"The Energy Department on Friday afternoon announced it would “postpone” Biden’s efficiency rules for lightbulbs, clothes washers and dryers, air conditioners, air compressors and gas-powered water heaters."
A coming lithium rush in Arkansas drew the notice of journalist Katie Myers, who used a grant from the Fund for Environmental Journalism to explore whether extraction activities near once-booming energy communities could avoid the economic and environmental impacts of another boom-and-bust cycle for a largely Black region with histories of land dispossession, plantation slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Lessons learned in the latest FEJ StoryLog.
"On February 5th, EPA removed from its website the environmental justice mapping and screening tool, EJScreen, as well as several related web pages. ... Public Environmental Data Partners (PEDP) released a reconstruction of Version 2.3 of EPA’s EJScreen."
"The Dungeness crab fishery is under increasing regulation as California tries to prevent whales from getting entangled in fishing gear. Facing a truncated season and sharp limits on how many pots they can throw, crabbers wonder whether the industry can survive. Experiments with a new form of pop-up crabbing gear show promise and could offer a solution."
"President Donald Trump is moving to reverse a federal push away from plastic straws, declaring that paper straws “don’t work” and don’t last very long."
In Part 2 of a two-part EJ Academy, SEJournal’s Emilia Askari examines changes artificial intelligence is bringing to journalism — among them possibilities for the analysis of data, including on climate and the environment. Plus, ways to use AI tools more effectively and how to track news organizations’ response to and use of AI. Also: Part 1, AI in the classroom.
"A new artificial intelligence model from China not only upended stock markets this week, it also called into question whether the rush to build new, mostly fossil-fueled power plants to run data centers is premature."
"One day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, a digital mapping tool used by federal and state agencies to identify environmentally disadvantaged communities was taken offline. Within 48 hours, a coalition of data scientists known as the Public Environmental Data Project had resurrected a functional but unofficial copy of the tool on an independent domain."
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