State rules to prevent significantly excessive profits by FirstEnergy and other Ohio utilities would be loosened by language slipped into Ohio’s massive two-year budget bill. [node:read-more:link]
Much of the debate concerning the ESA surrounds the role of economics, which plays an obvious role in determining the congressional budget allocations used to administer and implement the ESA. The ESA faces well-documented funding shortfalls (Miller et al., 2002; Stokstad, 2005), which may undermine the effectiveness of ESA recovery efforts (Ferraro, McIntosh, and Ospino, 2007) and have caused the number of species proposed for listing to outpace listing decisions, leading to backlogs (Stokstad, 2005). [node:read-more:link]
Loss of biodiversity stems from human activity, report says.* Wide transformation of economic systems needed-report says. Study is the work of 145 expert authors from 50 countries. Report echoes conclusions of U.N. climate change panel. [node:read-more:link]
Economists in the Agriculture Department's research branch say the Trump administration is retaliating against them for publishing reports that shed negative light on White House policies, spurring an exodus that included six of them quitting the department on a single day in late April. [node:read-more:link]
USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) announced that dairy producers who had coverage under the Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy), which provided payments to producers when the price of milk fell below the feed costs to produce it, are eligible to receive a repayment for part of the premiums paid into the program. [node:read-more:link]
America’s biggest milk maker is running out of options as milk consumption continues to decline in the U.S. Dean Foods Co.’s sinking sales also have been hurt by big customers such as Walmart Inc.opening their own dairy plants to help guarantee their own supply. The dairy company’s sales last year of $7.8 billion were down 38% from a decade ago.Shares in Dean Foods have lost around 60% of their value this year, and the Dallas-based company’s $141 million market value is about 5% of what it was worth a decade ago. [node:read-more:link]
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s plan to relocate the Economic Research Service outside the Beltway has triggered a brain drain of veteran economists, amid staff complaints the administration is cracking down on research that doesn’t align with White House priorities. [node:read-more:link]
Someone had shot an undercover video on his dairy. “I’ll always remember that day, Nov. 9, 2017,” Larson recalls. “We really didn’t have any warning. By the time she emailed it to me it was already online. Boy, it was rough. The initial reaction when I first saw it, I was just gut shot. I literally didn’t eat anything for 24 hours. I just wanted to throw up.”Larson’s phone was blowing up with calls, and he couldn’t keep track of them all. There were so many that he couldn’t even get a call in to his office. [node:read-more:link]
Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded. [node:read-more:link]
Over the next two years, Washington plans to lend $14.44 million and give another $7.11 million to public agencies, tribes and businesses to bring high-speed internet to rural areas and Indian reservations. [node:read-more:link]
