Environment | WPN World People News

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to expand the list of acceptable substitutes and prohibit the use of certain chemicals in the U.S. that significantly contribute to climate change where safer, more climate-friendly alternatives exist. This is another step forward in a series under President Obama's Climate Action Plan, which aims to reduce emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a class of potent greenhouse gases that can be up to 10,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide and are used in air-conditioning, refrigeration, and other equipment.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a last-ditch effort by the State of Alaska to exempt America's largest national forest from a national rule protecting undeveloped, road-free national forest areas from logging and road construction. The State sought to overturn a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that kept the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in effect in the vast Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska.

Two Connecticut companies, a scrap metal recycling facility and a waste oil transporter, agreed to pay fines to settle claims by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that they violated federal laws regarding toxic substances in their handling of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In addition, as part of the settlements one company will clean up PCB contamination and the other has voluntarily changed operations to reduce the chance of contaminating waste oil shipments with PCBs.

This photograph from a March 27, 2015 NASA IceBridge flight shows a mixture of deformed, snow-covered, first-year sea ice floes, interspersed by open-water leads, brash ice and thin, snow-free nilas and young sea ice over the East Beaufort Sea. Nilas are thin sheets of smooth, level ice less than 10 centimeters (4 inches) thick and appear darkest when thin.

Brenntag Northeast, Inc., the owner and operator of a chemical repackaging and distribution plant in Reading, Pa., will pay a $55,000 penalty, and donate $30,000 of emergency response equipment to a local fire department, to settle alleged oil and hazardous waste storage violations of regulations designed to protect public health and the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on March 28.

U.S. Rep. Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, introduced a bill Tuesday that would eliminate a federal loophole that allows power companies to dump toxic coal ash in municipal solid waste landfills without adequate health and environmental protection.

Martin Delingon's bathes near his house on July 13, 2014, that was among those in the Philippines crushed by this ship that was swept ashore by typhoon Haiyan's storm surge.

The female Sumatran rhino is estimated to be between four and five years old.

ShutterstockWorker inspecting valve for filtering water.

The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a US$500 million loan to China to support innovative financing for air pollution control in the Jing-Jin-Ji region on March 22 . The new operation aims to reduce air pollutants and carbon emissions through increasing energy efficiency and clean energy, with a focus on the Jing-Jin-Ji and neighboring regions—specifically, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Henan.