Environment | WPN World People News

Thursday, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finalizing a rule to prohibit certain uses of chemicals that significantly contribute to climate change in favor of safer, more climate-friendly alternatives. This action responds to President Obama's Climate Action Plan by reducing emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a class of potent greenhouse gases used in air-conditioning, refrigeration, and other equipment.

Two United Nations agencies have unveiled a series of new guidelines aimed at addressing the health risks posed by the increasing number and intensity of climate change-related heatwaves affecting the planet, as warm weather alerts spread across Europe following soaring temperatures that killed hundreds of people in India and Pakistan last month.

Farmworkers and their families, who are predominantly low-income and majority Latino, bear the brunt of poisonings from pesticides and pesticide drift.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee held Australia accountable for improving the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

IUCN delegation at the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bonn, Germany, 2015

Greenpeace has warned that until the threat from coal and climate change is removed, the Great Barrier Reef remains in danger.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an order to the City of North Las Vegas to take immediate steps to address federal Clean Water Act violations. Deficiencies in the management of its wastewater pretreatment program have the potential to lead to discharges of polluted water from the city’s Water Reclamation Facility into the Las Vegas Wash, which eventually feeds into Lake Mead.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to cancel certain uses of the insecticide propoxur after preliminary human health assessment found risks from certain applications.

Tendal Waterfall, Los Katíos National Park, Colombia

In the early hours of Tuesday's morning, around 85 Greenpeace activists blocked all Shell’s fuel stations in Zurich. The protest is part of a global campaign seeking to challenge Shell’s controversial plans to drill in the melting Alaskan Arctic.