Environmental News ICYMI 10-6-17

A weekly roundup for busy people

By Paul Rauber

October 6, 2017

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Illustration by Peter Arkle

Irish scientists have learned how to make electricity from tears.

The EPA is going to try to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the United States's leading vehicle for reducing carbon emissions.

The House of Representatives proposes a $1.5 trillion tax cut that would be paid for in part by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Scotland bans fracking.

General Motors says it will go all electric (eventually). 

President Donald Trump visits Puerto Rico, where he throws rolls of paper towels to survivors of Hurricane Maria but tells them they don't need flashlights. More than 90 percent of the island is still without power. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denies endangered-species status for 25 imperiled creatures, including the Pacific walrus and the Northern Rocky Mountains fisher. 

Energy Secretary Rick Perry speaks to a private gathering of mining executives at Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., and heralds the revival of the coal industry: "Coal is fighting back," he says.

Perry’s Department of Energy will provide $3.7 billion in loan guarantees to a troubled Georgia nuclear power project, on top of a previous $8.3 billion already committed.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and EPA chief Scott Pruitt will not reimburse their agencies for private charter flights they took that cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. 

Following the escape of more than 100,000 Atlantic salmon from a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm into Washington State's Puget Sound, the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife allows the same company to farm another 1 million fish.

A federal judge rebuffs the Trump administration’s attempts to delay an Obama-era rule that restricted methane emissions from the oil-and-gas industry, saying that industry must comply by the original January 17, 2018 deadline. 

With the help of trained U.S. Navy dolphins, Mexican wildlife officials will try to round up the fewer than 30 vaquita porpoises remaining in the Gulf of California for a captive-breeding program. 

A 70-mile-wide band that mystified Colorado radar operators turns out to be huge numbers of migrating painted lady butterflies