climate change

The grizzly bear will soon be delisted as an endangered species in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, according to a statement from the Department of the Interior. The area around Yellowstone National Park covers more than 20,000 square miles of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.

Nearly every article on food waste includes these stats: 40 percent of food in this country, worth $165 billion, is wasted each year. But a study from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Applied Economics says that those numbers are only estimates and may actually be inaccurate.

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that he supports the White House's proposal to cut his department's budget by $1.6 billion, saying "this is what a balanced budget looks like."

Almost a third of the world population is now exposed to deadly heatwaves that are a result of climate change, says a study published in Nature Climate Change.

The Advanced Biofuels Business Council told the Senate Environment Committee that year-round sales of E15 would widen the market for cellulosic ethanol, made from gasses and woody plants, reported DTN. At present, E15, a 15 percent mix of ethanol and gasoline, cannot be sold during the summer because of air pollution rules.

The Energy Department announced it would be disbanding the Office of International Climate and Technology, which was established in 2010 to help foreign countries lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who advocated U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, left Italy after a few hours of a two-day meeting of environment ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy industrialized nations.

In the wake of President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, California is teaming up with China and Germany to fight climate change.

The waters off the U.S. Pacific Coast are suffering from ocean acidification “hot spots,” says a new study of 600 miles of coastline. The study recorded some of the lowest pH levels ever found in surface water.

The European Union hopes to enlist American cities and states to lower greenhouse gas emissions, now that President Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate treaty, Reuters reports.

After President Trump withdrew U.S. participation in the Paris climate treaty, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged $15 million to help developing countries meet their goals under the agreement, says NPR.

Democratic lawmakers and farm activists criticized President Trump for his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty, saying it would result in harsher conditions for agriculture in coming years. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue shrugged off climate change as inevitable and said USDA was "committed to digging ever deeper into research to develop better methods of agricultural production in that changing climate."

Faced with climate change and cheap competition from countries like China, the American pine nut trade shows no signs of recovery. Long a staple food for Native American tribes in the Southwest, including the Navajo and Apache, 8 million pounds of pine nuts were wild-harvested in 1942, from New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona.

During brief exchanges with reporters, President Trump said he would announce "very soon" whether he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate treaty, adding, "I’m hearing from a lot of people, both ways." There were widespread reports that the White House has decided on withdrawal.

Starting this summer, the state of California will pay farmers to return nutrients to their soil that were lost to monocultures and tillage. The first of its kind in the country, California’s Healthy Soils Initiative will give growers grants to add “compost on rangelands or [seed] fields between harvests with so-called cover crops such as grasses and mustards, which add organic matter to the soil,” says The New York Times.

Peach orchards in Georgia and South Carolina will produce a meager harvest this year, the result of a warm winter followed by a hard freeze in the early spring, said the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "What does that mean for peach eaters in the Peach State? Probably only a shorter season," said the newspaper, as growers sell the fruit close to home and curtail out-of-state sales.

Seven out of 10 registered voters think the United States should stay committed to the Paris Climate Agreement, says a survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. What’s more, nearly half of Trump voters say the U.S. should participate.

During the last day of the G-7 summit in Italy, President Trump tweeted that he’ll decide later this week whether the U.S. will stay in the Paris Agreement, says the Los Angeles Times. The agreement, signed by almost 200 countries, including the U.S. under President Obama, calls for lowering greenhouse-gas emissions. It's widely supported by the other G-7 countries: Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Japan.