President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he reversed bans on offshore drilling in vast parts of the Arctic Ocean and dozens of canyons in the Atlantic Ocean, a U.S. judge said in a ruling that restored the Obama-era restrictions. U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in a decision late Friday threw out Trump's executive order that overturned the bans that comprised a key part of Obama's environmental legacy.

LA Times journalist and historian Scott Martelle blames American consumers for a significant increase in carbon emissions last year. Noting that alternatives to gas-powered vehicles have insufficient infrastructure and endurance, he says voters need to put more pressure on their representatives to use government to shift the markets away from products that are killing us.

Officials began to clean up a massive oil spill Friday that dumped nearly 800,000 gallons of oil and water into a California canyon, making it larger — if less devastating — than the state's last two major oil spills. The newly revealed spill has been flowing off and on since May and has again stopped, Chevron spokeswoman Veronica Flores-Paniagua said. She and California officials said the spill is not near any waterway and has not significantly affected wildlife. The last flow was Tuesday.

In a dramatic rollback of environmental oversight, President Donald Trump took action Thursday to clear the way and speed up development of a wide range of commercial projects by cutting back federal review of their impact on the environment.

Poland Spring announced Monday a plan to use 100% recycled plastic for all its noncarbonated water containers, a move that comes amid growing concern about plastic pollution. The Maine-based company said the effort kicks off this month with 1-liter bottles. By 2022, the company plans to use 100% recycled plastic for bottles in all of its still water lines. A niche product called Poland Spring Origin also uses 100% recycled plastic bottles.

"Thousands of scientists around the world joined together last month to label climate change the 'emergency' that it is. But one of the main points they make — linking control of women’s reproduction to environmental goals — is problematic," says columnist Kelsey Holt. "Focusing on what women in poor nations with the highest birth rates can do to curb climate change distracts from holding wealthy countries and corporations accountable for their disproportionate harm to the planet and imperils the right to reproductive autonomy.

Flying into the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Midway Atoll appears out of the vast blue Pacific as a tiny oasis of coral-fringed land with pristine white sand beaches that are teeming with life. But on the ground, there's a different scene: plastic, pollution and death. Here's a look at the island.

Unspoiled rivers in the Balkans are facing new dangers from small hydropower plants that have sprouted up across the region in recent years, environmental experts warned Thursday. In a declaration issued after a meeting in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, they urged Balkan governments to halt any further construction of hydro dams. "We want everybody to see that it is bad, and it is wrong and that we are devastating our natural beauties," said Irma Popovic Dujmovic, from World Wide Fund for Nature Adria group.

The sightlines at Wrigley Field, the panorama from Navy Pier, the vantage points at the Adler Planetarium observatory — all structures built more than 100 years ago — are at least 4 inches lower now. In the northern United States and Canada, areas that once were depressed under the tremendous weight of a massive ice sheet are springing back up while others are sinking. The Chicago area and parts of southern Lake Michigan, where glaciers disappeared 10,000 years ago, are sinking about 4 to 8 inches each century.

Climate change issues — and, more specifically, demands by Democratic activists for policies grouped under the label of a Green New Deal — are fast becoming a marquee issue in the 2020 presidential race. Increased voter anxiety over the warming planet and a deft marketing campaign by progressive activists have pushed candidates to take positions substantially bolder and louder than those of past elections. A recent poll found the idea of a Green New Deal has the support of 81 percent of registered voters, including nearly two-thirds of Republicans; and the Brookings Institution recently produced data showing that some of the regions at most risk of suffering economically from climate change are also the places most fiercely resistant to addressing it.