Water & Oceans

"The destruction of seagrass could derail progress in reining in planet-warming emissions and cost billions in environmental damage."

"JOHANNESBURG - Alongside forests, soil and wetlands, another powerful natural carbon absorber critical to tackling climate change lies hidden beneath the ocean surface: seagrass.

The loss of these underwater meadows, also known as blue carbon, could hobble efforts to tackle climate change, both financially and environmentally, a new study has found.

So what exactly is this marine vegetation, and what else did the research find?

"China’s plans to build a massive hydro project in Tibet have sparked fears about the environmental impacts on the world’s longest and deepest canyon. It has also alarmed neighboring India, which fears that China could hold back or even weaponize river water it depends on."

"The Trump administration is set to reverse a sweeping conservation rule for public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the latest in a series of actions to reverse Biden-era environmental protections. Announced without much public fanfare in early April, the sudden reversal of the rule, which sought to put conservation on an equal playing field with industrial activities, is a blow to conservation efforts, said environmental groups."

"One of the most eye-popping late-spring heat waves on record made its way from the Pacific Coast into the center of North America this week. Numerous towns and cities have notched their hottest days and/or warmest nights ever experienced this early in the season, and some have soared to readings unheard of anytime before June."

"The Trump administration will roll back a landmark regulation on “forever chemicals” in drinking water, two weeks after EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin promised to address contamination from the toxic, man-made substances."

"The tart saltwater odor of fresh-caught shrimp hangs thick in the air, stronger even than the earthier scent of marsh and mud, at Bubba Gumbo’s and BG Seafood, a dockside restaurant and seafood market on Tybee Island, Georgia. This is one of many restaurants that dot the creeks and rivers snaking like veins through the coastal Georgia marshes. They run the gamut from the upscale and trendy to more bare-bones joints like this one, adjacent to a working dock."

"Enlarging the dam would deliver more Sacramento River water to Central Valley farmers but a tribe could lose sacred sites and endangered salmon could lose habitat in wet years."

"Democratic Senator Adam Schiff on Tuesday urged Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's acting secretary to restore a database that tracked billion-dollar U.S. disasters."

"The Interior Department said it would fast-track the permitting process for a uranium mine in Utah as part of President Trump’s plan to shorten environmental reviews and speed the construction of certain types of energy projects." "An environmental review of the project, known as Velvet-Wood, would normally take roughly a year. The government says it will complete the process in two weeks."

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture has agreed to restore climate change-related webpages to its websites after it was sued over the deletions in February. The lawsuit, brought on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group, argued that the deletions violated rules around citizens’ access to government information."