[posted by Valerie Volcovici and Roberta Ramtpon on Reuters, December 4, 2017] President Donald Trump on Monday shrank two wilderness national monuments in Utah by at least half in the biggest rollback of public land protection in U.S. history, drawing praise from pro-development lawmakers and a lawsuit from environmentalists. Trump’s announcement followed months of review by the Interior Department after he ordered the agency in...

[posted by Jone Stone on the Independent, November 30th, 2017] Italian authorities are using a Mussolini-era law to put an entire town under lockdown while they force through a gas pipeline against the wishes of the local community, activists have said. A so-called “red zone” was declared around Melendugno by the central government’s military police force this month, after months of protests against the effect of the Trans Adriatic...

[posted by Fanny Malinen and Steve Rushton on Equaltimes, November 15, 2017] A serious man dressed in gákti, a traditional Sami (also Sámi or Saami) costume, speaks on a video on Facebook. “This is a call for help,” he starts. “The governments of Finland and Norway are trying to make salmon fishing illegal for the Sami and give new fishing rights to rich people who have built cabins on our homeland. This is theft in...

[posted by Timothy Gardner on Reuters, November 30, 2017] Eni US could begin work on oil exploration in federal waters off Alaska as soon as next month after the Trump administration on Tuesday approved permits for leases the company has held for a decade, the Interior Department said. The department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, issued Eni US, a unit of Italy’s Eni, a permit to explore for oil from an artificial...

[posted by Brigham A. McCown on Forbes, November 21, 2017] The long delayed Keystone XL Pipeline project came a step closer to becoming a reality this week after the Nebraska Public Service Commission voted to approve the line, albeit with a strange twist. The commission failed to adopt the proposed corridor, leaving many to question the commission’s real motives. Keystone XL’s “preferred route” had been the subject of several federal...

[posted by Marked Leon Goldberg on UN Dispatch, October 27, 2017] Pollution is not just a nuisance. It can kill people–and by the millions. It also keeps countries worst affected by it poorer and unequal. A new study from The Lancet describes the severe, planetary-scale, harm caused by pollution. Some nine million people around the world die each year from pollution related causes. This is three times more deaths than AIDS,...