Environment & Climate

From the normally mild summer climes of Ireland, Scotland and Canada to the scorching Middle East to Southern California, numerous locations in the Northern Hemisphere have witnessed their hottest weather ever recorded over the past week. Large areas of heat pressure or heat domes scattered around the hemisphere led to the sweltering temperatures.

Pruitt stepped down as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. President Trump announced the news in a tweet. He also announced that Andrew Wheeler, currently the EPA’s second-in-command, will take over as the agency’s acting administrator next week. Regardless of his righteousness, Pruitt blessed Trump by resigning. Over the last six months, Pruitt has attracted endless headlines to the Trump administration.

Ocean plastic has, in a pretty short time, become a surprisingly potent international environmental movement. For one, there’s more awareness now about the astounding quantity of plastic — between 4.7 and 12.8 million metric tons — floating around in the ocean. As the World Economic Forum put it, this volume is “equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean per minute.”

In a unanimous decision, state regulators in Minnesota approved a controversial new pipeline that will increase the flow of tar sands crude oil from Canada to refineries in the United States. The long-anticipated ruling is a victory for Canadian pipeline owner Enbridge and a significant blow to environmental and Native American advocates who opposed the pipeline through northern Minnesota in a region rich in wetlands and wild rice lakes.