic, netting themselves more than $10 million over seven years.  

The EPA eliminates its Office of the Science Advisor, and acting administrator Andrew Wheeler axes a scientific panel that advises the agency on clean air issues. 

Karen Budd-Falen, a Wyoming attorney who has opposed environmental protections for federal lands for decades, is the Interior Department’s new deputy solicitor.

Climate change will disrupt the global supply of beer. 

Donald Trump rejects the conclusions of the vast majority of scientists on climate change because, he says, he has “a natural instinct for science.” 

Between 1977 and 2013, a Puerto Rican rainforest suffers a 60-fold loss of insects and other invertebrates. Insect populations are also crashing in Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. 

Switzerland’s glaciers have lost a fifth of their ice over the last decade. 

Nine climbers—five South Koreans and four Nepalis—die when a violent wind sweeps them from their campsite at the base of Gurja Himal. The dead include famed Korean climber Kim Chang-ho, the first climber to summit all of the highest Himalayan peaks without oxygen. 

Blake Fischer, Idaho’s fish and game commissioner, resigns after photos circulate on social media of him posing with a family of baboons that he shot on an African hunting trip.

The Interior Department’s inspector general finds that Secretary Ryan Zinke improperly used $25,000 of taxpayer money on a security detail while he and his wife went on vacation in Turkey.

It will take mammals from 3 million to 7 million years to evolve new species to replace the ones that humans have eradicated.

For the third year in a row, the Yurok Tribe of Northern California cancels its commercial salmon season due to low numbers of chinook in the Klamath River. 

The Chinese city of Chengdu plans to launch an "artificial moon" to illuminate the city at night. The illumination satellite would be eight times as bright as the real moon.