• Animals

Polar Bears Jeopardized by Drastic Habitat Loss; DOI Says ANWR Drilling Won’t Hurt Them

• ANWR
• Arctic
• endangered species
• Interior Department
• NOAA
• oil and gas
• oil and gas drilling
• sea ice

All but a few populations of polar bears found in the high Arctic could be extinct by 2100 due to the drastic loss of sea ice across their range, according to a study in the Journal Nature Climate Change published Monday.  Without ice, polar bears must survive on land, long distances from their food supplies, causing them to go hungry.

Why This Matters:  This study puts data behind the starving polar bear photo.  The U.S. population is one of the most threatened in the world because of the loss of ice.

• Politics

Trump Jr. Says the President Slashed Bears Ears Monument So The Public Could Access It

• #30x30
• #monumentsforall
• Bears Ears
• national monuments
• oil and gas drilling

Donald Trump Jr. in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune over the weekend argued that by drastically reducing the size of Bear’s Ears monument his father was giving the public MORE access to public lands. The Tribune pointed out that Obama and Biden had “originally designated the Bears Ears area in southeastern Utah as a national monument, protecting 1.35 million acres from development” and that President Trump had ” at the behest of Utah’s elected Republican leaders, slashed the monument’s acreage by 85%…”

Why This Matters: Clearly Trump Jr. does not understand what a monument is and who it benefits — or he is just not telling the truth.

• Health

Living Near Oil and Gas Wells Tied to Low Birth Weight in California Study

• air pollution
• California
• fossil fuels
• natural gas
• oil
• oil and gas drilling
• public health

Pregnant women in rural California who lived near active oil and gas wells were 40% more likely to give birth to low birthweight babies, according to a new study. The study conducted by University of California researchers is the first to study how California’s network of oil and gas development affects babies born nearby. As […]

• People

Hero of the Week: Kendall Edmo

• Black Feet
• indigenous people
• indigenous rights
• Montana
• oil and gas drilling

For nearly 40 years the Blackfeet Nation has been fighting in Montana to protect the Badger-Two Medicine – an area of deep spiritual significance to the tribe – from oil and gas drilling. While many people have denounced drilling in this incredible landscape, for the Blackfeet Tribe confronted with the threat to their ancestral land, this is a […]

• Climate Change

More Cheap Oil Heading to Market Will Complicate Efforts To Curb Global Warming

• climate change
• fracking
• oil and gas drilling
• SUV

Brazil, Canada, Norway, and Guyana are set to flood the global oil and gas market with an additional million barrels a day in 2020 and nearly a million more in 2021, thus driving down prices and slowing efforts to combat global warming by weaning consumers and industries off fossil fuels.  According to The New York Times, experts predict that this will complicate efforts to gain greater adoption of electric vehicles, and will keep SUVs and other less fuel-efficient cars competitive.

Why This Matters:  An increase in the supply of cheap gas could not come at a worse time for the global fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions — this will obviously have the opposite effect of a carbon tax.

• Climate Change

Trump Administration Claims In Arctic Drilling Assessment That There Is No Climate Crisis

• Arctic
• Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
• environmental impact statement
• oil and gas drilling

E&E News reported on Monday that the Trump administration states it its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in favor of oil and gas leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – the agency responsible for EIS – “does not agree that the proposed development is inconsistent with maintaining a livable planet (i.e., there is not a climate crisis).”

Why This Matters:  This is yet another sign that the Trump Administration is ignoring the overwhelming opinion of expert scientists — the U.N. IPCC Oceans and Cryosphere report from last week is full of examples of how the Arctic region is being severely impacted by climate change caused by fossil fuel use.

• It is also highly likely that the BLM silenced its own scientists in the process of drafting the ANWR EIS.