Big Oil has a filthy legacy in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. One prominent environmentalist said: “They are moving out and leaving all the mess behind.”

​Every time we buy gasoline for our cars, every time we purchase something made of plastic, we are a little bit responsible for this.  Everything is connected to everything else. - NYTimes

Pollution in the rivers has led to reduced numbers of fish, and the ones that are caught are smaller and sometimes contaminated with oil, according to the fisherwomen.  ->

Oceanside’s annual harbor dredging and the occasional regional sand replenishment projects are not enough to save the city’s eroding beaches, a new study shows.  A proposal to build rock groins on the beach appears to be the best way to stop or at least slow the steady erosion that has been chewing away the city’s coastline since the 1940s, according to the study prepared for Oceanside by the Long Beach-based consulting firm GHD.  “Sand from this (harbor dredging) program does little to really benefit the city beaches,”  -San Diego Union

If some politicians are to be believed, taking sweeping action to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement would be calamitous for jobs in the energy sector. But a study suggests that honouring the global climate target would, in fact, increase net jobs by about 8 million by 2050. The study – in which researchers created a global dataset of the footprint of energy jobs in 50 countries including major fossil fuel-producing economies – found that currently an estimated 18 million people work in the energy industries, which is likely to increase to 26 million if climate targets are met. - Guardian

Years of recreational shooting left hazardous levels of lead in the soil of a parcel of land in the White Tank Mountains, and the site west of Phoenix will remain closed for three more years for cleanup.  The area was shuttered to recreational shooting after a pregnant woman was killed by a stray bullet more than three years ago.  The multimillion-dollar remediation effort comes as Buckeye aims to lease the land from the federal Bureau of Land Management for a park. It's an area that public safety officials previously describe as "a mess" because of the number of people shooting at all hours, in all directions. - AZ Central

The Skagit River runs about 150 miles through what is now British Columbia into northwest Washington, from the Cascade Mountains to Puget Sound. Along the way, three major hydroelectric dams owned by the city of Seattle — Ross Dam, Diablo Dam and the Gorge Dam — block the river’s flow. Now, as part of a once-every-few-decades federal relicensing process, the ecological alterations caused by those dams are being re-examined by scientists and regulators. The license renewal is exposing other changes, too, including how Indigenous nations are increasingly asserting their sovereignty and rights. Looked at from one angle, this regulatory process is simply a bureaucratic hoop Seattle must jump through to keep using the Skagit River to generate power. From another, however, it’s a chance to reconsider the value of the river itself. The relicensing process has triggered many different conversations on the Skagit’s future; this is one of a pair of stories that focus on a few of them. - HCN

The United States relies on a complex mix of energy sources to fuel the country’s various end-sectors’ energy consumption. While this energy mix is still dominated by fossil fuels, there are signs of a steady shift to renewable energy over the past decade. This radial Sankey diagram using data from the EIA (Energy Information Administration) breaks down U.S. energy consumption in 2020, showing us how much each sector relies on various energy sources. - Visual Capitalist

Portions of the Amazon rainforest are now emitting more carbon dioxide than they absorb — a troubling sign for the fight against climate change, a new study suggests.  Deforestation and an accelerating warming trend have contributed to change in the carbon balance, which is most severe in the southeastern region of the Amazon, where there are both rising temperatures and reduced rainfall in the dry season. The most affected regions have warmed by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit during the dry season in the last 40 years, comparable to the changes seen in the rapidly-warming Arctic. - NYTimes

Last summer’s relentless, 100-degree heat and compounding drought killed a record 520 people in Arizona — twice the total deaths reported nationally from hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, severe storms and floods, and a significant increase from the past decade, when heat-related deaths in Arizona never went above 283. With this summer already dangerously hot, researchers are sounding the alarm about a heat-vulnerable community that has been historically disregarded because of where they live: substandard, aged mobile homes.- Washington Post 

The collapse of the condominium building in Surfside, Florida, may force what some say is a long overdue conversation about the hard realities of climate change that will transform one of the nation’s most vulnerable regions.  To be sure, no evidence has emerged so far to connect climate change to the middle-of-the-night collapse of the Champlain Towers on June 24, which buried residents in the rubble. Sea level has risen eight inches in South Florida since 1981, when the 12-story condo was built—not enough to be responsible for its collapse, says Hal Wanless, a University of Miami geologist and South Florida’s preeminent voice on sea-level rise.  The investigation so far is more focused on a confluence of events including delays by the homeowners association in carrying out recommended repairs and an environmental danger that’s been known for more than a century: the corrosive effects of salt water on coastal construction. - National Geographic