EPA sets up email address where ‘regulated community’ can request exemption to evade air pollution rules
Donald Trump’s administration has offered fossil fuel companies an extraordinary opportunity to evade air pollution rules by simply emailing the US president to ask him to exempt them.
Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set up a new email address where what it calls the “regulated community” can request a presidential exemption from their requirements under the Clean Air Act, which is used to regulate dangerous toxins emitted from polluting sources.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
03/27/2025 - 15:19
03/27/2025 - 10:00
Ministers urged to do more after United Utilities discharged raw sewage into Unesco site for 6,327 hours last year
Celebrated by William Wordsworth, Windermere has long epitomised the natural timeless beauty of the Lake District, with millions of tourists drawn to the shores that inspired the poet. But today England’s biggest lake is, some campaigners say, a shadow of its 19th century self: its waters blighted by algae and its wildlife threatened by pollution, in a symbol of all that is wrong with the privatised water industry.
This month the environment secretary, Steve Reed, vowed to break with the recent past, standing on its shores and promising that Labour would “clean up Windermere”. The lake is showing the impact of sewage pollution from United Utilities treatment plants and increased pressure from climate change-induced temperature rises.
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03/27/2025 - 09:00
The Labor Environment Action Network says it won’t ‘sugar coat’ its reaction after working ‘so hard’ on obtaining commitment for EPA
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Labor’s grassroots environment action network has told its members it does not support legislation that Anthony Albanese rushed through parliament this week to protect salmon farming in Tasmania, describing it as “frustrating and disappointing”.
In an email on Thursday, the Labor Environment Action Network (Lean) said it would not “sugar coat” its reaction to a bill that was introduced to end a formal government reconsideration of whether an expansion of fish farming in Macquarie Harbour, on the state’s west coast, in 2012 was properly approved.
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03/27/2025 - 09:00
The flamboyant cuttlefish flashes patterns and psychedelic colours and waves its arms in a hypnotic display
More fantastic invertebrate nominations here
If you love a feisty rebel, look no further than the flamboyant cuttlefish, on the 10-strong shortlist for the Guardian’s invertebrate of the year 2025. It is small, smart, capable of spectacular displays and has fought against the odds to become the deadliest of its kind.
This creative creature is small for its class of cephalopods, which includes octopus, squid and nautilus, at just 6-8cm. Due to the relatively reduced size of its air-filled cuttlebone, a unique internal shell used for buoyancy that lends these molluscs their unique, rather alien-spaceship way of swimming, it cannot float or hover as well as its cousins.
Between 24 March and 2 April, we will be profiling a shortlist of 10 of the invertebrates chosen by readers and selected by our wildlife writers from more than 2,500 nominations. The voting for our 2025 invertebrate of the year will run from midday on Wednesday 2 April until midday on Friday 4 April, with the winner to be announced on Monday 7. Read the other wonderful nominations here.
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03/27/2025 - 09:00
Many importers halt shipments on chance White House makes good on threat of 200% markup on European goods
As the threat of exorbitant US tariffs on European alcohol imports looms, a warehouse in the French port city of Le Havre awaits a delivery of more than 1,000 cases of wine from a dozen boutique wineries across the country.
Under normal circumstances, Randall Bush, the founder of Loci Wine in Chicago, would have already arranged with his European partners to gather these wines in Le Havre, the last stop before they are loaded into containers and shipped across the Atlantic. But these wines won’t be arriving stateside anytime soon.
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03/27/2025 - 07:44
As life starts to return to the capital’s parks and woodlands, photographer Sarah Lee has been capturing daffodils and budding plants, walkers, buskers and joggers out in the sunshine. She says: ‘Everything feels so dark right now, it’s good to know the light is coming back’
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03/27/2025 - 06:54
Net zero is a target that countries should be striving for to stop the climate crisis. But beyond the buzzword, it is a complex scientific concept – and if we get it wrong, the planet will keep heating.
Biodiversity and environment reporter Patrick Greenfield explains how a loophole in the 2015 Paris climate agreement allows countries to cheat their net zero targets through creative accounting, and how scientists want us to fix it
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03/27/2025 - 06:30
Gene Likens, who first identified acidic rainwater in 1960s, said the Trump administration’s ‘rollbacks are alarming’
The US could be plunged back into an era of toxic acid rain, an environmental problem thought to have been solved decades ago, due to the Donald Trump administration’s rollback of pollution protections, the scientist who discovered the existence of acid rain in North America has warned.
A blitzkrieg launched by Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on clean air and water regulations could revert the US to a time when cities were routinely shrouded in smog and even help usher back acid rain, according to Gene Likens, whose experiments helped identify acidic rainwater in the 1960s.
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03/27/2025 - 06:25
Final gathering in April will mark end of street protests although campaign to continue ‘in courts and prisons’
Supporters of the climate group Just Stop Oil have announced that, after three years of disruptive protests, they are ending their campaign of civil resistance.
Hannah Hunt, whose speech on Valentine’s Day 2022 marked the beginning of the campaign, made the announcement outside Downing Street in London on Thursday.
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03/27/2025 - 05:57
Duration of spills by water companies up on previous year, in data described by environment secretary as ‘disgraceful’
Raw sewage was discharged into rivers and coastal waters in England for almost 4m hours last year, with waterways that have the highest environmental protections subjected to days of pollution.
Data released by the Environment Agency on Thursday revealed water companies discharged untreated effluent for 3.62m hours, a slight increase on last year.
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