Environmental News ICYMI 06-23-17

A weekly roundup for busy people

By Paul Rauber

June 23, 2017

hot airplane

ILLUSTRATION BY PETER ARKLE

On June 20, the temperature in Phoenix, Arizona, hits 119ºF. Some flights at the city’s airport are canceled as a result.

Strong 4G cell coverage will soon be available nearly everywhere in Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone grizzly bears lose their endangered-species protection, opening the door to future trophy hunting.

After only six fatal attacks in 130 years, black bears in Alaska kill two people in two days: a mining contractor and a 16-year-old participant in a foot race near Anchorage.

A federal court throws out a long-standing Justice Department rule that hunters could only be prosecuted for killing protected wildlife if they knew the animal was protected. "The responsibility for any mistake falls on the defendant," ruled the U.S. District Court for Arizona.

Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Co., the nation’s largest coal company, sues HBO comedian John Oliver for making fun of him.

Mississippi regulators say that Southern Co.’s $7.5 billion “clean coal” plant should give up and just burn natural gas.

The number of “super-commuters”—those who travel 90 minutes or more to get to work—skyrocketed from 2010 to 2015. In California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, North Dakota, and Rhode Island, long commutes spiked by more than 40 percent in that time.

Orcas in the Bering Sea have learned how to strip halibut from fishing lines so systematically that some fishers are using pots instead.

Sweden commits to carbon neutrality by 2045.

Scientists document that in the summer of 2016, a sheet of meltwater larger than the state of Texas covered the Ross Ice Shelf.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry says that he does not believe that carbon emissions from human activity are the main driver of climate change. Instead, he blames “the ocean waters and this environment that we live in." Perry shares his climate denialism with EPA head Scott Pruitt.

Researchers predict that this year’s Gulf Dead Zone—a very-low-oxygen area at the mouth of the Mississippi River caused by agricultural runoff—will be twice as large as average, or the size of Vermont. 

Oregon joins some 20 other states in making it legal to eat roadkill.

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