Environment | WPN World People News

On August 23, the U.S. Department of Energy released a much-hyped study examining electricity markets and grid reliability. Energy Secretary Rick Perry ordered the department to conduct the study in April, on the premise that “regulatory burdens” threaten the grid.

Central and southern Bangladesh are bracing for devastation as flood waters that wreaked havoc in the country’s north begin the long journey to the Bay of Bengal.

The Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise and her crew of 35 activists have been released in Tromsø, Northern Norway. The Norwegian Coast Guard boarded the Arctic Sunrise and arrested the ship and her crew last Thursday at the Korpfjell drill site after a peaceful protest against Statoil’s controversial oil drilling in the Arctic and to oppose the Norwegian government’s granting of oil licences in violation of Norway’s Constitution and the Paris Agreement.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded a $1.6M grant to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ) to assist the state in cleaning up petroleum contamination from leaking underground storage tanks. This grant is funded through the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund to support state efforts to address this type of contamination. Wyoming will use the funding to support staff that oversee and coordinate cleanup projects throughout the state.

Almost 20 million people are affected by flooding that’s inundated large swathes of Bangladesh, Nepal and India following heavy monsoon rains – with over 10 million reportedly now affected in India’s Bihar state alone.

On August 21st, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed the right of American and Japanese conservation groups and Okinawan citizens to sue to compel the U.S. military to fully consider the impacts of a new U.S. military base in Okinawa, Japan. The base would pave over some of the last remaining habitat for endangered Okinawa dugongs, ancient cultural icons for the Okinawan people. The lawsuit is part of a long-running controversy over the expansion of a U.S. Marine air base at Okinawa’s Henoko Bay. Preliminary construction on the base began earlier this year.

On August 18, Earthjustice said it would fight a Trump Administration attempt to stall adoption of standards to clean up air pollution in national parks and wilderness areas caused by power plants in Texas.

President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior is moving ahead with plans to scrap a five-year leasing plan adopted by the Obama administration in January that keeps sensitive Arctic and Atlantic ocean territories off-limits to oil drilling rigs, despite widespread public opposition and recent reports from climate scientists highlighting the dangers of accelerating fossil fuel development.

Norwegian authorities have arrested the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise, following a peaceful protest in the Barents Sea. The authorities unlawfully ended the activists’ peaceful protest against drilling in the Arctic with seizure of the ship and arrests of all 35 activists and crew members on board. The Arctic Sunrise is currently being towed away from the drilling site, to the mainland in Tromsö, Northern Norway.

Puente is a proposed 262 megawatt (MW) natural gas power plant on the coast in Oxnard that has long been opposed by environmental justice and environmental groups as well as the City of Oxnard due to its exacerbation of environmental injustice, vulnerability to coastal flooding from sea level rise, and divergence from California’s climate goals.