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The federal government is the largest land owner, energy consumer and employer in the US and it will “lead by example in tackling the climate crisis”, the White House said, by eliminating greenhouse gases from its activities.

The study concluded that there's a correlation between negative emotions, such as worry, and beliefs that government responses to climate change have been inadequate. So the way governments have been addressing — or failing to address — climate change is directly affecting the mental health of young people.

The contamination presents an “extremely troubling” health threat in the nation’s largest estuary, said Scott Faber, EWG’s senior vice president for government affairs.

“I am ‘report fatigued.’ We need action,” Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, wrote at Forbes this month. He called for more planning from local and federal governments for a transition to “a renewable energy economy,” and urged leaders to “address the disproportionate burden” of climate disasters on “vulnerable, poor, and marginalized populations.” The experts HuffPost spoke to all had the same antidote to climate dread: Take action. The climate crisis is urgent, the changes needed are at a massive scale, but it doesn’t mean individuals can’t make a difference.“We are now in an all-hands-on-deck moment,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s program on climate change communication. “We need everybody doing everything they can, at the individual level, community level, national government and business level. This is all of society.”

The Interior Department on Friday recommended that the federal government raise the fees that oil and gas companies pay to drill on public lands — the first increase in those rent and royalty rates since 1920.The long-awaited report recommended an overhaul of the rents and royalty fees charged for drilling both on land and offshore, noting one estimate that the government lost up to $12.4 billion in revenue from drilling on federal lands from 2010 through 2019 because royalty rates have been frozen for a century.

The felony charges come as more than a dozen states have passed laws to criminalize fossil fuel protests, and as the federal government has ramped up its own tactics for surveilling and penalizing protesters.

But while states such as Connecticut and New Jersey have enacted some curbs on neonicotinoids, the US federal government is set to bend to pressure from farming groups and pesticide makers to perpetuate their use nationally.

It’s not just about the money... ”forestry companies and the government say the cut must continue in order to protect jobs in an industry that has experienced steep job losses and mill closures in recent years.”

"The warnings are clear. The real question is whether we — the government, global institutions, our societies — are capable of heeding them at a time when states and societies are turning inward and political discourse has become poisonous."

On Coal River takes viewers to the Coal River Valley of West Virginia — a community surrounded by lush mountains and a looming toxic threat. The film follows four longtime residents as they confront their local school board, the state government, and a notorious coal company — Massey Energy — for putting their families and community’s health at risk. Past Presentation

Based on a true story about a journalist who gets detained and brutally interrogated in prison for 118 days. The only distinguishable feature of his captor is the distinct smell of rosewater. An interview and sketch that Maziar did with a faux journalist on The Daily Show was used as evidence that Maziar was a spy and in communication with the American government and the CIA. Past Presentation

Both Greenpeace USA and the Sunrise Movement are calling for Biden to declare a climate emergency and use the Defense Production Act, which allows the federal government to commandeer manufacturing operations under emergency circumstances, to expedite the transition to renewable energy.

What happens when a grassroots agricultural movement evolves into a booming international market. From farm fields to government meetings to industry trade shows, director Shelley Rogers shows us the hidden costs of conventional agriculture. We also see how our health, the health of our planet, and the agricultural needs of our society are all intimately connected. Past Presentation

Saving Jamaica Bay tells the story of how one community fought government inaction and overcame Hurricane Sandy to clean up and restore the largest open space in New York City, which had become a dumping ground for garbage, sewage and bullet-riddled mobsters. Narrated by Academy-Award winning actress Susan Sarandon, Saving Jamaica Bay underscores the importance of citizen action and the role of urban nature in protecting our cities from the effects of climate change. Past Presentation

The story of a community’s successful fight to protect their water from the oil and natural gas industry. In 2013, Texas-based SWN Resources arrived in New Brunswick, Canada, a region known for forestry, farming, and fishing, both commercial and small-scale subsistence operations that the rural community depend on. A multicultural group of unlikely warriors united and set up road blockades to prevent oil exploration. After months of resistance, their efforts not only halted drilling, they elected a new government and won an indefinite moratorium on fracking. Past Presentation

I documented this pattern in my book Dumping in Dixie more than three decades ago, finding that “toxic-waste dumps, municipal landfills, garbage incinerators and similar noxious facilities” tended to be located in minority neighborhoods with little access to the levers of government power.

During the pandemic, women were especially economically hard-hit because many work in industries with disproportionate job losses; others were forced to leave work to care for children and elders. Women collectively lost $800 billion in earnings in 2020, and there are 13 million fewer women in the workforce now than in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit people of color disproportionately hard, the report noted: Through November 2021, in the U.S, Black and Latinx people were about twice as likely to die from the virus than white people. Similarly, during England’s second wave of the pandemic, Bangladeshi people were five times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white Brits. In Brazil, Black people were 1.5 times more likely to die than white people. In the U.S, Black and Latinx people also work disproportionately in industries like the service or domestic sectors, which faced significant job loss, as well as in health care or agriculture, where workers deemed “essential” continued to work on the front lines as others stayed safely home. Millions of Americans received increased unemployment aid and three stimulus checks from the federal government during the pandemic, but undocumented immigrants were barred from this support. “There is no shortage of money... There is only a shortage of courage and imagination needed to break free from the failed, deadly straitjacket of extreme neoliberalism,” Oxfam International’s executive director Gabriela Bucher said in a news release. “Governments would be wise to listen to the movements — the young climate strikers, Black Lives Matter activists, #NiUnaMenos feminists, Indian farmers and others — who are demanding justice and equality.”

By the end of this century, New York City is expected to have up to 9.5 feet of sea level rise, radically reshaping its 520 miles of coastline, and impacting more than 100 coastal neighborhoods. This film follows the demolition of the first communities to undergo a 'managed retreat' from Staten Island waterfront. Faced with rising sea levels, three New York City neighborhoods are purchased by the government, to be demolished and permanently returned to nature. Over the course of a year, seasons change, homes are destroyed, and wild animals begin to return. Past Presentation

Facing the Surge documents the tangible costs of sea level rise for the people of Norfolk, VA. Norfolk is home to the largest naval base in the country and to thousands of hard-working Americans struggling to adapt to the rising tides and an uncertain future. The town has registered 16 inches of sea level rise since 1930. But Facing the Surge is not a film about loss and inaction. It tells the stories of citizens from across the United States as they step forward to raise awareness and push their government to solve climate change. Past Presentation

We need to address the root of the problem, redesigning the system and tackling the throwaway society once and for all.” The government intends to make companies pay the full cost of recycling and disposing of their packaging and has consulted on introducing the scheme, called “extended producer responsibility” on a phased basis from 2023.

A Low Carbon Future for China's Furnace Cities (United Kingdom [UK], 10 min). Directed by Monika Koeck. China’s economic development and rapid urbanization has led to a dramatic rise in energy consumption due to excessive heating and air-conditioning causing carbon emissions of immense proportions. China’s government has set the ambitious target of reducing CO2 emissions by 40–45% by 2020 against the 2005 baseline. A UK/China-funded team working on how to solve the problem in some of the most extreme climate regions in China. The team discovers groundbreaking solutions using computational-fluid-dynamics simulations. Now Playing

Rescuing Abundance is a food sustainability film starring heroes from the Pittsburgh food community. The film tells the story of how business, government, farmers, nonprofits, and college students can work together to reverse the current trend of 31% of the food produced in the United States ending up in landfills, despite millions of people going hungry every day. The ultimate purpose of the film is to develop the foundation for community-focused solutions. Business and the community can work together and drive social innovation in the food space. Past Presentation

"This also poses a great opportunity to educate the public about the challenges that wild animals face for survival and the need for better protection from a government, industry and society level," Sun wrote. "These animals belong in the wild. We need to keep a safe distance from them, which is good for us and the wild animals."

The multibillion-dollar plan, known as Willow, by the oil giant ConocoPhillips had been approved by the Trump administration and legally backed by the Biden administration. Environmental groups sued, arguing that the federal government had failed to take into account the effects that drilling would have on wildlife and that the burning of the oil would have on global warming.

The Japanese government intends to starting dump the nuclear wastewater in two years from now. We ask them to reflect on our joint nuclear legacy and listen to their Pacific neighbours. We are saying loudly and clearly: our ocean is not your dumping ground.

A world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, all around the world people are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization. Past Presentation

Meanwhile, the federal government is taking the first steps to vastly increase the size of the nation’s carbon dioxide pipeline network as a way of fighting climate change. Our investigation reveals that such pipelines pose threats that few are aware of and even fewer know how to handle.

The federal government is the largest consumer in the world, spending more than $650 billion on products and services annually. According to a White House fact sheet, the Buy Clean Task Force will prioritize products and pollutants, help manufacturers better report emissions data and set up pilot projects to increase federal procurement of clean construction materials.

The city of 176,000 has long been recognized by environmentalists — and even by the Russian government — as one of the most polluted places on Earth, because of one business: Norilsk Nickel, the world’s biggest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and a top producer of platinum, cobalt and copper.

The push is largely coming from investors themselves, who are increasingly keen to know how climate change might impact the businesses they fund. The White House also wants to address climate-related financial risk. President Biden issued an executive order last year pushing the federal government to help identify the risks posed by climate change.

Homes in the area were built in the 1970s and 1980s and marketed to Black, low- and middle-income residents who weren’t told that the site was a one-time landfill. As awareness grew and environmentalists raised concerns, the area was named a federal Superfund cleanup site in 1994. Amid reports that the soil was contaminated with lead and carcinogens, including arsenic, residents began a decades-long effort to be relocated at government expense.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer’s recent request that the federal government require the immediate inspection of oil pipelines off the county is bogged down in the federal bureaucracy, so the top prosecutor is reaching out to Congress. In a letter Wednesday copied to the entire Orange County delegation, Spitzer asked Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, to help expedite his Oct. 11 request to the Department of Transportation. Steel’s 48th District includes much of coastal Orange County.

Predicting faster sea level rises and more frequent and extreme storms due to global warming, the government said it could only afford to keep defending the village for another 40 years. Officials said that by 2054, it would no longer by safe or sustainable to live in Fairbourne. Authorities therefore have been working with villagers on the process of so-called “managed realignment” -- essentially, to move them away and abandon the village to the encroaching sea.

Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, which debuted on Netflix on December 24th, satirizes the politicization of the climate crisis and centers on a fictional comet hurtling through space on a direct path to Earth. Two scientists, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio, alert the US government — a clown town operation being helmed by a ridiculous president and her son, played by Meryl Streep and Jonah Hill — about the urgency of an event that could result in mass extinction but are repeatedly disregarded.

Before starting a family, the director, daughter of an industrial chemical distributor, embarks on a journey to find out the levels of toxins in her body and explores if she or anyone else can do anything to decrease toxins in the body. Soozie learned that hundreds of synthetic toxins are now found in every baby born in America, and the government and chemical corporations are doing little to protect citizens and consumers. With guidance from world-renowned physicians and environmental leaders, interviews with scientists and politicians, and stories of everyday Americans, Soozie uncovers how we got to be so overloaded with chemicals and whether we can control our exposure. Can we hit the reset button, or is it too late? Past Presentation

The removal of Endangered Species Act protections had been in the works for years and was the right thing to do when finalized in Trump’s last days, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Assistant Director for Ecological Services Gary Frazer told AP. On Friday, attorneys for the administration asked a federal judge in California to reject a lawsuit from wildlife advocate s that seeks to restore protections, signaling the conclusion of Biden’s promise on his first day in office to review the Trump move. But wolf management policies in place at the state level have shifted dramatically since protections were lifted, and Frazer suggested the federal government could take steps to restore protections if population declines put wolves back on the path to extinction.“Certainly some of the things we’re seeing are concerning,” he said.

Montana’s Republican governor has made it clear his state won’t be bothered to help in the fight against climate change. But he still wants federal assistance to deal with the climate impacts at Montana’s door. Last week, Gov. Greg Gianforte withdrew Montana from a bipartisan coalition of more than two dozen states committed to upholding the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which include net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Brooke Stroyke, a spokesperson for Gianforte, told Montana Public Radio that the governor believes innovation, not government regulation, is the solution to climate change.Two days later, Gianforte called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to declare a drought emergency across his state, which would make emergency funds available to farmers who have suffered losses.

Yet most governments propose to do nothing except “encourage” fishers and gear manufacturers to behave responsibly, without sanctions or incentives. No vessel should be allowed to leave port unless it has enough space to store all its rubbish. Mandatory deposit return schemes would ensure that fishers returned used gear to the manufacturers at the end of its life. All nets should be traceable to the boats that use them.

Florida’s artesian springs are a natural wonder of the world. As unique as the geysers of Yellowstone and as mesmerizing as Vernal Falls in Yosemite, these blue jewels surrounding the north Florida landscape are considered a treasure by many who see them. The state contains the largest and highest concentration of fresh water springs on earth. But today, the future of Florida’s springs is uncertain. With flow levels declining and nitrate pollution on the rise, the springs today bear the scars of a profound struggle. Florida's own government continues to approve permits for large companies that want to pump water from the springs and their springsheds, for nominal permit fees that often cost less than a day pass to Disney World. The Fellowship of the Springs takes viewers behind the scenes of the fight to save Florida's springs, from the halls of the state capitol in Tallahassee to deep caves of Ichetucknee spring. Now Playing

The U.S. Army released its first climate strategy this week, an effort to brace the service for a world beset by global-warming-driven conflicts. The plan aims to slash the Army’s emissions in half by 2030; electrify all noncombat vehicles by 2035 and develop electric combat vehicles by 2050; and train a generation of officers on how to prepare for a hotter, more chaotic world. It is part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to address climate change across government agencies, including at the Pentagon.“Climate change threatens America’s security and is altering the geostrategic landscape as we know it,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth wrote in a foreword to the strategy. “For today’s Soldiers operating in extreme temperature environments, fighting wildfires, and supporting hurricane recovery, climate change isn’t a distant future, it is a reality.”

With climate change and long-term drought continuing to take a toll on the Colorado River, the federal government on Monday for the first time declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, one of the river’s main reservoirs. The declaration triggers cuts in water supply that, for now, mostly will affect Arizona farmers. Beginning next year they will be cut off from much of the water they have relied on for decades. Much smaller reductions are mandated for Nevada and for Mexico across the southern border. But larger cuts, affecting far more of the 40 million people in the West who rely on the river for at least part of their water supply, are likely in coming years as a warming climate continues to reduce how much water flows into the Colorado from rain and melting snow.

President Biden will meet Wednesday with Cabinet officials and leaders from Western states, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, as he faces what could be another devastating year of wildfires with drought conditions worsening and searing temperatures spreading.The situation has alarmed experts and public officials, who warn that this year’s fire season could outpace last year’s, which was the worst on record. Blazes have already ignited around California, where dry vegetation has left large swaths of the state primed to explode into flames, even as the federal government struggles to hire firefighters.“We’re at a point where we’re simply going to be overwhelmed year after year going forward given the current systems we have in place,” said Jim Whittington, an expert in wildland fire response. “We really need to look at the way we staff and work wildland fires, the way we fund them, and the way we take care of our people. We need a full reset.”

Rather than merely build levees or weatherize homes, communities will purposefully move away from places threatened by floods, droughts, fires or high temperatures.This strategy is known as managed retreat. It is often considered an extreme option to be pursued only when no other alternatives remain. People don’t want to move from their homes, especially when environmental conditions, even if worsening, have not yet made life unlivable. Managed Retreat (United States, 18 min). Directed by Nathan Kensinger. By the end of this century, New York City is expected to have up to 9.5 feet of sea level rise, radically reshaping its 520 miles of coastline, and impacting more than 100 coastal neighborhoods. This film follows the demolition of the first communities to undergo a 'managed retreat' from Staten Island waterfront. Faced with rising sea levels, three New York City neighborhoods are purchased by the government, to be demolished and permanently returned to nature. Over the course of a year, seasons change, homes are destroyed, and wild animals begin to return. http://nathankensinger.com/managed-retreat/

Our tax system operates on the same “you figure it out” model, one that costs citizens 9 billion hours a year. Many other wealthy economies let their citizens know if they owe anything in taxes or send them prefilled forms to review once a year. The IRS could do that, but tax-prep companies’ lobbying and Congress’s disregard have maintained the miserable status quo... Even if we do not have a measure of the time tax itself, we have ample evidence of its effects. We know that millions of Americans do not receive the credits or benefits they qualify for. Taken as a whole, the time tax is regressive. Programs for the wealthy tend to be easy, automatic, and guaranteed. You do not need to prostrate yourself before a caseworker to get the benefits of a 529 college-savings plan. You do not need to urinate in a cup to get a tax write-off for your home, boat, or plane. You do not need to find a former partner to get a child-support determination as a prerequisite for profiting from a 401(k). The difference is so significant that, as shown by the Cornell political scientist Suzanne Mettler, many high-income people, unlike poor folks, never even realize they are benefiting from government programs.

Governments must halve emissions by 2030 if they intend the Earth to stay within the 1.5C “safe” threshold. But the latest set of national policies submitted to the UN shows emissions will merely be stabilised by 2030.

The world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society, scientists have said in what is in effect a final warning for governments on the climate.

Until now, in the decades-long war of flamingos versus frequent flyers, the flamingos have lost every round. But the European commission has weighed in, accusing the Spanish and Catalan governments of failing to protect the wetlands and warning against a proposed expansion of the airport.

Coral bleaching from rising sea temperatures has grown from isolated, regional events to a global threat. Duane began documenting increasing degradation of the ocean and he brought the issue to a larger audience with the hope that science and governments could save coral reefs, like a team of scientists working in Hawaii. Past Presentation

It’s the governmental and capitalist systems that have made life on the planet untenable. It’s abhorrent that the burden of environmental collapse falls first on the shoulders of young people and the global south, when oil corporations and countries like the United States carry an outsized responsibility for the crisis.

For decades Rick Desautel had been told by courts and governments that his people no longer exist in Canada. But Desautel and others in his community in Washington state have long argued that they are descendants of the Sinixt, an Indigenous people whose territory once spanned Canada and the United States.‍

With travel stalled for the past 10 months, its sustainable comeback has been a popular topic. Now with Covid-19 vaccines in distribution, and the prospect of travel reviving later this year, some travel operators, local governments and nonprofit organizations are walking the talk, with new eco-oriented programs, trips, transportation initiatives and preserves.

The researchers, part of a group of more than 14,000 scientists who have signed on to an initiative declaring a worldwide climate emergency, said in an article published in the journal BioScience on Wednesday that governments had consistently failed to address “the overexploitation of the Earth”, which they described as the root cause of the crisis.

What exactly is the connection between bats and coronavirus? And how has sheltering-in-place disrupted field research in California and beyond? State and local governments have set restrictions on bat research and rescue in an effort to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. Dr. Winifred Frick, chief scientist of Bat Conservation International, describes how the new restrictions have affected conservation efforts. Now Playing

This significant documentary explains the spectacular financialization of environmental conservation. If nature had a price, wouldn’t corporations and governments be less likely to destroy it? Wouldn’t putting a price on nature overturn what economist Pavan Sukhdev calls “the economic invisibility of nature”? Reality, of course, turns out to be rather more complex. What guarantees do we have that our natural inheritance will be protected? Should our ecological heritage be for sale? Is the best way to protect nature to put a price on it? Wouldn’t putting a price on nature overturn what economist Pavan Sukhdev calls “the economic invisibility of nature?” Past Presentation

Journey to the seemingly idyllic Hawaii, where communities are surrounded by experimental test sites for genetically engineered seed corn and pesticides sprayed upwind of homes, schools, hospitals, and shorelines. Discover what’s at stake for Hawaii from local activists, scientific experts, and healthcare professionals who explain the effects of environmental injustice. Join the international debate about pesticides and the movement to hold corporations and governments accountable for poisoning planet Earth. Jane Goodall: “I hope that this film is shown around the world, that it wins every prize out there, that it wakes people up and generates anger.” Past Presentation

Throughout the day and for the days that followed, temperatures in the desert city hovered close to historic highs, peaking at 116 degrees Fahrenheit (46.6 Celsius), and setting a new record for such dangerously hot weather so early in the year. Meanwhile, dust and smoke from nearby wildfires hung in the stiff hot air, casting a brown haze over the valley. “Nevada’s climate is changing,” the Nevada government’s Climate Initiativewebsite reports. “In fact, Nevadans say, they are already noticing and impacted by these changes. Climate change has come home.”

A documentary that examines the underground culture of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, illegal hiking adventurers (known as “stalkers”), extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the mysterious, ghostly landscape, where trees and forest animals have reclaimed land abandoned by villagers. Even as survivors continue to reckon with a dishonest government’s attempts to cover up the extent of the disaster, and as humanity faces new nuclear incidents in place like Fukushima, the Chernobyl site has turned into a bizarre tourist attraction, drawing seekers with a taste for the post-apocalyptic. (a Cultures Of Resistance film) Now Playing

"People worldwide have made their views clear," said Marco Lambertini, WWF International's director general. "The onus and opportunity is now on governments to adopt a global plastics treaty ... so we can eliminate plastic pollution." Nearly 90% of those surveyed said they supported a treaty, but it remains to be seen whether any such deal will focus on waste collection and recycling or take more radical measures such as curbing production and use of throwaway plastics. Reuters revealed last week that big oil and chemical industry groups were devising strategies to persuade conference participants to reject any deal that would limit production of plastic, which is made from oil and gas and a key source of their revenues.

Decades of mismanagement, environmental changes and a burgeoning population have created tensions for the 40 million people living on the shores of the world's second largest freshwater lake, Lake Victoria. Desperate fishermen use illegal nets and overfish the East African lake's dwindling stocks, while many fishermen have had to turn to other forms of work - much of which has a detrimental impact on the health of the lake and its residents. Lake Victoria: An Ecosystem in Turmoil follows some of those trying to eek out a living on the lake: a Kenyan fisherman who illegally crosses the border into Uganda in the search for fish; a Ugandan who gave up fishing to become a palm oil farmer; and a Tanzanian gold miner using mercury with his bare hands to extract the precious mineral from unregulated mines on the lake's shores. But how well do they comprehend the pressure that they’re putting on the lake, and can the regional governments and communities take action before irreversible damage happens? Now Playing

Embarking on an 800-mile walk across the state of Florida, Nicholas Vazquez is a 23-year-old climate activist using unconventional tactics to raise awareness for climate change.