Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle. You can also submit opinion essays to us for our consideration for posting on our new “Bright Ideas” op-ed page.
Land
by Julia Fine Last month, we wrote about the outbreak of locust swarms traveling from East Africa to the Indian subcontinent. Now, as the New York Times reported yesterday, the locusts have made their way to New Delhi. The capital region’s fields, metro stations, suburbs, and more are now teeming with swarms. We previously noted […]
Continue Reading 487 words
Our nation is in the midst of a moment where statues and monuments celebrating our racist past are being reevaluated and taken down. However, some on the political right have begun calling into question the validity of this conversation. Conservative media personality Meghan McCain wrote in a tweet that we’re “one week removed from entire […]
Continue Reading 426 words
The House was set to vote to pass the Great American Outdoors Act, which will provide nearly $1B annually for parks and other conservation, but a group of Western Republicans has raised procedural hurdles that will delay final passage until late July, The Hill reported yesterday. And, a new report from the Center for American Progress (CAP) urges the United States to launch a major effort—a “Race for Nature” — to help the nation’s agricultural producers, who are facing a bleak economic future, by increasing opportunities to pay them for their conservation efforts.
Why This Matters: As the CAP Report explains, “Family farmers and ranchers need lifelines…Bold and swift investment in nature conservation can provide one.”
Continue Reading 524 wordsStay in the know, empower yourself to be a #FriendOfThePlanet, sign up to receive ODP in your inbox each morning!
In a quiet decision in late May, the Trump Administration said it will open up California’s Carrizo Plain National Monument, which is known for its stunning wildflowers, to oil and gas drilling and a pipeline, the LA Times reported last week.
Why This Matters: This project is inconsistent with the purposes of the monument and will surely cause environmental harm.
Continue Reading 493 words
By Monica Medina and Miro Korenha Monuments have been much in the news lately. In Decatur, Georgia on Thursday night, thanks to a Judge’s order, the county finally took down the Confederate Monument in the central square. It is one of a few monuments to the Confederacy remaining in Atlanta. State law protects them, unfortunately, […]
Continue Reading 939 words
The Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the Great American Outdoors Act and put $900m each year in perpetuity into the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which can be used to create, further protect, and expand federal, state, and local parks. In order to preserve the first fully protected area in the Atlantic Ocean, environmental groups yesterday challenged President Trump’s order opening up the NE Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument to commercial fishing.
Why This Matters: The public overwhelmingly supports conserving our most precious areas of historic importance and natural beauty.
Continue Reading 667 words
Yesterday, Bayer AG said it will scrap a nearly $1 billion project to produce the chemical dicamba in its Luling, Louisiana planet. This comes after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the sale and use of the herbicide, stating that “the EPA substantially understated the risks related to the use of dicamba, a […]
Continue Reading 349 words
With relative humidity as low as 5% (wow), strong winds, temps over 100 degrees in places like Phoenix, and little rain recently, the desert Southwest is facing the “perfect” conditions for wildfires and they are getting them. Against the backdrop of these fires was a courtroom in San Francisco yesterday, where the CEO of PG&E pled guilty to each of the 81 individual counts of criminal manslaughter against the company for the deaths of the Camp Fire in 2018.
Why This Matters: PG&E is to blame for the Camp Fire and its CEO did what he should in standing up in Court — this is what it means to be accountable.
Continue Reading 539 words
The Supreme Court by a 7-2 majority handed the Old Appalachian Trail, national parks and trails, and their visitors a major setback, ruling yesterday that the Forest Service has the authority to permit a pipeline to be constructed underneath the trail despite the objection of the agency that manages it as a national park “unit,” the National Park Service.
Why This Matters: Conservatives often make the slippery slope argument opposing parks when they are created — that is exactly what fishers claimed to persuade President Trump to allow fishing inside the NE Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument last week.
Continue Reading 575 words
It has been hard to find agreement in Congress on the issue of climate change, but one new “fertile” area of discussion is engaging the agriculture sector and finding financial opportunities to sequester carbon in soil and plant life in the form of marketable carbon offsets or credits.
Why This Matters: Agriculture is carbon-intensive — it would be great to flip the paradigm and make it one of the major solutions to our climate crisis.
Continue Reading 600 words
Having access to parks is a key to the quality of life no matter where you live. Today, according to the Trust for Public Land, 100 million Americans don’t have a park within a ten-minute walk from home. They have studied the maps and other data on park access for most of the cities and […]
Continue Reading 119 words
Yesterday the European Commission announced that it will commit to protecting 30% of the EU’s land and oceans by 2030 (30 by 30) as part of the European Green Deal. In addition to this declaration, the EU will also plant 3 billion trees by 2030 and cut chemical pesticide use by 50% and fertilizer use […]
Continue Reading 328 words