Can California’s cap and trade address environmental justice? Julia Rosen Wed, 12/16/2020 – 01:30 Growing up in North Richmond, California, Denny Khamphanthong didn’t think much of the siren that wailed once a month at 11 a.m. every first Wednesday. The alarm is a test of the community’s emergency warning system, which has alerted residents to numerous incidents over the years at the nearby Chevron oil refinery. One accident there a 2012 fire sent a cloud of black smoke billowing over San Francisco Bay and left thousands of local residents struggling to breathe. Now, when Khamphanthong explains the sound to his young nieces, he sees the fear in their eyes. “I forget that this isn’t normal,” he says. Nor is the fact that Khamphanthong and most of his childhood friends carried inhalers. Richmond, a diverse, industrial city where housing prices and incomes have lagged behind its Bay Area neighbors, has poor air quality and some of the highest rates of respiratory
The 2021 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment
December 16, 2020
SEJournal looks ahead to key issues in the coming year with this 2021 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment special report. The report was formally launched Jan. 27, 2021, at an annual roundtable organized by the Society of Environmental Journalists, hosted virtually by National Geographic Society and co-sponsored by the Wilson Center. Check out the guide s various Backgrounders, TipSheets and WatchDog reports, an overview analysis and coverage of the roundtable:
2021 Guide Event Coverage
The Uinta Basin lies in the northeast corner of Utah and has seen oil and gas development since 1925. The proposed railway could take one of three potential routes – the favored of which would run through 390 acres of state lands and 401 acres of roadless U.S. Forest Service lands.
This story was originally published by the Guardian
as part of their two-year series, This Land is Your Land, examining the threats facing America’s public lands, with support from the Society of Environmental Journalists, and is republished by permission.
In July 2019, a proposed railway intended to shuttle fossil fuels across a mountainous corner of eastern Utah received a $28 million grant from a local, state-run community fund. The financing allowed the group behind the railway – the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition – to kick off a federally mandated environmental impact survey, that would need to be completed before construction could begin.