• Energy

California Issues 190% More New Oil and Gas Drilling Permits

• California
• fracking
• Gavin Newsom
• oil and gas drilling

• Land

Trump Administration Green Lights Oil and Gas Development in ANWR

• ANWR
• Arctic
• oil and gas
• oil and gas drilling

The Trump Administration yesterday finalized one of its most controversial fossil fuel favoritism pledges — the Interior Department approved oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) a pristine area in Alaska that has been considered sacred ground to both Indigenous people and environmentalists.  The Refuge is a a 1.56-million-acre area of […]

• 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 […]