Pollution

As we approach Earth Day this Tuesday, it’s tempting to believe that the world is on the brink of environmental collapse. We are constantly inundated by dire predictions of climate catastrophe and warnings about the planet’s imminent destruction.

But this is misleading. Rather than spiraling into panic, we should take a moment to appreciate the remarkable progress we’ve made in improving the environment, and acknowledge that a key factor is prosperity.

When Earth Day was first marked 55 years ago, the world faced some grim environmental challenges.

More than 37 million Americans are consuming drinking water contaminated with toxic "forever chemicals" that exceed federal safety limits, according to a recent USA Today report. The report analyzed the first Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) update since President Donald Trump returned to office.

While carbon dioxide is a small part of the atmosphere, it has a large impact on climate as a greenhouse gas. AllSides highlights content from Gigafact, a network of newsrooms that respond to online claims. View the full fact brief on Skeptical Science.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday it is loaning $6.6 billion to an electric-vehicle maker facing accusations of defrauding investors.

The Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office is awarding $6.6 billion to a subsidiary of Rivian Automotive to construct Project Horizon, an electric-vehicle factory in Georgia east of Atlanta. Rivian previously paused construction of the $5 billion Georgia facility earlier this year to cut costs and speed up production.

President Joe Biden’s administration announced Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Energy will make a $6.6 billion loan to Rivian Automotive to build a factory in Georgia that had stalled as the startup electric vehicle maker struggled to become profitable.

It’s unclear whether the administration can complete the loan before Donald Trump becomes president again in less than two months, or whether the Trump administration might try to claw the money back.

A bag of Cheetos gets dropped and left on the floor. Seems inconsequential, right?

Hardly.

Rangers at Carlsbad Caverns National Park in southern New Mexico describe it as a “world-changing” event for the tiny microbes and insects that call this specialized subterranean environment home. The bag could have been there a day or two or maybe just hours, but those salty morsels of processed corn made soft by thick humidity triggered the growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations.

This article was published in 2022. 

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a technique for recovering gas and oil from shale rock.

It involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals at a rock layer, to release the gas inside.

Although US coal consumption has fallen dramatically since 2005, the country still consumes millions of tons a year, and exports tons more—much of it transported by train. Now, new research shows that these trains can affect the health of people living near where they pass.

The Supreme Court rejected a settlement with OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma that would have shielded the Sackler family from legal liability for the company’s role in exacerbating the disastrous opioid crisis.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected on Thursday the Securities and Exchange Commission's in-house enforcement of laws protecting investors against securities fraud, dealing a blow to the agency's powers in a ruling that could reverberate through other federal regulators.

The decision - a setback for President Joe Biden's administration - upheld a lower court's decision siding with George Jarkesy, a Texas-based hedge fund manager who contested the legality of the SEC's actions against him after the agency determined he had committed securities fraud.