An EPA Researcher Details the Agency039s Assault — Climate in Focus
A short Planet B dispatch on climate, environmental — the evidence, and why it matters for the work of restoration.
What happened
A development worth noting for anyone who believes the first Earth is the only one we get. The signal is a familiar Planet B truth: that climate is not a distant abstraction but a set of choices being made now.
The core of it: Air quality researcher Thomas Luben, who had worked at the agency for 18 years, was fired for objecting. The figures that anchor it — 18 years — are worth sitting with rather than scrolling past.
Why it matters for Planet B
Planet B reads this the way it reads everything: not as spectacle, but as material. Every fact like this is a reminder that restoration is ordinary work, done in ordinary places, by people who decided to look closer instead of away. The lesson travels.
Editorial note: this dispatch was drafted by Planet B's editorial engine (extractive) from public reporting by Yale Environment 360, then reviewed and approved by a human editor before publication.