The New York Times: Plastics and papers from dozens of American cities and towns are being dumped in landfills after China stopped recycling most “foreign garbage. “…as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import “foreign garbage.” Since Jan. 1 it has banned imports of various… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Environmental Law
Visualizing the Patterns of Natural Disasters in the United States
Center for Data Innovation: “The New York Times has created several data visualizations that illustrate a pattern of natural disasters occurring in the same locations in the United States. The visualizations use data from the U.S. Small Business Administration to show that areas with 20 percent of the U.S. population have accounted for 90 percent… Continue Reading
EU Proposes a Total Ban on Plastic Forks and Other Products
Bloomberg: “The European Commission proposed a total ban on some single-use plastic products and measures to drastically cut the consumption of others, in the latest push by the EU to reduce carbon emissions and marine litter threatening its seas. The ban will apply to plastic cotton buds, cutlery, plates, straws, drink stirrers and sticks for… Continue Reading
Demand for electric vehicles will rise significantly – McKinsey
“Demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is primed for the passing lane. While EVs accounted for only about 1 percent of global annual vehicle sales in 2016 and just 0.2 percent of vehicles on the road, McKinsey estimates that by 2030 EVs (including battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) could rise to almost 20 percent of… Continue Reading
21st century Noah’s ark – is this the only hope for world wildlife?
Washington Post: MAJETE WILDLIFE RESERVE, Malawi – “Two decades ago, this patch of Malawian forest was almost emptied of wildlife. The last elephants had been poached. The lions had been caught in snare traps. Other species died off as their range was diced by machete-wielding farmers. Now the animals have returned in a modern-day Noah’s… Continue Reading
New Tool Provides Conservation Report Card for Every Land Parcel in Maryland
“The Maryland Department of Natural Resources launched an innovative new tool to evaluate the conservation benefits and ecosystem “value” of every parcel of land across the state. The Parcel Evaluation Tool was designed to identify and prioritize the conservation and protection of ecologically important, sensitive, and valuable land and watershed resources in Maryland for use by the department, land… Continue Reading
Dept. of the Interior Interior moves to lift restrictions on hunting bears, wolves using bait and spotlights
AP: “The Trump administration is moving to reverse Obama-era rules barring hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in their dens. The National Park Service issued a notice Monday of its intent to amend regulations for… Continue Reading
Uncensored version of government report on impact of climate change to national parks
Reveal – Center for Investigative Reporting: “Backing away from attempts at censorship, the National Park Service on Friday released a report charting the risks to national parks from sea level rise and storms. Drafts of the report obtained earlier this year by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting showed park service officials had deleted… Continue Reading
40 percent of plastic is used just once and it’s choking our waterways
National Geographic: We Made Plastic. We Depend on It. Now We’re Drowning in It. The miracle material has made modern life possible. But more than 40 percent of it is used just once, and it’s choking our waterways. “Because plastic wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, and production really only took off around 1950,… Continue Reading
Survey – Modern indoor living can be bad for your health
“…Whether we like it or not, we are the so-called “Indoor Generation”. On average, people spend 90 percent of their time indoors, yet many of us are not aware of the risks associated with our indoor environments. A new study by YouGov for the VELUX Group asked 16,000 members of the public in 14 countries… Continue Reading
Ireland’s Open Data Portal
Ireland launches the third version of their national data portal DATA.GOV.IE – Promoting innovation and transparency through the publication of Irish Public Sector data in open, free and reusable formats. “A new and improved version of the national Open Data portal, data.gov.ie was recently launched. It is the third iteration of the portal now using… Continue Reading
Every one of America’s 57,636 wind turbines, mapped
Washington Post: “California’s Kern County, home to the city of Bakersfield, bills itself as the “Wind Capital of the West.” But a Washington Post analysis of a massive new U.S. Geological Survey database of over 57,000 commercial wind turbines suggests that the county is being overly modest: It is, in fact, the wind capital of the… Continue Reading
