From The International Energy Agency:

The decline of arctic sea ice since 1980

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“[T]he frequency of coal retirements highlights the speed at which the nation’s utilities are changing the energy mix by replacing coal with natural gas and renewables, particularly wind. Few new coal plants are in the works to replace those that are being shut down...As a result of a confluence of factors, the coal industry’s decline has been a long time coming. The story of coal’s decline goes far beyond the false narrative that Trump and his EPA pick Scott Pruitt are advancing that points to EPA regulations as the sole reason for coal plant retirements.” - Devashree Saha and Sifan Liu

From USA Today:

U.S. Geological Survey data released Wednesday shows [Glacier National Park’s] 37 glaciers, along with two others on federal Forest Service land, have shrunk an average of about 40% since 1966... In fact, they'll all be gone within our lifetime, warns Daniel Fagre, a research ecologist with the USGS's Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center... Some masses deteriorated so much, they're no longer large enough to be considered glaciers, which must be at least 25 acres. Some of the glaciers lost up to 85% of their mass.

Protecting Global Biodiversity Hotspots

Map 1: Biodiversity hotspot regions. Biodiversity hotspots are defined as areas "[h]aving at least 1500 endemic plant species and having lost at least 70 per cent of their original habitat extent".

Map 2: Conservation targets. The Convention on Biological Diversity is a multilateral treaty seeking to safeguard global biodiversity. One target calls for protected areas, formal designations of land protected for conservation, so cover 17% of earth’s land area. This Map highlights biodiversity hotspot regions where at least 17% of land area is formally protected (blue-green), and biodiversity hotspot regions where less than 17% is formally protected (red-orange).

Map 3: Protected areas. Formal protected areas are shaded green. Dark green areas are protected areas that allow for use of natural resources (i.e. protected forests where sustainable logging is permitted, or protected grasslands where livestock grazing is permitted). Light green are strict protected areas (i.e. nature reserves, national parks and monuments, wilderness areas). Areas shaded red are biodiversity hotspot regions.

Source: ATLAS for the END of the WORLD

From National Geographic:

Four national monuments in the American West could be shrunk and six others opened up to permit more mining, grazing, logging, and commercial fishing if President Trump follows the recommendations of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke...

If enacted, the modifications would represent the most sweeping changes to existing national monuments by any sitting president — and are sure to set off a legal battle over presidential powers likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here are the threatened monuments:

Facing size reduction: 4. Cascade-Siskiyou, Oregon/California 12. Gold Butte, Nevada 13. Grand Staircase Escalante, Utah 14. Bears Ears, Utah

Facing management changes (mining, grazing, logging, fishing): 20. Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, New Mexico 21. Rio Grande del Norte, New Mexico 22. Katahdin Woods and Waters, Maine C. Pacific Remote Islands, south of Hawaii  D. Rose Atoll, by American Samoa E. Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, off the coast of Massahcusetts

Brad Plumer in the Washington Post explains a new study on the dramatic drop in carbon emissions in the U.S. over the past five years. This graph shows a hypothetical level of emissions that were projected based on trends from 1990-2005, compared to the actual level of emissions in 2012. It then breaks down the causes.

Plumer explains:

The recession and financial crisis, obviously, made a big difference. A weaker economy has meant less demand for energy — that was responsible for more than half the drop compared with business as usual.

Meanwhile, Houser and Mohan find the U.S. economy actually hasn’t become vastly less energy-intensive over time (the blue bar). Yes, overall efficiency has gone up — Americans are buying more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, etc. But the country is also no longer shedding manufacturing jobs as quickly as it was during the 1990s. So the amount of energy we use per unit of GDP has generally followed historical trends, improving only gradually.

The real change has come in the type of energy that the United States is using. The country is now relying more heavily cleaner forms of energy than it used to, and that explains about half of the fall in emissions

As the Trump administration rolls back Obama’s Clean Cars program, meant to increase the fuel efficiency of American cars and light trucks, demand for electric vehicles [EV] - both battery electric (BEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) - is soaring globally. 

But as Brad Plumer points out, a good deal of this growth is the result of policy meant to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles and build up EV infrastructure.

As a result, electric vehicles now make up more than 1 percent of sales in China, France, Denmark, and Sweden. They make up 9.7 percent of sales in the Netherlands, and 23 percent of sales in Norway, which offers some of the most generous tax incentives around, worth about $13,500 per car.

Coal's share of U.S. electricity generation has been steadily declining, a result of market forces, particularly the low price of natural gas and the expense of building new coal plants. Since throughout its life cycle coal is arguably our dirtiest fuel source (from mountaintop removal mining, to mercury and air toxics released during combustion, to carbon emissions, to hazardous coal ash), a move away from reliance on coal benefits public health, the environment and the climate.

Let's look at the false choice too often portrayed in the media and by politicians of jobs vs. the environment in the context of mountaintop removal mining (MTR). Coal companies claim that any efforts to stop or restrict MTR will cost jobs and devastate economies in Appalachia. Yet, the graph above shows that as coal production has increased, employment of coal miners has decreased. This is because MTR replaces coal miners with big machinery and explosives. The reason coal companies like it is because it increases profits, in part by decreasing labor costs. Thus, it is MTR, not efforts to protect the environment by restricting MTR, that is destroying jobs in the mountains of Appalachia