by #LyllaYounes in @grist:

"This week, the EPA abruptly terminated three of its highest-profile open civil rights complaints. The move deals a major blow not only to the majority-Black communities that filed them but also to the EPA’s own authority to enforce Title VI in places with some of the nation’s worst air quality. The cases originated in the region widely known as 'Cancer Alley,' an 85-mile industrial corridor in southeast Louisiana, and were voluntarily closed after the state’s Republican attorney general sued the federal government for alleged abuses of power during the complaint negotiations."

https://grist.org/equity/civil-rights-cancer-alley-louisiana-epa/

#EPA #CancerAlley #CivilRights #Louisiana #pollution #environment #AirQuality #regulation

by #LyllaYounes in @grist:

"Pakistan is still recovering from a flood that submerged a third of the country last September, killing nearly 1,700 people and displacing 8 million others. At the U.N. climate conference in November, the country’s climate change minister described the devastation and pressed wealthy nations establish a fund for 'loss and damages' — the financial losses borne by nations that are suffering the impacts of climate change but bear little responsibility for causing it (Pakistan has contributed to less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions)."

https://grist.org/extreme-weather/india-and-pakistan-are-bracing-for-a-mammoth-cyclone/

#India #Pakistan #cyclone #flooding #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #climate #Grist

by #LyllaYounes in @grist (published 6/8):

"City officials know where the most vulnerable New Yorkers live and should have done more this week to protect them, said Eddie Bautista, the executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works to advance environmental health in disadvantaged neighborhoods. He mentioned a program that his organization pushed the city to implement at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which distributed air conditioning units to low-income households so that they could stay cool and socially distant during heatwaves. He wondered aloud why local agencies did not take comparable measures this week, like quickly getting N95 masks to elderly people."

https://grist.org/extreme-weather/how-nyc-officials-failed-to-prepare-for-an-air-quality-crisis/

#wildfires #AirQuality #pollution #environment #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #climate #N95 #masks #weather

by #LyllaYounes in @grist:

"Like many coastal cities around the world, New York City is sinking. On a year-to-year basis, the rate of its descent into the Earth is practically imperceptible, but over time those millimeters add up: Today, the city is 9 inches lower than it was in 1950 — a number that has serious implications for waterfront neighborhoods that are having to reckon with increasingly extreme storms."

https://grist.org/climate-energy/new-york-public-housing-sinking-sea-level-rise/

#NewYorkCity #NYC #ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #climate #SeaLevelRise #subsidence #StormSurge #Brooklyn #Queens #Bronx #Manhattan #PublicHousing #NewYorkCityHousingAuthority #NYCHA #EnvironmentalJusticeAlliance