Oil prices surged past $100 a barrel this week as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran threatens global energy supplies and the broader economy. Iranian officials say no oil will be allowed to leave the Middle East until the bombardment stops, raising fears of disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which about 20% of the world’s oil and gas flows. This comes as Israel has struck…
Source
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) repealed Biden-era regulations that forced power plants to cut harmful pollutants including brain-damaging mercury and particulate matter, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced on Friday. At an event at the Mill Creek Power Plant in Kentucky, the agency announced the repeal of a 2024 rule known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power…
Source
As a rare winter storm bore down on South Carolina, bringing conditions that historically paralyze the state for days, local officials in a rural county quietly pushed through a massive $2.4 billion data center without most residents knowing it was even on the table. “There was a public meeting, which most were unaware of,” Jessie Chandler, a resident of rural Marion County, told Capital B…
Source
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now only counting costs to businesses when considering regulation on key pollutants, internal documents show, rather than considering human lives saved by such caps. For the first time in decades of the practice, The New York Times reports, the EPA will effectively set the cost of a human life at $0 when doing cost-benefit analysis for fine…
Source
SAN JACINTO RIVER, Texas — Over the past 30 years, federal and state agencies in Texas have allowed hundreds of oil and chemical barges to amass in a once-tranquil section of the San Jacinto River, just east of Houston. Only about 100 barges were on the six-mile stretch of water in 1990, according to a Public Health Watch analysis of archival satellite imagery. Today, at least 600 crowd the…
Source
Since 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required large industrial facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The data, which the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has been collecting since 2011, is essential in efforts to reduce emissions and provides vital information to the public about climate pollution from the largest U.S. polluters. However, the Trump EPA has…
Source