• Air

New Delhi Raises Ambitions To Fight Air Pollution

• air pollution
• COVID-19
• India
• smog

by Julia Fine, ODP Contributing Writer New Delhi officials have “introduced an antipollution campaign in an attempt to curb air pollution ahead of winter, when the city is regularly covered in toxic haze,” the Associated Press reported this week. The city of 21 million people New Delhi has some of the worst air quality in […]

• Air

The Snowballing Effect Wildfire Smoke Is Having on California

• California
• solar power
• wildfire smoke
• wildfires

The smoke from California’s wildfires has had far-reaching consequences beyond the human health aspect. Aside from ruining the grape harvest for numerous wineries in Northern California wineries, over a month of smoky skies has had an impact on the state’s ability to reduce the very carbon emissions that have been fueling wildfires.  As The Verge […]

• Air

COVID Clean Air Benefits Prove to Be Short-Lived

• air pollution
• coronavirus
• COVID-19

by Julia Fine, ODP Contributing Writer The positive environmental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic “prove short-lived,” Rebecca Beitsch reported for the Hill this week. While emissions took a “massive drop a few months ago,” according to Beitsch they are now “within 5 percent of what they were around the same time last year.”  Professor Corinne […]

• Air

New Study Suggests Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks Could Have Dire Consequences

Over the course of the Trump presidency, the Trump administration has unraveled nearly all of Obama’s environmental policies. A new report from the Rhodium Group suggests that this could pump 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the next fifteen years.

Why this Matters: Trump’s swift reversal of environmental policies is unprecedented in the time since the major environmental laws were enacted, and these actions are likely to have dire impacts if courts uphold them.

• Air

New Study Says Air Pollution is Comparable to Eating a High Fat Diet

• air pollution
• air quality
• clean air
• heart disease

A new study conducted by an international team of researchers has found that air pollution can play a role in the development of cardiometabolic diseases such as diabetes. But most startling is that the study also shows that living in a polluted region was comparable to eating a high-fat diet. As Science Daily explained, researchers […]

• Air

Even As Air Pollution Drops, Communities of Color in the U.S. Still Breathe Dirtier Air

• #environmentaljustice
• air pollution
• Black Americans
• Environmental Justice
• particulate matter
• PM 2.5

Although absolute disparities in terms of exposure to air pollution have fallen, relative disparities remain a new study published this week in Science showed. What they found, in the words of Emily Holden in The Guardian, was that “wealthy white Americans are still getting to breathe cleaner air than lower-income communities of color, despite significant nationwide reductions in pollution since the 1980s.”

Why This Matters: We see time and time again how intimately intertwined environmental justice is with racial justice. It is not enough that the absolute disparity of air pollution has fallen.