It just wouldn’t be the Society of Environmental Journalists annual conference recap without the waggish tales of SEJ’s resident wit, David Helvarg, who once again this year skewers the lot of us, sparing not a jot of our five days in Philadelphia. Read on and prepare to snicker.
"Increasingly sophisticated and better-funded disinformation is making climate coverage trickier both for journalists to produce and for the public to fully understand and trust."
"With just over six months before the election, at least one major Biden proposal appears to be stalled: an update to the federal housing rules that agency experts estimate would save homeowners nearly three times more money on energy bills than it would add to construction costs, spread out over a 30-year mortgage."
"In a move that environmentalists called a betrayal, the Biden administration has approved the construction of a deepwater oil export terminal off the Texas coast that would be the largest of its kind in the United States."
"Water utilities will face costly challenges meeting the EPA’s new limits on PFAS in drinking water, making litigation nearly inevitable, lawyers and analysts say."
"From airlines to pork sellers, corporate brands face legal and regulatory challenges for misleading the public with lofty climate claims."
"A group of advocates and Democratic senators gathered in Washington DC on Tuesday to decry utilities’ practice of spending customers’ money to advance a pro-fossil fuel agenda."
"Honolulu's climate lawsuit is an existential threat to Big Oil. So they’re buying Republican attorneys general to defend them in court."
"Allies of former President Donald Trump don’t just want to muzzle federal climate science if he wins a second term — they also want to upend the agencies that fuel such research."
"Using satellite imagery and data on dozens of factors — including air and noise pollution, park space, open water and tree canopy — NatureQuant has distilled the elements of health-supporting nature into a single variable called NatureScore. Aggregated to the level of Census tracts — roughly the size of a neighborhood — the data provide a high-resolution image of where nature is abundant and where it is lacking across the United States."
