The United States currently relies heavily on fossil fuels to heat our homes, fuel our cars, power our machines and produce electricity, harming our health and our climate. But the country is beginning to embrace the promise and potential of renewables. Offshore wind is a massive and underutilized energy resource just off our coasts, and can play a crucial role in moving toward a 100% renewable energy future.
Abuse and overexploitation of ocean environments have led to ecosystem destruction and biodiversity decline on an unprecedented scale. The experience of marine protected areas (MPAs) around the world shows that properly implemented marine protections can be effective in reversing the damage done to our ocean and restoring marine ecosystems to health.
Now is no time to fritter away scarce public resources on wasteful boondoggle projects. Yet across the country, state and local governments continue to move forward with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of new and expanded highways that do little to address real transportation challenges, while diverting scarce funding from much-needed infrastructure repairs and key, future-oriented transportation priorities. Highway Boondoggles 6 finds seven new budget-eating highway projects slated to cost a total of $26 billion that will harm communities and the environment, while likely failing to achieve meaningful transportation goals.
Clean energy is sweeping across America. Today, America produces almost four times as much renewable electricity from the sun and wind as it did in 2010. Renewables on the Rise 2020 tracks the rapid growth of the key clean energy technologies that will enable America to move toward a future of 100% renewable energy.
Colleges and universities are leading the transition to 100% renewable energy. Top campuses are already getting 100% or more of their power from clean sources, using energy more efficiently, and employing clean electric vehicles.
America's Top Colleges for Renewable Energy 2020 highlights the schools that are already tapping the power of the sun, wind and other renewable sources to power their campuses, as well as those schools that have made ambitious clean energy commitments for the future.
A surge in visitors to public lands across the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated just how much we crave the outdoors. With visitor numbers expected to remain high, we need to create more opportunities for outdoor recreation and better protect the ones we have. New factsheets created with Environment America describe the surge in visitation to parks and natural areas in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada and the benefits of land preservation programs such as the federal Land & Water Conservation Fund.
The Clean Water Act, adopted in 1972, set the goal of making all of our waterways safe for swimming. Nearly a half-century later, Americans visiting their favorite beach are still met all too often by advisories warning not to go in the water. And each year, millions of Americans are sickened by swimming in contaminated water.
Safe for Swimming? reviews sampling data from beaches in 29 coastal and Great Lakes states and Puerto Rico, finding that all too often our beaches have risky levels of pollution -- and suggests tools for communities and policymakers to make beaches safe, now and for the future.
The global oil price war, demand reductions resulting from the coronavirus outbreak, and the industry’s mountain of debt have left Texas oil and gas companies in crisis. But even before the crisis, oil and gas drilling in Texas posed dangers to the environment and public health. Any response to the current crisis by the Railroad Commission and other state leaders should recognize the underlying risks created by oil and gas production and move toward correcting them.
