15 Apr 2025

US to counter China’s “dominance” of rare earth minerals   Image description: Black and gold computer processor against a black background. Image by Pete Linforth / Pixabay   The Trump administration is drafting an executive order to enable the stockpiling of deep-sea metals to counter China’s dominance in battery minerals and rare earth supply chains, […]

02 Jul 2024

The US Department of Commerce and NOAA has announced $16.7 million in funding across 12 awards to support the development of innovative new technologies and public-private partnerships focused on sustainability, equity, biodiversity and climate adaptation. “To tackle climate change nationwide, we have to better understand and manage our coasts,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina […]

09 Dec 2020

FEMA ends policy favouring flood walls over green protections The Federal Emergency Management Agency has taken a dramatic step to encourage communities to use environmentally friendly features such as wetlands for flood protection instead of building sea walls and levees. A new FEMA flood policy released late last month with no public announcement is drawing praise from […]

09 Aug 2017

  Bob Earll:   For my generation George Orwell’s books ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’ were key reading and masterpieces of how words and communication were controlled for the good of the state. Although this is nothing new and Ian Hislop’s Orwell lecture highlighted that in the time when they were written Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were […]

25 May 2016

Senate committee passes water reuse bill The Environment and Public Works committee of the United States senate has passed new legislation to support water reuse and critical investment in water infrastructure. The Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), passed on 28 April 2016, is the main vehicle for authorising water projects to be developed by the […]