Keeping tabs on the increasingly frequent closing of U.S. coal-fired electric power plants is an important way to follow developments on the larger climate change beat. The latest Reporter’s Toolbox points to several mapping databases that help make the job far easier — whether watching the industry in the United States or abroad.
"The Department of Health and Human Services decided to award a second $10.2 million, six-month contract to TeleTracking Technologies even though Congressional committees are investigating the process by which the contract was awarded and the HHS Inspector General is looking at how the company is securing the information it is gathering, an NPR Investigation has learned."
"After stalling for months, a top Trump official released a polar bear study by government scientists Friday that highlights the endangered animals’ vulnerability to climate change and the fact that proposed oil drilling in Alaska would probably encroach on their habitat, causing more stress."
"Big is beautiful in the public vote for the brown bear piling on the most pounds before hibernation in Alaska’s Katmai national park".
"Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, is decrying the political polarization that has led some Americans to question the science behind climate change and COVID-19."
"A top official at the Interior Department has delayed the release of a study that shows how oil and gas drilling in Alaska could encroach upon the territory of polar bears — which are already struggling for survival as a warming planet melts their habitat — according to documents obtained by The Washington Post."
"The EPA is touting the number of contaminated Superfund sites removed from its priority list—even as newly proposed sites and sites awaiting funding continue to pile up."
"President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden sparred over climate change and their respective records on the issue during Tuesday night's presidential debate."
"Pennsylvania’s utility regulator is siding with a Cumberland County man in his complaint against Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline."
Drainage basin may not be the sexiest of ecosystem designations, but watersheds have essential stories to tell. And environment reporters would be wise to view them as regional beats all their own, argues a long-time watershed reporter, who explains why and offers a series of tips to help journalists get the best of the basin beat.
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