Portside

The new law is aimed at protecting the Central American nation’s environment and natural resources. Approved on March 29 with the support of 69 lawmakers from multiple parties (out of a total of 84), the law blocks all exploration, extraction, and processing of metals, whether in open pits or underground. It also prohibits the use of toxic chemicals like cyanide and mercury.

Mustafa Ali is stepping down from his position as head of the environmental justice program at the EPA after a 24-year career at the agency. There appear to be no plans to replace him amid reports that the Trump administration is targeting deep cuts in EPA's environmental justice and other efforts.

The crisis at Oroville Dam should be a wake-up call to take these warnings seriously, though it’s hardly the first.

The evidence is pretty clear: the transition team's policies are problematic and unprecedented. So much so that at least some Trump administration officials have backed away from them once they became the subject of news stories.

What our communities need so intensely right now are real examples of a vision for a new culture and society, right in their own neighborhoods. They need to be able to touch and feel and experience them and also experience building them as participants in our democracy.

Why did so many veterans take up the cause of the Native Americans and environmentalists at Standing Rock? My own reasons are rooted in western Pennsylvania’s coal country, where I grew up.

An issue of this magnitude clearly isn’t down to a few shady companies.

The department of the Army will not approve an easement that will allow the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe. The following statement was released by Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II.

The United Nations Earth Summit in 1992 took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was supposed to establish guidelines for sustainable development. At the Summit, then Cuban President Fidel Castro gave a speech (short), warning of the dire consequences of failing to reverse course. Castro long warned that capitalism was threatening to destroy human civilization through ecological destruction, with the poor of the global South its first victims. Speech reprinted below.