news

Biodiversity Loss Deserves Attention

1/30/2012

Biodiversity loss is probably a challenge that is often ignored as climate change looms. Currently the world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate, further, it is currently seeing the sixth mass extinction.

The previous mass extinction occured 65 million years ago, and was caused by ecosystem changes, changes in atmospheric chemistry, impacts of asteroids and volcanoes. For the first time in history, the current extinction is called by the competition for resources between a single species Homo sapiens and all others.

1/23/2012

Just because your motor oil looks black doesn’t mean it’s time for a change. Changing your oil too frequently hurts the environment but has no impact on your vehicle’s efficiency.With advancements in vehicle and oil technologies, it is not only possible but recommended for many vehicles to go longer between oil changes without compromising your vehicle’s engine or sacrificing performance.

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New Site Helps Hoosiers Protect Waterways

1/16/2012

INOurWater.org tells stories and shares aerial photos of both polluted and clean waterways in Indiana. There are about 8 stories on the site now and multiple photos that highlight issues resulting from pollution from CAFOs, coal plants, agriculture and fertilizer use. By sharing stories of how water quality affects people across the state, we hope to demonstrate the critical role clean water plays in Hoosiers’ daily lives and build support for the policies and practices that will improve water quality in Indiana.

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2nd Chance For Christmas Trees

1/2/2012

The gifts have long since been opened, the turkey leftovers are gone, and the eggnog has been drunk. For those who purchased real Christmas firs or pines, the tree may be looking a bit droopy or thin. How to dispose of it?

Luckily, creative and eco-friendly recycling options abound around the country. With alternatives like turning Christmas kindle into kilowatts and creating fish farms from firs, locally tailored recycling can ensure that the tree keeps on giving after its retirement.

12/28/2011

Want to live greener on less green in 2011? Start with your New Year's Eve party.

12/20/2011

What’s the best way to get a person to do something? Make them compete for it. That’s how Opower, a company that sends a comparative energy bill that lets you see how much power you use versus people in similar houses, has helped drastically reduce power use among its users. But what’s better than competing with random, faceless strangers? Competing with your friends. That’s why Opower is about to roll out a new plan that lets you add your utility bills to Facebook to see if you can use less than your network.

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Interactive Map Tracks Extreme 2011 Weather

12/12/2011

2011 has been a year of unparalleled extremes: 14 disastrous weather events in the US so far this year have resulted in over a billion dollars in property damage – an all-time record breaking number – and their estimated $53 billion price tag doesn’t include health costs. As shown recently, in a first-of-its-kind study published in the journal Health Affairs¹, when health-related costs of extreme events are calculated, the total tally increases substantially and will likely continue to climb due to climate change. 7 of the 2011 extreme events – a record-high number – are the type expected to worsen due to climate change.

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Water Bottle Tracks Your Eco Karma

12/5/2011

I dutifully sort my recycling, shun Styrofoam, and buy biodegradable detergent. And while I wouldn’t consider doing otherwise, sometimes these efforts feel like casting a vote in the 2000 presidential election: for naught. I might have a different outlook if I could see the aggregated impact of these small gestures over time--how many trees I’ve saved, for instance, by recycling the Sunday paper (or by switching to a digital subscription).

That’s the logic behind a brilliant conceptual project by Artefact’s director of industrial design, Fernd Van Engelen, who wanted to quantify the impact of using a reusable water bottle: How much money did he save? How many plastic bottles didn’t end up in a landfill as a result of his choice? “I tried to do the mental math,” Van Engelen writes. “And of course, I wasn’t quite able to put a number to it.”

11/28/2011

Millions of people in the Philippines live in (relative) darkness. The cost of electricity is beyond the means of many, so residents of poorer communities resort to candles or kerosene lamps, which pose serious health and fire hazards.

Using electricity 24 hours per day, something most of us take for granted, raises a household’s expenses by approximately 40 percent. In a country where the average income ranges from minimum wage to less than $1 a day, this added expense isn’t seen as crucial.

However, there’s an incredibly simple solution that’s both greener and safer.

The Solar Bottle Bulb was originally developed by students at MIT and spearheaded by Mac Diaz, the innovative founder of MyShelter Foundation. It uses plastic water bottles and a little bleach to bring light to the darkness.

11/22/2011

A funny thing has happened in the way well-meaning greenies talk about the earth. Call it the Al Gore effect: Faced with so many climate skeptics who deny the reality that 99% of scientists back global warming, the greenies typically resort to more and more wonkish sorts of communication. As if proving the climate skeptics wrong were simply about showing more and more data.

The result, of course, is that the well-meaning message becomes harder and harder to comprehend. It seems to me that there's no convincing people who've already made up their minds. Instead, you need to reach people who simply haven't paid attention.

Something like this is going on in a rather nice little series of videos by the World Wildlife Fund. The first urges you to think about the connection between your plate, and the resources required to grow all that food:

11/14/2011

A study by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) predicts a dramatic reduction in polar bear habitats over the next 10 to 50 years, due largely to global warming.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species assesses Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) as Vulnerable, with trends that suggest the population is decreasing. Polar Bears rely almost entirely on the marine sea ice environment for their survival, so much so that large scale changes in their habitat will have a devastating impact on the population.

“Now is the time to act in order to save the waning polar bear population,” says Dag Vongraven, Chair IUCN/Polar Bear Specialist Group, Norwegian Polar Institute. “If we fail to make a stand to save this species we risk having the population become severely decimated, and quite certainly they will have disappeared from many areas where they’re found today.”

11/7/2011

Birds tend to be small creatures on average. SF State scientists, working with researchers from PRBO Conservation Science and the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory who collected the data, found that birds' wings have grown longer and birds are increasing in mass over the last 27 to 40 years. What's making the birds bigger? The researchers think that the trend is due to climate change, but their findings put a twist in the usual thinking about climate change and body size.

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Why Population Matters to the Environment

10/31/2011

Environmentalists agree on the issues facing us, including collapsing diversity, climate change and resource insecurity. We also agree on the causal factors, including pollution, invasive species, resource over-exploitation, waste, population growth, global industrialisation, unsustainable consumption and poor business practices.

Solutions are harder. None will solve all our problems and all face obstacles and opposition. Technological solutions, such as biofuels, fracking, shale oil, GM foods and nuclear have side effects, while renewables have limited scope. Environmentally conscious lifestyles, including less waste, travel and consumption, are increasingly adopted, but the impact may by limited given the billions seeking to improve their low living standards. Changes to corporate and governmental practices have occurred, but are far from universal, particularly in the developing world.

10/24/2011

Global temperature rise could exceed "safe" levels of two degrees Celsius in some parts of the world in many of our lifetimes if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, two research papers published in the journal Nature warned.

"Certain levels of climate change are very likely within the lifetimes of many people living now ... unless emissions of greenhouse gases are substantially reduced in the coming decades," said a study on Sunday by academics at the English universities of Reading and Oxford, the UK's Met Office Hadley Center and the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

"Large parts of Eurasia, North Africa and Canada could potentially experience individual five-year average temperatures that exceed the 2 degree Celsius threshold by 2030 -- a timescale that is not so distant," the paper said.

10/17/2011

OFFICES, HOMES, STARBUCKS and DUNKIN’ DONUTS NATIONWIDE — You’ve all seen them. You may have one in your home. Maybe there’s one in the breakroom at your workplace. They are easy to use, require almost no maintenance or cleaning and can have you sipping your morning joe before you can say “America Runs on Dunkin’.”

The Keurig single-cup coffee brewer is perhaps the best example of American lust — almost exclusively sated at the expense of the environment — for all things cheap and convenient.

10/10/2011

The trees spanning many of the mountainsides of western Montana glow an earthy red, like a broadleaf forest at the beginning of autumn. But these trees are not supposed to turn red. They are evergreens, falling victim to beetles that used to be controlled in part by bitterly cold winters. As the climate warms, scientists say, that control is no longer happening.

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A Medical Metaphor for Climate Risk

10/5/2011

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/a-medical-metaphor-for-climate-risk-including-the-risk-of-overreaction/?ref=greenhousegasemissionsPaul C. Stern, the director of the National Research Council committee on the human dimensions of global change, has been involved in a decades-long string of studies of behavior, climate change and energy choices.

This is an arena that is often attacked by foes of cuts in greenhouse gases, who see signs of mind control and propaganda. Stern says that has nothing to do with his approach, as he made clear in “Contributions of Psychology to Limiting Climate Change,” a paper that was part of a special issue of the journal American Psychologist on climate change and behavior:

Psychological contributions to limiting climate change will come not from trying to change people’s attitudes, but by helping to make low-carbon technologies more attractive and user-friendly, economic incentives more transparent and easier to use, and information more actionable and relevant to the people who need it.

9/26/2011

President Barack Obama swiped at Texas Gov. Rick Perry, criticizing him as "a governor whose state is on fire, denying climate change."

Obama also poked at the audience reactions at recent GOP presidential debates, singling out those who cheered at the prospect of someone dying because he didn't have health insurance – and those who booed a gay service member.

The president said "that's not reflective of who we are."

9/19/2011

Yale University has created a new poll based report, Politics & Global Warming, which describes how Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and members of the Tea Party respond to the issue of global warming. The results come from a nationally representative survey of 1,010 American adults, aged 18 and older, conducted April 23 through May 12, 2011. The samples were weighted to correspond with US Census Bureau parameters for the United States. The study shows majorities of Democrats (78%), Independents (71%) and Republicans (53%) believe that global warming is happening. By contrast, only 34 percent of Tea Party members believe global warming is happening, while 53 percent say it is not happening. While 62 percent of Democrats say that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, most Tea Party members say it is either naturally caused (50%) or isn’t happening at all (21%)

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Japanese Wind Turbine Triples Power Output

9/9/2011

Necessity, as we’ve all been told can sometimes be the mother of invention. In Japan, there is a necessity for a power source that does not require fossil fuels, since they don’t have any. So the Japanese invested heavily in nuclear power, which, at the moment, is looking like a tenuous investment given the recent Fukushima meltdown. Fortunately, they did not put all their eggs in one basket, either. In fact, researchers at Kyushu University, which houses the International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research, had a hunch that the answer just might be blowin’ in the wind, if only they could squeeze a little more out of it than what conventional technology would allow.

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Environmentalists Stung by Obama on Clean Air

9/6/2011

For environmental groups, it was the final hard slap that brought a long-troubled relationship to the brink. In late August, the State Department gave a crucial go-ahead on a controversial pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Then on Friday, leading into the holiday weekend, the Obama administration announced without warning that it was walking away from stricter ozone pollution standards that it had been promising for three years and instead sticking with Bush-era standards.

8/25/2011

In July, at the Association for Computing Machinery’s MobiSys conference, researchers from MIT and Princeton University took the best-paper award for a system that uses a network of smartphones mounted on car dashboards to collect information about traffic signals and tell drivers when slowing down could help them avoid waiting at lights. By reducing the need to idle and accelerate from a standstill, the system saves gas: In tests conducted in Cambridge, Mass., it helped drivers cut fuel consumption by 20 percent. Cars are responsible for 28 percent of the energy consumption and 32 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, says Emmanouil Koukoumidis, a visiting researcher at MIT who led the project. "If you can save even a small percentage of that, then you can have a large effect on the energy that the U.S. consumes," Koukoumidis says.

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Ride-sharing App Changes the Way We Commute

8/19/2011

The seemingly never-ending rise in gas prices has made ridesharing seem less like an opportunity for awkward small talk with a coworker and more like an easy way to save cash. For drivers and riders who don't have easy access to a carpooling buddy, there is a growing group of ridesharing smartphone apps that can help (and in some cases, earn drivers some extra gas money in the process). Jut this week, ridesharing stalwart Zimride announced that it is opening itself up beyond college campuses. Take a look at some of the most promising rideshare apps (including Zimride).

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How Much Will Warming Raise Seas?

8/15/2011

Scattered across the world's largest island, as big as Alaska and California combined and 80 percent covered by ice, small bands of specialists tended to GPS sites and automatic weather stations, drilled down into the island's frozen cap, and analyzed the air and clouds overhead, working long hours under the midnight sun.

All this is to help begin answering a crucial question: How much of Greenland's ice will melt, and how quickly, in a world growing warmer and warming fastest in the Arctic?

If all the ice eventually slipped into the ocean, it would be enough to raise global sea levels by 23 feet. Even a fraction of that would inundate Bangladesh and south Florida, drown small islands, threaten cities as widely dispersed as Shanghai and New York.

8/8/2011

Creating crops with deeper roots could soak up much more carbon dioxide from the air, help mankind fight global warming and lead to more drought-tolerant varieties, a British scientist says in a study.

Douglas Kell of the University of Manchester says crops can play a crucial role in tackling climate change by absorbing more of mankind's rising greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Doubling root depth to two meters would also make crops more drought resistant, improve soil structure and moisture, store more nutrients and reduce erosion, Kell says in the study published online in the Annals of Botany journal.

Plants use carbon dioxide (CO2) and sunlight to grow and carbon is stored in the roots and leaves. Deeper and more bushy roots would store more carbon underground.

8/1/2011

Made from a mixture of clay, compost, and seeds, seedbombs are a great way to combat the many forgotten grey spaces you encounter everyday: from sidewalk cracks, to vacant lots and parking medians. They can be thrown anonymously into these abandoned urban sites to reclaim and transform them into places worth looking at and caring for. They can also be tossed into your home garden.

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More Polar Bear Cubs Die as Arctic Ice Melts

7/19/2011

Polar bear cubs forced to swim long distances with their mothers as their icy Arctic habitat melts appear to have a higher mortality rate than cubs that didn't have to swim as far, a new study reports.

Polar bears hunt, feed and give birth on ice or on land, and are not naturally aquatic creatures. Previous reports have noted individual animals swimming hundreds of miles (kilometers) to reach ice platforms or land, but this is one of the first to show these swims pose a greater risk to polar bear young.

"Climate change is pulling the sea ice out from under polar bears' feet, forcing some to swim longer distances to find food and habitat," said Geoff York of World Wildlife Fund, a co-author of the study

7/15/2011

Sen. Dick Lugar has named the Indianapolis Zoo’s energy team, consisting of Norah Fletchall, Paul Grayson, Mike Sanderson, Tim Savona, Mike Teague, and Claudia Willis, a Lugar Energy Patriot.

The Indianapolis Zoo’s energy team has been an advocate for saving money through energy conservation for years.

Through research and planning, the Indianapolis Zoo’s energy team has generated millions in savings for the Indianapolis Zoo and implemented programs for sustainable energy.

7/13/2011

How deep is the ocean's capacity to buffer against climate change?

As one of the planet's largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.

But whether the ocean can continue mopping up human-produced carbon at the same rate is still up in the air. Previous studies on the topic have yielded conflicting results, says University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Galen McKinley.

6/27/2011

Although scientists say innumerable species are threatened by climate change, polar bears have been the global symbol of the movement to reign-in greenhouse gas emissions. This is perhaps not surprising, since polar bears are well known to the public—even though they inhabit a region largely absent of humans—and they make a big impression. Their glaringly white coat contrasts with their deadly skills: as the world's biggest terrestrial predators, they are capable of killing a seal with single blow. When young they are ridiculously adorable, but when adults they are stunning behemoths. But that's not all. Unlike many other species, the perils of climate change are also easy to visualize in connection with polar bears: their habitat is literally melting away.

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Time to Wave the Green-Spangled Banner

6/23/2011

I'm a whiny liberal film-maker who has spent the past four years making Carbon Nation, a documentary about climate change solutions that doesn't even care if you believe in climate change. I know climate change is real and happening, but you don't have to agree with me to see the benefits of clean energy. A low-carbon economy is also a national security issue, a great business opportunity, even just a way to keep families together. As The New York Times writer Thomas Freedman says in the movie: "It's the most patriotic thing you can be, do, think or feel today. Green is the new red, white and blue."

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Supreme Court Blocks Climate Change Lawsuit

6/20/2011

The Supreme Court blocked a federal lawsuit Monday by states and conservation groups trying to force cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The court said that the authority to seek reductions in emissions rests with the Environmental Protection Agency, not the courts. The ruling was 8-0.

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Thinning Snows in Rockies Tied to Climate Change

6/15/2011

The snowpack in the Rocky Mountains has been gradually thinning over much of the past century, and a new study attributes much of that to global warming.

This year is a notable exception — unusually heavy snowfall throughout the Rockies this winter has caused a lot of flooding and water-management headaches downstream. But taking the long view, the trend is toward less and less snow.

And snowpack in the Rockies isn't simply of interest to skiers and snowmobilers. "Over 70 million people are dependent on this water," says Greg Pederson of the U.S. Geological Survey in Bozeman, Mont. "This water feeds the Columbia River, the Missouri and the upper Colorado, as well as the Rio Grande."

6/6/2011

It's Saturday night, and you want to catch the latest summer blockbuster. You do a quick Google search to find the venue and right time, and off you go to enjoy some mindless fun.

Meanwhile, your Internet search has just helped kill the planet. Depending on how long you took and what sites you visited, your search caused the emission of one to 10 grams of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

Sure, it's not a lot on its own — but add up all of the more than one billion daily Google searches, throw in 60 million Facebook status updates each day, 50 million daily tweets and 250 billion emails per day, and you're making a serious dent in some Greenland glaciers.

6/1/2011

The rare metals that go into clean technology are already in short supply. Without a way to get them out of our old electronics, we could run out before we know it.

Try as we might, it's impossible to fashion wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles out of thin air. These technologies are complex, and many different materials go into their production. The problem is, a lot of the necessary metals aren't recycled at the end of their lives--and that could lead to shortages in the future, putting the entire clean technology sector at risk.

5/27/2011

The Save the Redwoods League is partnering with Google Earth Outreach and iNaturalist.org to connect citizens and scientists in an effort to track the effects of climate change on redwood trees and forests.

Redwoods have a relatively limited natural range, beginning in central California and spreading north through southern Oregon. Less than five percent of California’s original two million acre coast redwood forest remains, and giant sequoias are now found only in seventy-seven groves of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These majestic trees can live to be thousands of years old, grow hundreds of feet tall, and are among the planet’s largest and most ancient life forms.

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LED Bulbs Hit 100 Watts as Federal Ban Looms

5/23/2011

Two leading makers of lighting products are showcasing LED bulbs that are bright enough to replace energy-guzzling 100-watt light bulbs set to disappear from stores in January.

Their demonstrations at the LightFair trade show in Philadelphia this past week mean that brighter LED bulbs will likely go on sale next year, but after a government ban takes effect.

5/16/2011

At the national level, the Chicago Zoological Society’s (CZS) Brookfield Zoo has spearheaded a first of its kind Climate Literacy Initiative through a network of 15 Association of Zoos and Aquariums- accredited institutions around the country. Together they will educate the masses about perhaps our most pressing environmental concern.

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Climate Scientists Told to Stop Speaking in Code

5/9/2011

Scientists at a major conference on Arctic warming were told Wednesday to use plain language to explain the dramatic melt in the region to a world reluctant to take action against climate change.

An authoritative report released at the meeting of nearly 400 scientists in Copenhagen showed melting ice in the Arctic could help raise global sea levels by as much as 5 feet this century, much higher than earlier projections.

James White, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, told fellow researchers to use simple words and focus on the big picture when describing their research to a wider audience. Focusing too much on details could blur the basic science, he said: "If you put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it will get warmer."

5/5/2011

Renewable energies such as wind or solar power are set to surge by 2050, and expected advances in technology will bring significant cost cuts, a draft United Nations report showed on Wednesday.

The most comprehensive U.N. overview of the sector to date said renewables excluding bioenergy, which is mainly firewood burned in developing nations for cooking and heating, could expand by three to 20 times by mid-century.

4/25/2011

Almost 700 people died from heat-related stress during the catastrophic 1995 heat wave in Chicago, Illinois. The three-day weather event saw 24-hour mean average temperatures of 87.2°F; the heat reached triple digits on two days, and there was little relief at night.Many people succumbed to heart attack and dehydration, while others collapsed during severe episodes of existing respiratory conditions. The death toll in the summer of 1995 gave Chicagoans a clear picture of how a surge in hot weather can affect human health.

A decade later, Mayor Richard Daley launched an extensive program that brought together city agencies, academics, and scientists to develop a Climate Change Action Plan to help reduce the city’s contribution to climate change. Much of the plan focuses on sustainable mitigation actions such as planting trees and training workers to install renewable energy technologies. Within that plan, however, is a climate change adaptation strategy with a goal of preparing the city and its residents for future unusual weather events associated with climate change.

4/14/2011

Playgrounds and play structures are meant to give children an outlet for their energy. In exchange for all of that energy, the kiddos get to have fun and, if you’re lucky, they might just get to bed on time. This playground, designed by You Song Young, Jin Soo Yeon, Ahn Ho Sang, and Lee Sung Jae, is a bit different in that it is designed to take kids’ energy and give something back in the form of education as well as entertainment. It’s part jungle gym, part science experiment and all about entry level lessons in the world of renewable energy. Hyundai engineering and construction calls it the “Natural Energy Park” and the concept landed the company a highly coveted Red Dot design award in the green category.

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Tweaking the Climate to Save it: Who Decides?

4/4/2011

To the quiet green solitude of an English country estate they retreated, to think the unthinkable.

Scientists of earth, sea and sky, scholars of law, politics and philosophy: In three intense days cloistered behind Chicheley Hall's old brick walls, four dozen thinkers pondered the planet's fate as it grows warmer, weighed the idea of reflecting the sun to cool the atmosphere and debated the question of who would make the decision to interfere with nature to try to save the planet.

"If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist," said Kenyan earth scientist Richard Odingo. "But I worry."

3/23/2011

The Great Recession appears to have had a big – and negative - impact on Americans’ sympathy for Mother Earth.A Gallup pool released last week found that Americans are prioritizing economic growth over the environment by the widest margin in nearly three decades.The poll found that 54 percent of Americans think economic growth should be given priority over environmental protection, while 36 percent thought the environment should be given the top priority.

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The Greening of the American Brain

3/14/2011

It's a question whispered by climate scientists and pondered by environmental activists: why don't they believe us? When the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fourth assessment on climate science in 2007the one that called evidence of warming temperatures "unequivocal" — it seemed as if the scientific debate over global warming was essentially over. There would be disputes over how best to lower carbon emissions, how much money should be devoted to adaptation and just how severe future warming might be. But surely, we were done arguing about whether man-made carbon emissions were making the planet hotter.

Apparently we're not. The past few years have seen a marked decline in the percentage of Americans who believe what scientists say about climate, with belief among conservatives falling especially fast.

3/7/2011

If you've ever enjoyed the sight of polar bears, this story is for you because you're about to see them as you never have before. For this, you can thank the ice-breaking work of John Downer, a British filmmaker who has spent the last two years getting to know them.

It wasn't easy: polar bears frequent the most forbidding part of the planet. It's tough to get there, and once you do, it's really cold. Polar bears are also difficult to spot - white on white is not easy on the eye.

3/2/2011

Google on Monday was among investors pumping $42 million into a climate change inspired technology startup that calculates the chances of crops being ruined by weather.

WeatherBill launched Total Weather Insurance in 2010 as a way for US farmers protect themselves against being devastated by weather, which the US Department of Agriculture blamed for 90 percent of crop losses last year.

2/25/2011

It’s always great to see a large company taking steps to reduce waste, which is why I’m very excited about the release of the new compostable SunChips bag.

Frito-Lay had high hopes when it first released the compostable SunChips bag last year, but one issue prevented the bag from being popular with consumers: its high level of noise. While customers loved that the bag was 100% biodegradable, it just didn’t seem to be worth the pain released on their eardrums. At one point, an Air Force Pilot even said that the bag created more noise than the cockpit of his jet.

2/23/2011

Climate change is forcing a lot of people--50 million by 2020, to be exact--to skip town, prompting the world's scientists, farmers, filmmakers, and urban planners to frantically seek out ways to accommodate environmental refugees.

At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting this weekend, scientists warned about looming food shortages and other climate change-induced migration catastrophes. "When people are not living in sustainable conditions, they migrate," said UCLA Professor Cristina Tirado.

2/16/2011

As he prepares to introduce a major energy bill, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) told lawmakers on Wednesday that they can find common ground on the issue of energy security.

Lugar addressed the Alliance to Save Energy on Wednesday, saying now is a time to “prioritize what can unite.”

“I remain optimistic about what can be achieved,” Lugar said. “Progress will require uniting Americans behind a political consensus on the direction of our energy future.”

2/7/2011

Seward’s 26th Annual Polar Plunge had a special guest participant this year, one of the world’s foremost authorities on polar bears who brought a slideshow presentation to the Liberty Theater on polar bears in the Arctic, their behavior, eating habits, and their plight in the age of global climate change. He also brought along a message of hope.

After plunging into the harbor waters, Dr. Steven Amstrup looked refreshed and ebullient. He later told his audience that the water in Resurrection Bay that it had felt colder to him than some of the other places that he has plunged or swum—including the Barent’s sea at the northern most city in Norway, and Davis Strait at the SE shore of Greenland.

2/3/2011

Ladies, let's face it. Many of us have bras in our drawer that just simply don't fit correctly, that we've hardly worn, or that we just plain don't like anymore. We can't throw them away because they were so darn expensive, so they just sit in our drawer taking up room. So why not clean out and put them to good use by recycling them?

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Lugar Calls for Highly Visible Energy Initiative

1/26/2011

Indiana Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today called on the Obama Administration to shift its attention from the divisive issue of reducing carbon emissions to a comprehensive campaign to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. “The President should say unequivocally that the United States is going to achieve a particular goal or goals related to overcoming our oil dependence,” Lugar told the 1st Annual Clean Energy Summit in Washington sponsored by the Clean Economy Network Education Fund.

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Why Are We Using Up the Earth?

1/24/2011

The United Nations expects the population to grow by mid-century to more than 9 billion people; that's two more Chinas. The world adds about 70 million people each year, twice as many as live in California.

Meanwhile, populations of fishes, amphibians, mammals, reptiles and birds have declined about 30% worldwide since 1970, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The last extinction wave this severe snuffed the dinosaurs.

We're pumping freshwater faster than rain falls, catching fish faster than they spawn. Forty percent of tropical coral reefs are rapidly deteriorating; none of the rest are considered safe. Forests are shrinking by about an acre per second.

1/20/2011

Pyrite, also known as fool’s gold, was the stuff of heartbreak for many a gold miner. Mimicking the look of the precious gold they were after, Pyrite was considered essentially worthless. But for the solar energy industry, Pyrite just may turn into a pot of gold.

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Defense of CO2 Rules Top Priority

1/17/2011

Defending new regulations on the emission of greenhouse gases will be a top priority for the Obama administration this year as challenges emerge, a senior U.S. Justice Department official said on Thursday.

The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered states to begin issuing greenhouse gas permits that would allow emissions by the biggest polluters such as oil refineries, coal-burning power plants and cement and glass makers, prompting lawsuits.

1/13/2011

High speed rail is considered the holy grail of mass transit planning, and touted as a necessity for advanced economies. America is often derided for not having any high speed rail networks, while other advanced nations in Europe and Asia have them well established. A new report from the group America 2050 outlines the areas of the United States which have the greatest potential to support a high speed rail network.

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Dust Levels in Atmosphere Contribute to Climate Change

1/10/2011

The amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere has doubled over the last century, according to a new study; and the dramatic increase is influencing climate and ecology around the world.

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The Paradox of Efficiency

1/6/2011

Several thousand officials from 194 countries just gathered in Cancún, Mexico, for yet another global climate summit. Dissatisfied with the pace of climate diplomacy, many individuals are now wondering what they can do about climate change on their own.

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Italy Bans Plastic Shopping Bags

1/3/2011

Italy, one of the top users of plastic shopping bags in Europe, is banning them starting January 1, with retailers warning of chaos and many stores braced for the switch.

Italian critics say polyethylene bags use too much oil to produce, take too long to break down, clog drains and easily spread to become eye sores and environmental hazards.

Italians use about 20 billion bags a year -- more than 330 per person -- or about one-fifth of the total used in Europe, according to Italian environmentalist lobby Legambiente.

12/29/2010

2010: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… for the environment.

For every success in Nagoya (yay!), there was at least one major coral bleaching event (boo!). Solar panels on the White House roof? Great! But what about that that oil spill?

The Nature Conservancy’s lead scientist, Sanjayan, shares his “best and worst” moments of the year (in no particular order).

12/23/2010

Republicans poised to take power in Congress are planning a rapid attack against a climate change initiative the Obama administration wants to launch on January 2, according to members of the Senate and House of Representatives.

Their resolve could harden further after President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency announces a second layer of regulation, possibly as early as Thursday, ratcheting up Washington's fight against global warming.

12/21/2010

Every year brings new accounts of coral bleaching in the tropical oceans. Even the largest living structure on Earth, the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, is under threat. According to marine scientist, J.E.N.Veron, in a couple generations coral reefs will no longer exist, unless humans find a different way to live and allow this fragile ecosystem to recover.

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NASA Releases Global Warming Maps

12/17/2010

NASA has released a new analysis of temperature change. The map shows temperature anomalies for 2000-2009 and 1970-1979 relative to a 1951-1980 baseline. To conduct the analysis, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) uses "publicly available data from 6,300 meteorological stations around the world; ship-based and satellite observations of sea surface temperature; and Antarctic research station measurements."

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Then and Now: Changing Landscapes

12/13/2010

Taking photos from the same vantage point years apart has been used to study changes in the landscape since the late 19th century. The technique got its start as a way to document the retreat of European glaciers.

For 50 years, the U.S. Geological Survey has been building an archive old photos of desert landscapes and revisiting the sites to take new photos. The result is the largest collection of repeat photography in the world.

Some of these sets of photos appear in a new book about the technique and the effects of climatic variation and land-use that it can document. We have a few of the most interesting repeat photographs in this gallery that show changes such as the retreat of glaciers seen above, the birth and death of cactus forests, the excavation of ruins and the shifting of a river channel.

12/9/2010

Beetles killing trees in North America, blue tongue disease ravaging livestock in Europe, and borers destroying African coffee crops are examples of migrating invasive species not getting enough attention at global climate talks, scientists said on Wednesday.

Invasive pests have plagued agriculture and nature for thousands of years as mankind's migrations brought them to places without natural enemies. But the price tag to battle them, now estimated at $1.4 trillion annually, may go up as rising temperatures and more storms and floods unleash species to new areas.

12/6/2010

Community leaders managing a fragment of ancient Mexican jungle say their approach to logging precious hardwoods protects rare jaguar and may guide nearby U.N. climate talks seeking a forest blueprint.

Community forest management means giving land ownership to local villagers, so that they harvest timber with an eye on the future and damage the forest less than industrial logging concessions which typically last 20 or 30 years.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are gathered in Mexico's Cancun beach resort, 155 miles north of the Noh-Bec forest community, where they are trying to design an extra incentive to reward careful foresters.

12/3/2010

Planting more reflective versions of crops could cool regional temperatures in summertime, reducing the impact of increasing global temperatures in these areas, according to ongoing research. Increasing the reflectivity of crop plants by 20 percent could decrease temperatures in a given area by about one degree Celsius (1.8 degreesFahrenheit), said Joy Singarayer of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

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Color-coded Sustainable Shopping Guide

11/30/2010

Humans are well-intentioned but lazy creatures; give us a long-winded report about sustainable retailers and we will quickly forget about it. Give us a printable, color-coded guide telling us what brands to avoid and it just might make an impact. Climate Counts, a non-profit that rates companies once a year on their voluntary efforts to mitigate climate change, hopes to do just that with its Striding Shopper campaign.

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Taking Climate Education to the Streets

11/24/2010

The Alliance for Climate Education, a non-profit based in Oakland, has created a hip, multi-media presentation spiced with animation and rock music to reach teens. Think An Inconvenient Truth goes MTV. The alliance has shown it to more than 420,000 high schoolers across the nation in the past year. The presentation teaches teens the basics about climate change and urges them to “do one thing” to fight it.

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Global Coral Bleaching Worst Ever Seen

11/22/2010

Coral reefs are a foundation for a healthy ocean ecosystem, serving as home for a wide variety of plants and animals. Coral communities play a vital role across the entire food chain, from the tiniest creature right up to humans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that healthy coral reefs generate up to $375 billion annually in food, jobs, and tourism.

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No Ice on Hudson Bay Yet

11/19/2010

It’s the second week in November and the weather is warm in Churchill: above freezing, with rain—not snow—in the forecast.

“There’s no ice on Hudson Bay, and there’s no ice north of us, either. To venture a guess, we’re still a month away from freeze-up, although weather conditions can change quickly—and that’s what we’re hoping for.” --Dr. Andrew Derocher, PBI Advisory Council scientist.

11/15/2010

With a tense pilot gripping the stick, the helicopter hovered above the water, a red speck of machinery lost in a wilderness of rock and ice.

To the right, a great fjord stretched toward the sea, choked with icebergs. To the left loomed one of the immense glaciers that bring ice from the top of the Greenland ice sheet and dump it into the ocean.

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Over 2,000 People Have Pledged to Go "Up 2, Down 2"

11/11/2010

The Indianapolis Zoo is proud to announce that as of November 1, 2010, over 2,100 people have taken the pledge to go “Up 2, Down 2,” which equates to a reduction in carbon emissions of over 4.2 million pounds! The simple act of turning your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter can save the average family $100 per year on utility bills and reduce CO2 emissions by 2,000 pounds per year.

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Hate Big Government? Try Global Warming.

11/8/2010

The best science available suggests that without taking action to fundamentally change how we produce and use energy, we could see temperatures rise 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States by 2090. These estimates have sometimes been called high-end predictions, but the corresponding low-end forecasts assume we will rally as a country to shift course. That hasn’t happened, so the worst case must become our best guess….

Today’s conservatives would do well to start thinking more like military planners, reexamining the risks inherent in their strategy. If, instead, newly elected Republicans do nothing, they will doom us all to bigger government interventions and a large dose of suffering – a reckless choice that’s anything but conservative.

11/5/2010

A U.S. judge on Thursday asked the Obama administration to clarify whether polar bears are endangered, a listing that ultimately could be used to force polluters to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan asked the Interior Department for more information on whether the bears, which are losing Arctic sea ice habitat due to global warming, could be considered endangered instead of merely threatened.

11/1/2010

Call it a DNA digital Dewey Decimal System for all life on Earth.

Every species, from extinct to thriving, is set to get its own DNA barcode in an attempt to better track the ones that are endangered, as well as those being shipped across international borders as food or consumer products.

Researchers hope handheld mobile devices will be able to one day read these digital strips of rainbow-colored barcodes -- much like supermarket scanners -- to identify different species by testing tissue samples on site and comparing them with a digital database.

10/29/2010

Argentina enacted a new law that protects the country's glaciers, in a global context where climate change threatens the large bodies of ice and there are risks of different polluting activities.

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World's Largest Solar Plant Gets US OK

10/26/2010

Calling it a major milestone, the Obama administration on Monday approved what investors say will be the world's largest concentrated solar power plant and one that more than doubles all of U.S. solar output and can power at least 300,000 homes.

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PepsiCo to Cut CO2 Emissions by 50%

10/22/2010

International drink and snack giant PepsiCo has vowed to cut the carbon emissions and water consumption of its UK operations by 50 percent in five years.

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"We Are Destroying Life on Earth," Says UN Conference

10/20/2010

A U.N. biodiversity conference aims to address a simple problem: "We are destroying life on Earth," said the head of the U.N. Environment Program.

The world cannot afford to allow nature's riches to disappear, the United Nations said on Monday at the start of a major meeting to combat losses in animal and plant species that underpin livelihoods and economies. The U.N. cited the worst extinction rate since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, saying it's a crisis that needs to be addressed by governments, businesses and communities.

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Peter Goldmark: "My Generation Has Failed."

10/14/2010

“What we need more than anything else is a mass movement of young people,” Peter Goldmark, director of EDF’s Climate and Air Program, who recently announced his retirement at the end of the year. “In American culture, it is youth that sets the agenda. It’s always been this way. Think who was driving change in the anti-Vietnam war movement, in the civil rights era. They have to mobilize, now, and demand action against global warming.”

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Plastic Solar Cells

10/12/2010

Physicists at Rutgers University in New Jersey have discovered new properties in a material that could result in efficient and inexpensive plastic solar cells for electricity production.

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Fifth of World's Plants Endangered

9/30/2010

One in five of the world's 380,000 plant species is threatened with extinction and human activity is doing most of the damage, according to a global study published on Wednesday.

Scientists from Britain's Botanic Gardens at Kew, London's Natural History Museum and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), found that more than 22 percent of species were endangered, critically endangered or vulnerable.

"The single greatest threat is conversion of natural habitats to agricultural use, directly impacting 33 percent of threatened species," the report said.

9/20/2010

Tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the sea ice they normally rest on has melted.

U.S. government scientists say this massive move to shore by walruses is unusual in the United States. But it has happened at least twice before, in 2007 and 2009. In those years Arctic sea ice also was at or near record low levels.

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Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Third Lowest Level

9/17/2010

Arctic sea ice melted over the summer to cover the third smallest area on record, US researchers said Wednesday, warning global warming could leave the region ice free in the month of September 2030.

Last week, at the end of the spring and summer "melt season" in the Arctic, sea ice covered 4.76 million square kilometers (1.84 million square miles), the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center said in an annual report.

9/14/2010

As an advertisement aimed at a specific demographic, I think it's quite clever. I would give it an A. I'm giving it another '+' for the response it's provoking in the anti-science, pro-pollution crowd.

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3D Mapping Reveals Climate Impact of Logging

9/9/2010

Scientists using a combination of satellite imagery, airborne-laser technology, and ground-based plot surveys to create three-dimensional high resolution carbon maps of the Amazon rainforest have documented a surge in emissions from deforestation and selective logging following the paving of the Trans-Oceanic Highway in Peru.

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Top Climate Skeptic Reverses Course

9/3/2010

Bjørn Lomborg may not be a household name around here, but that's through no fault of his. In November 2001, this Danish environmental author and economics professor was selected "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum. Lomborg was selected as one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people of 2004. In June 2002, Business Week named Lomborg one of the "50 Stars of Europe" in the Agenda Setters category. The magazine noted, "No matter what they think of his views, nobody denies that Bjørn Lomborg has shaken the environmental movement to its core."

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Journal About Climate Change to Launch in 2011

8/31/2010

Launching in April 2011, Nature Climate Change will be a monthly journal providing in-depth coverage of the impacts and wider implications of the Earth's changing climate.

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Pakistan's Climate Change Floods, Seen From Above

8/27/2010

A series of satellite photographs conveys the epic scale of the floods sweeping through Pakistan, leaving millions homeless and the world aghast at an extreme weather disaster that experts consider the new normal.

8/24/2010

We live in a watery world, with the average American lifestyle fueled by nearly 2,000 gallons of H2O a day.

What may come as a surprise is that very little of that—only five percent—runs through toilets, taps, and garden hoses at home. Nearly 95 percent of your water footprint is hidden in the food you eat, energy you use, products you buy, and services you rely on.

Find out your water footprint, then pledge to dry it out, joining other nationalgeographic.com users who have already committed to saving thousands of gallons.

The more we save, the more water we leave for healthy ecosystems and a sustainable future.

8/20/2010

Thermographic infrared maps are being used in Antwerp, Belgium to put the spotlight on buildings' energy consumption, Reuters reports.

The birds-eye view offers residents the ability to compare their energy conservation with that of their neighbors, and often prompts those with poor findings to seek out home remodeling efforts that will better conserve energy, such as new insulation.

8/16/2010

The floods battered New England, then Nashville, then Arkansas, then Oklahoma — and were followed by a deluge in Pakistan that has upended the lives of 20 million people.

The summer’s heat waves baked the eastern United States, parts of Africa and eastern Asia, and above all Russia, which lost millions of acres of wheat and thousands of lives in a drought worse than any other in the historical record.

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Hollywood Greens Up with Environmental Database

8/13/2010

Television and movie makers have no excuse for not jumping on the "green" movement bandwagon. A new website with resources on everything from recycling sets to cruelty-free mascara makes it simple to do so.The Producers Guild of America on Wednesday unveiled www.greenproductionguide.com -- a database of environmentally-friendly products and services from vendors across the United States.

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Indiana State Fair Includes Climate Change Exhibit

8/10/2010

The Indiana State Fair will include a Purdue University science lesson tackling the hot topic of climate change. Fairgoers visiting the "Altered Earth" exhibit can learn how humans are contributing to climate change and how they can help reduce global warming.The display will explore climate, weather and global warming with the "Climate Kids."

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Not Enough Hours in the Day for Endangered Apes

8/6/2010

A study on the effect of global warming on African ape survival suggests that a warming climate may cause apes to run 'out of time'. The research, published today in Journal of Biogeography, reveals that rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns have strong effects on ape behavior, distribution and survival, pushing them even further to the brink of extinction.

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Here Come the Electric Cars: "Leaf" and "Volt"

8/3/2010

The Plug-In 2010 Conference in San Jose was the site of major announcements by major auto manufacturers Nissan and General Motors

. During their Tuesday morning speeches last week, both Nissan North America’s executive vice president, Carlos Tavares, and General Motors vice president of U.S. marketing, Joel Ewanick, announced that their much-anticipated products would be available in only a limited number of cities, at first, and that both companies will begin delivering cars by the end of the year.

Even though there are many similarities and differences, both Nissan and GM are betting that U.S. auto buyers will embrace the plug with open arms. The Leaf and the Volt are the first mass-market plug-in electric vehicles to be sold in the U.S. The LEAF is a "pure" battery-electric vehicle, or BEV, and has no gasoline motor whatsoever. Its range is approximately 100 miles.

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Warming of Oceans Will Reduce and Rearrange Marine Life

7/30/2010

The warmth of the ocean is the critical factor that determines how much productivity and biodiversity there is in the ocean, and where. In two separate studies, researchers found that warming oceans have led to a massive decline in the amount of plant life in the sea over the last century, and that temperature is tightly linked to global patterns of marine biodiversity.

7/27/2010

Continued climate change will drive Mexican farm workers to migrate to the United States in greater numbers, environmental experts predicted on Monday.For every 10 percent of lost crop yields, 2 percent more Mexicans will leave and most will try to come to the United States, Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University in New Jersey and colleagues predicted.

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Transitioning to Cool Roofs

7/22/2010

In the effort to slow the pace of global warming, researchers and policy makers are encouraging the use of lighter colors for rooftops and streets worldwide. Dark, non-reflective surfaces which are common for asphalt and asphalt shingles, absorb heat from the sun and create a "heat-island" effect, plus a greater need for air conditioning. Lighter surfaces would reflect the sun’s rays back to outer space, reducing ground-surface temperatures and overall energy requirements.

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World Simmers in Hottest Year So Far

7/19/2010

The world is enduring the hottest year on record, according to a U.S. national weather analysis, causing droughts worldwide and a concern for U.S. farmers counting on another bumper year.

For the first six months of the year, 2010 has been warmer than the first half of 1998, the previous record holder, by 0.03 degree Fahrenheit, said Jay Lawrimore, chief of climate analysis at the federal National Climatic Data Center.

7/16/2010

In June the average sea ice extent in the Arctic was the lowest on record for that month, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Measured by satellites, the seasonal movements of Arctic ice have been tracked since 1979 with a dramatic decline observed over the last 30 years. This decline is linked by experts to climate change.

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Sierra Club's Guide to Carbon Offsets

7/12/2010

You’ve seen it in the news: Celebrities are flying all over the globe in private jets, then assuaging their guilty consciences by paying a fee to a company to “offset” their emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering greenhouse gases. Or maybe you’ve passed a Hummer on the highway with a bumper sticker reading, “My vehicle is carbon neutral.” If that’s not galling enough, there are reports of some of the carbon-offset companies making obscene profits and contributing less than 20% of revenues to emissions-reduction projects. So are carbon offsets nothing but “greenwash”?

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British Report ClearsClimate Scientists of Exaggeration

7/8/2010

Leading climate scientists on Thursday welcomed a British report that cleared researchers of exaggerating the effects of global warming and said they hoped it would restore faith in the fight against climate change.

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Starbucks Program Recycles Cups into Napkins

7/5/2010

This fall, stores in Chicago will start sending used cups to a Green Bay, WI, paper mill, where a Georgia Pacific facility will turn them into napkins. The program will start small but is a significant step to address the company’s devouring of 3 billion paper cups

and 1 billion plastic cups annually. Starbucks wants recycling at all of its stores by 2015 and the company's leadership is focusing on two approaches: first, recycling bins at all of its stores, and second, finding a market for all those dirty cups that otherwise end up in a landfill.

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Conroller Gives Smart Homes a Command Center

7/1/2010

Cisco has made a big push into the smart grid industry recently, first with two pieces of substation gear for utilities and now with a home energy display that allows users to monitor power use. The Home Energy Controller--Cisco's first piece of equipment for smart meter-equipped homes--will be tested this summer with Duke Energy customers in Charlotte, North Carolina and Cincinnati, Ohio.

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More Fraud Within the Clean Development Mechanism

6/29/2010

A consortium of North American and European activists have demanded sweeping changes to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) after charging that up to one-third of all CERs ever sold may have been illegitimate.

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Telepresence Could Cut CO2 Emissions by 5.5 Million Tons

6/25/2010

According to a new study of large companies using telepresence technology, U.S. and U.K. businesses that substitute some business travel with telepresence can cut CO2 emissions by nearly 5.5 million metric tons in total — the greenhouse gas equivalent of removing more than one million passenger vehicles from the road for one year — and achieve total economy-wide financial benefits of almost $19 billion, by 2020.

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The Risk of Afghanistan's Resources

6/23/2010

The New York Times, in a front-page story last week, reported that $1 trillion worth of minerals was buried in the mountains of Afghanistan. Geologists, Afghan officials and mining companies stand ready to launch a modern-day gold rush.

Before everyone charges in, however, we need to recognize the risks and rewards inherent in these resources.

6/18/2010

You've heard about it for years now—everyone’s interested in being green. But do you really know how your personal choices are adding up? What about the choices of your fellow citizens? What behaviors are people adopting globally that have a positive impact on environmental sustainability? What has changed—and what hasn’t—in the past few years?

This is the third year National Geographic has partnered with GlobeScan to develop an international research approach to measure and monitor consumer progress towards environmentally sustainable consumption. The key objectives of this unprecedented consumer tracking survey are to provide regular quantitative measures of consumer behavior and to promote sustainable consumption.

6/14/2010

An Australian restaurateur fed up with the waste left by diners has ordered her customers to eat everything on their plates for their sake of the earth or pay a penalty and not return.

Chef Yukako Ichikawa has introduced a 30 percent discount for diners who eat all the food they have ordered at Wafu, her 30-seat restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, that describes itself as "guilty free Japanese cuisine."

6/9/2010

The latest proposal to deal with energy and global warming came Wednesday from Senator Richard Lugar, a moderate Republican from Indiana, whose plan seeks to cut energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions without creating a new market in carbon credits or taking a big bite out of the economy.

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Lemurs Offer Clues to Global Warming Impact

6/8/2010

Global warming may present a threat to animal and plant life even in biodiversity hot spots once thought less likely to suffer from climate change, according to a new study from Rice University.

Research by Amy Dunham, a Rice assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, detailed for the first time a direct correlation between the frequency of El Niño and a threat to life in Madagascar, a tropical island that acts as a refuge for many unique species that exist nowhere else in the world. In this case, the lemur plays the role of the canary in the coal mine.

6/4/2010

With a simple Google search, Iain Douglas-Hamilton knows that victory in his five-decade fight to save his beloved elephants remains uncertain.On the Internet, one can find ivory knife handles, $45; ivory gun grips, $600; ivory elephant tusks, $18,500.

Twenty-one years after a worldwide ban on ivory trade helped stop the slaughter of African elephants, the demand for ivory seems to be making a comeback -- prompting some African countries to propose the sale of tons of stockpiled ivory, while giving poachers a new incentive to slaughter elephants for their valuable tusks.

"Their existence is hanging on a thread," said Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of Save the Elephants, who today will be named the winner of the 2010 Indianapolis Prize for conservation, which includes a $100,000 award -- the largest gift of its kind in the world.

6/1/2010

At the Oslo Climate and Forest Conference in Norway on Friday, over 50 developed and developing countries signed a "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation" (REDD) partnership, committing to spend over $4 billion in the next three years to reduce emissions from deforestation activities.

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Powering the Earth

5/28/2010

Ever wondered how much CO2 the world emits from the power it uses? Take a look at this interactive graph. It shows you each region's population, their electrical consumption, and CO2 emissions.

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Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons

5/25/2010

Last month hundreds of environmental activists crammed into an auditorium in London to ponder an anguished question: If the scientific consensus on climate change has not changed, why have so many people turned away from the idea that human activity is warming the planet?

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Redford Calls for Clean Energy Now

5/21/2010

In a powerful new ad released today by NRDC, Robert Redford describes with candor the true nature of the Deepwater Horizon crisis and calls on President Obama to show bold leadership on clean energy and climate solutions for America.

“The Gulf disaster is more than a terrible oil spill,” he explains. “It's the product of a failed energy policy...one that puts oil company profits ahead of people and the environment.”

5/18/2010

The U.S. could miss out on 100,000 clean energy manufacturing jobs by 2015 and 250,000 by 2030 if current industry trends continue, according to a new report by the Apollo Alliance and Good Jobs First. The report, Winning the Race: How America Can Lead the Global Clean Energy Economy, estimates that 70 percent of the nation’s renewable energy systems and components are currently being manufactured abroad.

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Brick Could Reduce World's CO2 Emissions by 800 Million Tons/Year

5/13/2010

Metropolis magazine has announced the winner of its 2010 Next Generation contest: A brick that doesn't have to be baked or fired, but rather, can be grown.

The Next Generation contest awards designs that tackle the world's problems, and the humble brick is a Big Problem. As our own Suzanne LeBarre writes:

Tossing a clay brick into a coal-powered kiln, then firing it up to 2,000°F, emits about 1.3 pounds of carbon dioxide. Multiply that by the 1.23 trillion bricks manufactured each year, and you’re talking about more pollution than what’s produced by all the airplanes in the world.

5/10/2010

Think that in order to go green, the changes to your lifestyle must be extreme? Think again! This eye-opening half-hour reality series makes shrinking your ecological footprint appealing and virtually effortless.

5/6/2010

The world can be a thoroughly depressing place. It seems like bad news is all we ever get, like oil spills destroying wildlife, killer hurricanes, economic collapse, and terrorists with bombs in their underwear. However, bad news is not always so bad. It motivates us to act, to learn from our mistakes, and eventually become better for it. Good news does not teach us anything, except how much better good news feels than bad news. However, it offers a glimmer of hope, a reminder that hard work can actually show results. Yesterday, we received that good news from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent federal statistics and analysis agency. They reported that the US achieved a record setting seven percent decline in CO2 emissions in 2009.

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Plan B: California Braces for Climate Change

5/4/2010

When it comes to environmental regulation, California doesn’t wait for the Feds to ride in and lay down the law. The Golden State led the way on mandating emissions-control equipment in motor vehicles in 1961. It pioneered tailpipe-emissions standards in 1967 and ratcheted them up into the 1990s, prompting the federal government to follow. When the Environmental Protection Agency proved reluctant to tighten fuel-economy standards, California outmaneuvered it in 2002 by limiting carbon dioxide from cars. That decision achieved the same end — and was the first move in the United States to control greenhouse gases.

4/29/2010

In another display of the sea change that has occurred at the US Environmental Protection Agency under the current administration, a new report was issued yesterday regarding indicators of climate change. The report, entitled "Climate Change Indicators in the United States," measures 24 separate indicators showing how climate change affects the health and enrivonment of US citizens.

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Good Bacteria Eat Bad Greenhouse Gas

4/27/2010

A small rectangular window on the front of the fermenter shows bubbling liquid inside. If it is clear, then that means it is only solution. If it is foggy, then bacteria have been added. Today, the liquid looks milky grey. It fizzes and froths as the correct amount of air and methane is added, which grows and feeds the bacteria inside.

This solution is more than just bacterial soup; it could hold the answers to some of the world's most complex problems, including how to mitigate global warming and how to clean up toxic waste in the environment.

4/23/2010

Forty years ago, when Sen. Gaylord Nelson launched the first Earth Day, the United States was an environmental disaster area. Air pollution was unchecked — cars and factories filled our skies with toxic smoke. The same was true of waterways. Lake Erie was so polluted it was declared dead. The oil-slicked Cuyahoga River in Cleveland had caught fire a year earlier. Vehicle fuel efficiency was a novel idea.

4/20/2010

The staff of the Indianapolis Zoo was privileged to participate in a special program on Friday, April 16, as they joined the students of Robey Elementary School in Wayne Township for an "Acres for the Atmosphere" event. Polar Bears International and zookeepers from across the country recently gathered in the Arctic and created the "Acres for the Atmosphere" program to combate the warming climate and shrinking Arctic sea ice, the number one threat to the survival of the polar bears.

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Earth's Missing Heat a Concern

4/16/2010

The rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means far more energy is coming into Earth's climate system than is going out, but half of that energy is missing and could eventually reappear as another sign of climate change, scientists said on Thursday.

4/13/2010

Today, six of the world's foremost conservationists will be named finalists for the 2010 Indianapolis Prize, a $100,000 award given out every two years. Funded by the Lilly Foundation and initiated by the Indianapolis Zoo, it is the largest such prize for animal conservation in the world.

4/9/2010

There's a plan afoot among evolutionary scientists to launch a big new project — to look back in time and find out how climate change over millions of years affected human evolution.

4/7/2010

"Even in the face of a worldwide economic downturn, the global wind industry posted another record year in 2009 as cumulative installed wind power capacity grew to 158,000 megawatts," says J. Matthew Roney, Staff Researcher for the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, "Wind Power Soared Past 150,000 Megawatts in 2009." "With this 31 percent jump, the global wind fleet is now large enough to satisfy the residential electricity needs of 250 million people. Wind provides electricity in over 70 countries, 17 of which now have at least 1,000 megawatts installed."

3/31/2010

Starved and emaciated sea lion pups are beaching themselves along the Pacific Coast. A strong El Nino tropical weather pattern is to blame. Unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the western Pacific are moving east, forcing the sea lions' natural food sources — squid, hake, herring and anchovies — to seek out cooler waters.

3/29/2010

Almost two-dozen designers are donating their time, to create an animated film about global warming.

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Death of Coral Reefs Could Devastate Nations

3/26/2010

Coral reefs are dying, and scientists and governments around the world are contemplating what will happen if they disappear altogether. The idea positively scares them.

Coral reefs are part of the foundation of the ocean food chain. Nearly half the fish the world eats make their homes around them. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide — by some estimates, 1 billion across Asia alone — depend on them for their food and their livelihoods.

3/23/2010

Environmental degradation is causing serious detrimental health impacts for humans, but protecting natural habitats can reverse this and supply positive health benefits, according to a new WWF report.

3/19/2010

Mammals, birds and fish living in the High Arctic experienced an average 26 percent drop in their populations between 1970 and 2004 due to the loss of sea ice, according to a new report from The Arctic Species Trend Index, "Tracking Trends in Arctic Wildlife."

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Climate Change Bedtime Story Causes Stir

3/16/2010

Britain's independent advertising watchdog agency has criticized a government ad campaign that highlights the dangers of climate change. An Advertising Standards Association spokesman says nearly 1,000 complaints about the ads have been received.

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100% Clean Coal-Fired Power?

3/11/2010

If you combine CO2 with seawater, or any kind of briny water, you produce CaCO3, calcium carbonate. That is not only the stuff of corals. It is also the same white, pasty goop that appears on your shower head from hard (calcium-rich) water. At its demonstration plant near Santa Cruz, Calif., Calera has developed a process that takes CO2 emissions from a coal- or gas-fired power plant and sprays seawater into it and naturally converts most of the CO2 into calcium carbonate, which is then spray-dried into cement or shaped into little pellets that can be used as concrete aggregates for building walls or highways — instead of letting the CO2 emissions go into the atmosphere and produce climate change.

3/9/2010

On March 9, 2010, Senator Dick Lugar announced that he is drafting a practical energy plan that would meet many climate improving goals, without cap and trade, by conserving energy and saving people, businesses and government money.

3/8/2010

With a simple swipe, Starbucks SBUX customers can join Conservation International (CI) to help protect forests and the life that exists within them - as well as fight climate change. Starting March 9 and through December 31, 2010, every time a customer pays with their new Conservation International Starbucks Card at participating stores in the U.S., Starbucks will donate five cents to CI to help protect forests.

3/4/2010

The latest industry to get clobbered by climate change is coffee, according to the International Coffee Organization (ICO). The organization, which represents 77 coffee-producing countries, says that the temperature has risen half a degree in coffee-producing countries over the past 25 years--five times faster than in the previous 25 year period. That change has led to a panic among countries reliant on coffee.

3/1/2010

Almost half of Americans in the Yale Project on Climate Change's new study on global warming said strong action needs to be taken. But the amount who think it's all a hoax has doubled. Nearly everyone, however, supports regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

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iPhone Apps to Shut Up Climate Change Doubters

2/23/2010

If you've got a friend, relative, or famous radio personality who makes a point of doubting the effects or even the existence of climate change--especially if that person cites a snowstorm as evidence--we've got a few apps that'll learn 'em good, and then teach 'em how to make up for the damage they've done.

2/19/2010

The results of a national survey by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities has revealed that most Americans like the idea of conservation, but few practice it in their everyday lives.

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Site Simulates World's CO2 Emissions in Real Time

2/16/2010

Take a look at this fascinating real-time simulation of the world's CO2 emissions in addition to the birth and death rates.

2/11/2010

As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region get ready to dig themselves out of the third major storm of the season, they may stop to wonder two things: Why haven't we bothered to invest in a snow blower, and what happened to climate change? Brace yourselves now - this may be a case of politicians twisting the facts. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm.

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Recycled Electronics Used in Olympic Medals

2/9/2010

Sustainability is one of the three pillars of the Olympic movement, which means that Vancouver, the host of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, will do as much as it can to reduce, reuse and recycle. In a particularly creative move, the Vancouver Olympic Committee is recycling post-consumer electronics for the material in Olympic medals

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Arctic Ice Not Growing as Fast as Usual This Winter

2/5/2010

Scant ice over the Arctic Sea this winter could mean a "double whammy" of powerful ice-melt next summer, a top U.S. climate scientist said on Thursday.

2/2/2010

A new exhibition that explores climate change is opening at the Cranbrook Institute of Science. "Cape Farewell: Art & Climate Change" opens to the public Sunday and runs through June 13 at the museum in Bloomfield Hills.

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Lugar: Energy Reform and the Military

1/28/2010

As our troops advanced toward Baghdad in the spring of 2003, we faced an obstacle nearly as difficult as the enemy. It was getting fuel when and where we needed it across large stretches of desert, where the supply convoys were constantly under threat of attack. The security measures necessary to defend this vast space so slowed American movements and reduced options available to the Army and Marines that one commander pleaded, “Unleash us from the tether of fuel.” This situation plays out still in Afghanistan, where 3-mile-long fuel convoys are exposed as they crawl along dangerous mountain routes.

Militarily, our inefficient use and overreliance on oil adds significantly to the risks already assumed by our troops. It reduces combat effectiveness and exacts a huge price tag — in dollars and lives. It puts our troops — more directly and more often — in harm's way.

1/27/2010

Tiny Kivalina, Alaska, does not have a hotel, a restaurant or a movie theater. But it has a very big lawsuit that might affect the way the nation deals with climate change.

Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo village of 400 perched on a barrier island north of the Arctic Circle, is accusing two dozen fuel and utility companies of helping to cause the climate change that it says is accelerating the island’s erosion.

1/22/2010

Polar bear droppings are helping scientists shed light on the spread of deadly antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

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Purdue Professor Brings Arctic Stories to the Web

1/19/2010

Paul Shepson has been traveling to the Arctic since 1988. The Purdue University professor's research spans the fields of atmospheric chemistry and climate change. Shepson launched a Web Site called Arctic Stories at www.arcticstories.net The site uses a rich collection of video, photos and text to explain what and who the Arctic is.

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Underwater Rocks Could be Used for Carbon Storage

1/8/2010

Considering it is unlikely that global carbon emissions

will start dropping anytime soon, researchers are beginning to look at other methods to combat climate change. One of these is to hook polluting power plants

up to massive carbon sinks where instead of the carbon going into the atmosphere it would be stored away in rocks.

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US Car Fleet Shrinks for the First Time

1/6/2010

Americans scrapped more automobiles than they bought last year as the ragged economy reduced demand and some major cities expanded mass transit service, according to a new report.

12/31/2009

According to new information from RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) when partygoers recycle six aluminium cans they are effectively offsetting a 25 kilometre train journey, a 17 kilometre bus ride or ten kilometre trip in an average size car.

12/28/2009

Earth's various ecosystems, with all their plants and animals, will need to shift about a quarter-mile per year on average to keep pace with global climate change, scientists said in a study released last week.

12/21/2009

U.S. President Barack Obama reached a climate agreement on Friday with India, South Africa, China and Brazil. The deal outlined fell far short of the ambitions for the Copenhagen summit.

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Investors Give Cautious Thumbs Up to Climate Deal

12/21/2009

Businesses and investment analysts cautiously welcomed a climate deal struck in Copenhagen on Friday, but complained that it was unclear how its commitments would be translated into law.

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Moderate Global Warming to Wipe Out Many Species

12/18/2009

Up to a fifth of all species of animals and plants risk extinction even if the world manages to limit global warming to levels widely viewed as safe, the head of the Convention on Biological Diversity said.

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What CEO's Want From Copenhagen

12/18/2009

Business leaders are watching Copenhagen climate talks, which might launch new, bigger carbon markets, help drive investment in green technologies and change the way they do business.

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Coral Reefs and Climate Change - A Message For Copenhagen

12/11/2009

Coral reefs are the most biologically diverse habitats of the oceans and face extinction due to climate change by 2050 ... We're hoping that the politicians and heads of state who attend the UNEP 2009 climate change conference in Copenhagen will make positive amendments to global environmental policy and help save coral reefs and ultimately protect the amazing planet we live on. Check out our video.

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The Psychology of Climate Change Denial

12/11/2009

Even as the science of global warming gets stronger, fewer Americans believe it’s real. In some ways, it’s nearly as jarring a disconnect as enduring disbelief in evolution or carbon dating. And according to Kari Marie Norgaard, a Whitman College sociologist who’s studied public attitudes towards climate science, we’re in denial.

12/1/2009

Antarctica has been protected from the most damaging effects of climate change by the impact of one of the worst environmental disasters of the 20th century, the hole in the ozone layer, research published today revealed.

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Dalai Lama Says Climate Change Needs Global Action

12/1/2009

Tibet's exiled Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama entered the climate change debate on Monday, urging governments to take serious action and put global interests ahead of domestic concerns.

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Kids' WWF Video Urges Obama to Help Enact Global Climate Treaty

11/13/2009

On December 7, 2009, more than 192 nations will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a fair and binding global treaty to reduce emissions and save our planet from the worst impacts of climate change.

Join us in urging the President to lead the U.S. into making a global climate treaty a reality. Learn more about Copenhagen and hear from some who have the most at stake in solving this issue—our kids.

11/13/2009

The Great Barrier Reef will be so degraded by warming waters that it will be unrecognizable within 20 years, according Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, at a conference in London: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so. They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organization. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”

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Girl 'Inspired and Passionate' After a Trip to See Polar Bears

10/28/2009

Courtney Freyhauf was not exactly at the top of the world, but she may as well have been. The 16-year-old Nordonia High School junior spent a week in late September and early October watching polar bears in their natural habitat Churchill, Manitoba on Hudson Bay.

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Fewer Believe in Global Warming Than 3 Years Ago

10/28/2009

The number of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the Earth is warming because of pollution is at its lowest point in three years, according to a survey released Thursday.

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Why a Coal Guy is Going Green

10/22/2009

Of all the companies in the U.S., Duke Energy is the 3rd largest emitter of CO2. Of all the companies in the world, Duke is the 12th biggest emitter. And if North Carolina-based Duke were a country, it would rank No. 41 in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of entire nations in Europe, Africa and Asia.

And yet...Jim Rogers, Duke's longtime president, CEO and chairman, is pushing as hard as anyone in corporate America to get a climate-change bill passed by Congress. His company helped the U.S. Climate Action Partnership get going, and he was key in getting some (but not all) utility-company CEOs to support carbon regulation.

10/16/2009

Check out 19 frightfully fun homemade Halloween costumes made from recycled materials. Hopefully, you'll be inspired to make your own!

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Fight Climate Change by Protecting Forests

10/16/2009

On October 7, the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests unveiled a report highlighting a cornerstone of the climate change policy debate: We cannot win the battle against climate change without protecting our forests.

10/16/2009

About a year ago, we (treehugger.com,) put together a list of 20 iPhone apps that would help you live a greener life. The number of apps we've seen come across the radar since then has exploded to the point where we wonder how on earth anyone can keep track of them.

10/2/2009

In recent years, Apple (AAPL) has been hammered by several environmental groups. Greenpeace singled it out for its use of toxic chemicals in 2007, and it has done poorly in rankings of the greenest corporations. The criticism is jarring for a company with a cool, progressive image and Mr. Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore, on its board.

Now, Apple is set to launch its most aggressive effort yet to counter green critics. On Sept. 24, the company released more of the details environmental groups have been clamoring for, on its Web site and elsewhere. Apple, for example, revealed its annual corporate carbon emissions for the first time.

10/2/2009

"Green" roofs, those increasingly popular urban rooftops covered with plants, could help fight global warming, scientists in Michigan are reporting. The scientists found that replacing traditional roofing materials in an urban area the size of Detroit, with a population of about one-million, with green would be equivalent to eliminating a year's worth of carbon dioxide emitted by 10,000 mid-sized SUVs and trucks.

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Holyfield Tackles Global Warming

9/25/2009

Evander Holyfield has no intention of hanging up his gloves. In fact, he'll have a new nickname the next time he climbs into the ring. The Real Deal is now the Lean Green Fighting Machine.

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River Turbines Could Electrify New York City

9/25/2009

A network of floating docks could harness clean energy for New York City and provide new space for parks, researchers now propose.

9/21/2009

The work of the Lugar Center and other energy research endeavors is vital because the United States is confronted by a cluster of national security threats that arise from our economic and cultural reliance on fossil fuels.

9/18/2009

The dramatic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of global warming aren't just confined to melting sea ice and polar bears — a new study finds that the forces of climate change are propagating throughout the frigid north, producing different effects in each ecosystem with the upshot that the face of the Arctic may be forever altered.

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Electricity Harvested From Trees

9/18/2009

Researchers have figured out a way to plug into the power generated by trees.

Scientists have known for some time that plants can conduct electricity. In fact, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants can pack up to 200 millivolts of electrical power. A millivolt is one-thousandth of a volt.

9/15/2009

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar, Ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hailed the appointment of the first full-time International Energy Coordinator at the State Department.

9/8/2009

Among scientists who study wildfires a broad consensus is developing that global climate change -- caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- is increasing the risk of these sorts of fires in the West.

9/3/2009

A photo of a melting glacier dubbed "Mother Nature in Tears" has been seized by environmentalists as the latest sombre reminder of the effects of climate change.

9/3/2009

Europe started eradicating traditional energy-guzzling light bulbs on Tuesday, angering some consumers who had grown attached to their warm glow and cheap price.

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Indianapolis Zoo Taking on Global Warming

8/21/2009

The Indianapolis Zoo is taking on the crisis of global warming one Hoosier household at a time.

The MyCarbonPledge initiative began last year with a simple request of Indiana families and businesses: switch out incandescent light bulbs for energy-saving CFLs.

This year, the zoo has issued another challenge, encouraging people to unplug unused appliances in an effort to cut "phantom" power, the energy wasted even when electric items aren't in use.

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Toxic Soup: Plastics Could be Leaching Chemicals into Ocean

8/21/2009

Although plastic has long been considered indestructible, some scientists say toxic chemicals from decomposing plastics may be leaching into the sea and harming marine ecosystems.

8/18/2009

A monthly report released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows net U.S. electrical generation from renewable sources (biomass, geothermal, solar, hydro, and wind) reached an all-time high in May of 2009, comprising 13% of the total electrical generation for the month.

8/18/2009

The first U.S. industry to face a cap on its greenhouse gas emissions is not, as may be expected, the coal-burning power utilities. It's not the oil refineries, churning through crude. It's not the automakers, manufacturing again.

8/10/2009

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

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Why Americans Don't Act on Climate Change

8/10/2009

Three-quarters of Americans think climate change is an important issue, a recent Pew Research Center survey found. But they don't see it as an immediate threat and so aren't keen to act to change the status quo. The issue ranked last on a list of 20 compelling issues, behind things like terrorism and the economy.

8/7/2009

The “cash for clunkers” program seems to be doing its job: people flocked to dealerships to use the rebates and trade in their old vehicles for new, more efficient ones. Dealers estimate they sold nearly a quarter million cars under the plan, almost exhausting the program’s $1 billion budget in about 10 days. The new cars achieved 10 miles per gallon more, on average, than the trade-ins.

8/7/2009

The fate of U.S. climate control legislation is in the hands of the Senate, where it faces an uphill climb. Democratic leaders hope to put it to a vote in October.

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Hacking the Planet: The Only Climate Solution Left?

7/27/2009

In a room in London late last year, a group of British politicians were grilling a selection of climate scientists on geoengineering - the notion that to save the planet from climate change, we must artificially tweak its thermostat by firing fine dust into the atmosphere to deflect the sun's rays, for instance, or perhaps even by launching clouds of mirrors into space.

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Earth Bears Scars of Human Destruction

7/27/2009

A Canadian astronaut aboard the International Space Station said on Sunday it looks like Earth's ice caps have melted a bit since he was last in orbit 12 years ago.

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Could $20/Gallon of Gasoline Make us Happier?

7/24/2009

When it's time to fill up the gas tank, many fear the price of gas will return to the $4-a-gallon days of last summer. But according to author Chris Steiner, our lives would be a lot happier and healthier if gas prices rose into the double digits.

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Boiling the Frog

7/24/2009

Is American on its way to becoming a boiled frog? I’m referring, of course, to the proverbial frog that, placed in a pot of cold water that is gradually heated, never realizes the danger it’s in and is boiled alive. Real frogs will, in fact, jump out of the pot — but never mind. The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep up on you a bit at a time.

7/24/2009

Microsoft had trouble solving the problems with its Vista operating system, so what are its chances of fixing climate change? The global software firm has created an online tool called Project 2 Degrees for cities across the world to monitor their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and, the hope is, then do something about them.

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Reducing Your Carbon Footprint Lets You Earn Money

7/10/2009

MyEmissionsExchange or MyEex (pronounced "my-eeks") is a personal carbon exchange that lets you earn money for reducing your carbon footprint. MyEmissionsExchange tackles the increasingly important issue of global warming in a new way: by paying individuals for reducing their carbon emissions. MyEex allows participating members to earn money by brokering their personal carbon credits on the voluntary carbon market and returning the proceeds.

7/10/2009

President Barack Obama said Thursday the global recession makes it harder to strike an international agreement to battle dangerous temperature increases, but he urged the poor emerging economies that rejected specific clean-energy goals to "fight the temptation toward cynicism" and embrace them soon.

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Wildlife Crisis Worse Than Economic Crisis

7/10/2009

Life on Earth is under serious threat, despite the commitment by world leaders to reverse the trend, according to a detailed analysis of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™.

7/6/2009

Chronic hunger may be "the defining human tragedy of this century," as climate change causes growing seasons to shift, crops to fail, and storms and droughts to ravage fields, an advocacy group said.

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The Zoo is IPL's Largest Consumer of Green Power

6/30/2009

The Zoo is IPL’s largest consumer of green power, and as of spring 2009, taking advantage of this option has helped the Zoo reduce CO2 emissions by over 30 million pounds.

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Energy Legislation Could Bring Deep Change

6/30/2009

Congress has taken its first step toward an energy revolution, with the prospect of profound change for every household, business, industry and farm in the decades ahead.

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Alaska Polar Bear Numbers Declining

6/22/2009

Polar bear populations in and around Alaska are declining due to continued melting of sea ice and Russian poaching, according to reports released Thursday by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Obama Beating Path to China to Talk Climate Change

6/19/2009

Officials from the Obama administration have been beating a steady path to China’s door to talk about climate change.

6/19/2009

Climate change has already caused "visible impacts" in the United States and poses particular risks to the U.S. agriculture and energy industries, a new government report said on Tuesday.

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Carbon 'Pedometer' Helps Volvo Cut Commute's Footprint

6/5/2009

Using a mobile phone-based software program has enabled a test group of Volvo employees to cut the greenhouse gas emissions of their daily commute by more than 30 percent.

6/5/2009

Global emissions of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide will jump more than 39 percent by 2030 without new policies and binding pacts to cut global warming pollution, the top U.S. energy forecast agency said on May 27, 2009.

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Climate Change Making Everest Ascent Harder

6/5/2009

A Nepali sherpa who holds the world record for climbing Mount Everest said on 5/25/09 rising temperatures were melting snow and turning the slopes barren, making it even harder to scale the world's tallest peak.

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Drop in CO2 in U.S. and Power Use in China

6/5/2009

Not surprisingly, given the depth of the recession, emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning in the United States declined 2.8 percent last year, the biggest annual drop since the early 1980’s, according to a preliminary estimate released by the Energy Department.

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Climate Change and its Human Toll

5/29/2009

The first comprehensive report into the human cost of climate change warns the world is in the throes of a "silent crisis" that is killing 300,000 people each year.

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What is the Environmental Impact of the Indy 500?

5/28/2009

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway recycles 20 tons of cans, plastic and cardboard in May, plus all its motor oil, brake fluid and transmission fluid. Its golf course is certified as environmentally friendly by Audubon International. Its trash gets converted to energy.

5/28/2009

Indiana Republicans are warning of dire consequences for Hoosiers if the federal government caps greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming.

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Lugar Supports Greater Fuel Efficiency and Flexible Fuel Standards

5/22/2009

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar said Wednesday that our dependence on foreign oil is draining our economy, threatening our national security and harming the environment. He supports the agreement to increase vehicle fuel efficiency and calls for a flexible fuel vehicle requirement.

President Obama’s fuel efficiency announcement mirrors legislation he co-sponsored with Lugar when he was in the Senate (see summary below).

"I am proud to have partnered with President Obama on energy security while he was in the Senate. Obama-Lugar legislation offered bipartisan solutions to combat America's oil dependence by increasing fuel economy standards, bolstering biofuels and other needed steps. I congratulate President Obama for bringing together automakers, national security leaders and environmental groups in support of fuel economy reform," Lugar said.

"I encourage the President to include a requirement that all new vehicles using gasoline engines are also flex-fuel capable. FFV technology is ready today and is a low-cost way to ensure that America's fleet is prepared for future biofuels production."

"Energy security is national security, and there is no more important energy goal than dramatically reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Oil is a magnet for conflict. It puts American troops in harms-way and ties the hands of our diplomats. It drains our economy of billions of dollars, and burning oil damages the environment in which we live."

"CAFE standards have never been a perfect solution, but I have consistently supported them because they have been proven necessary to drive incremental development of fuel efficient technology. I also strongly support government incentives for biofuels, electric vehicles and other innovative technologies that can propel America's fleet beyond the fuel economy targets announced today."

5/22/2009

Charge your iPod, kill a polar bear? The choice might not be quite that stark, but an energy watchdog is alarmed about the threat to the environment from the soaring electricity needs of gadgets like MP3 players, mobile phones and flat screen TVs.

5/20/2009

This week Congress is set to release the details of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that purports to combat global warming by setting strict limits on carbon emissions. I'm not a candidate for any office -- now or ever again -- and I've approached the "climate change" debate with an open-mind. But it's clear to me that the nation, and in particular Indiana, my home state, will be terribly disserved by this cap-and-trade policy on the verge of passage in the House.

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Carter Speaks at Energy Security Hearing

5/13/2009

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Energy Security Historical Perspectives and Monder Challenges, Senator Lugar discussed energy security with former President Jimmy Carter, FedEx President Fred Smith and General Charles F. Wald, USAF (Ret.).

5/11/2009

Attached is Senator Lugar’s response to the EPA draft rules on greenhouse gas impacts of indirect land use changes. We’ve copied his letter to Administrator Jackson below.

The troubling EPA analysis points to at least two major issues that should be of interest to anyone interested in energy security. First, regulation should reflect sound science, not overly-speculative modeling. Many accused the Bush Administration of ignoring the science of climate change, yet, ironically, this EPA action is an exercise in just the opposite direction – an over-reach of what the science can actually prove. Second, many of the solutions to energy security are also solutions to climate change, but that does not mean that there will always be 100% alignment at all times. Whether it is ethanol production, milling steel for wind turbines, or plowing land for rail, no solution will be perfect, and we must not so lightly sacrifice our strategic interests or available technologies.

5/11/2009

A $500 million North Atlantic shrimp fishery may be vulnerable to climate change that could disrupt the crustaceans' life cycle and mislead them into hatching when food is scarce, scientists said.

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US Climate Bill Unlikely to Pass This Year

5/11/2009

US climate change legislation is unlikely to pass this year due to concerns about the recession and contention over the implementation of the program, according to energy and carbon market experts.

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China Outpaces US in Cleaner Coal-Fired Plants

5/11/2009

China’s frenetic construction of coal-fired power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, making it the world’s largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet.

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Lugar Introduces Legislation for Clean Energy

5/4/2009

Senator Lugar joined with Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, Ranking Member Lisa Murkowski, and others in introducing legislation to improve and extend federal support for clean energy projects.

4/24/2009

Come visit the brand new Indianapolis Zoo’s Conservation Station, an interactive exhibit for kids! We’ll be at the Earth Day Indiana Festival at the American Legion Mall on Saturday, April 25, from 11am-4pm.

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Stay Slim to Save the Planet

4/24/2009

Overweight people eat more than thin people and are more likely to travel by car, making excess body weight doubly bad for the environment, according to a study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

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Obama Climate Chief: U.S. Law Vital to Global Deal

4/24/2009

President Barack Obama's top climate negotiator warned on Wednesday that international efforts to tackle global warming are doomed unless the United States enacts laws to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

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Lugar Delivers Statement at Climate Change Hearing

4/22/2009

Senator Richard Lugar is hopeful that the U.S. climate change response can be centered on steps that simultaneously reduce our reliance on foreign oil, promote soil and water conservation, contribute to rural development, leverage new energy technologies, and create jobs. Public support will be strongest for emissions-cutting measures that are seen as contributing to additional U.S. economic or national security priorities.

4/7/2009

Arctic sea ice, a key component of Earth's natural thermostat, has thinned sharply in recent years with the northern polar ice cap shrinking steadily in surface area, government scientists said on Monday.

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Cows and Climate Change?

4/3/2009

Farmers of the future will have to use cattle and sheep that belch less methane, crops that emit far less planet-warming nitrous oxide and become experts in reporting their greenhouse gas emissions to the government.

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Concrete is Remixed with Environment in Mind

4/3/2009

Concrete suppliers are going green. “The new twist over the last 10 years has been to try to avoid materials that generate CO2,” said Kevin A. MacDonald, vice president for engineering services of the Cemstone Products Company. Some engineers and scientists are going further, with the goal of developing concrete that can capture and permanently sequester CO2.

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Scientists Help Map US Rocks That Soak Up CO2

3/20/2009

Certain rocks abundant on the US East and West coasts may one day be coaxed to absorb emissions of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at a rate that could slow climate change, scientists say.

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Disney Sets Plan to Cut Carbon Emissions to Zero

3/20/2009

The Walt Disney Co said March 9, 2009 that it planned to cut carbon emissions from fuels by half by 2012, and ultimately to achieve net zero direct greenhouse gas emissions at its office and retail complexes, theme parks and cruise lines.

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US Climate Change Takes Center Stage in Congress

3/20/2009

With climate change legislation a top U.S. priority for Democrats this year, lawmakers began zeroing in on March 12 on ways to ease the financial burden it could impose on the poor, especially in the midst of a deep economic recession.

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Polar Bears At Risk, Climate Deal Needed

3/18/2009

"Climate change has overtaken hunting as the most significant threat to the polar bear," Norway's Environment and Development Minister Erik Solheim told a meeting of the five states rimming the Arctic where the white bears live.

3/12/2009

U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar today introduced a bill that would expand energy security cooperation between the United States, Brazil and other nations in the Western Hemisphere.

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Scientists: Flaw in Ice Assertions

3/6/2009

The office of former Vice President Al Gore complained about my story on climate exaggeration the other day, writes Andrew Revkin, and now George Will, the other (very different) example in that piece, has weighed in as well with a column, “Climate Science in a Tornado,” defending his accuracy and questioning my competence. I’ll leave the competence judgment to readers.

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Climate Change in a Video Game?

3/6/2009

Climate change in a video game?? We'll admit it's different, but this game works.

2/20/2009

A penguin species found in Argentina is under threat because climate change is forcing the birds to swim farther to find food, researchers are saying.

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Polar Seas Are No Biological Desert

2/20/2009

The polar oceans are not biological deserts after all. A recently released marine census documented 7,500 species living in the Antarctic and 5,500 in the Arctic, including several hundred that researchers believe could be new to science.

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EPA to Review Bush Rule on Warming Emissions

2/17/2009

The Obama administration on Tuesday agreed to review whether it should regulate carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, portending a major reversal of the Bush administration's policy on global warming.

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Climate Change Will Be Major Driver of Extinctions

2/13/2009

Approximately 20 to 30% of plant and animal species are likely to be at increasingly high risk of extinction as global mean temperatures exceed warming of 2 to 3 oC above preindustrial levels, according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Fourth Assessment Report). Global warming has already been implicated in hundreds of documented cases of species declines across marine, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems globally, including in the loss of amphibian species such as the Golden Toad. Climate change will be one of the major drivers of species extinctions in the 21st century.

2/11/2009

Starbucks recently announced their participation in a new coalition of consumer brands advocating for action on the issue of climate change. Starbucks is a founding member along with other leading responsible companies Nike, Timberland, Levis, and Sun Microsystems. They join together to advocate for stronger climate change and clean energy policy.

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Wind Jobs Outstrip Coal Mining

2/6/2009

Here’s a talking point in the green jobs debate: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States.Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released from the American Wind Energy Association.

2/5/2009

The Senate's top environmental lawmaker offered a preview on Wednesday of major component of climate change legislation she said could be introduced "in weeks, not months." "We are not sitting back and waiting for some magic moment," Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters. "We're ready to go."

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Gore Urges Passing Stimulus Deal to Aid Climate

2/5/2009

Climate crusader Al Gore said the first step toward restoring U.S. "economic and moral leadership" is to pass President Barack Obama's stimulus package -- and the second step is putting a price on carbon.

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Raise the Gas Tax

2/4/2009

Reality is stark: Nearly every major foreign policy challenge we face is aggravated by our continued addiction to oil. Recent developments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa only underscore this fact. But a new president and changed economic conditions offer the chance to take a bold step toward freeing our nation from the grip of foreign petroleum.

1/28/2009

Senator Lugar and Senator Kerry host former Vice President Al Gore today for a hearing on climate change. Lugar advocates that climate and energy security concerns be engaged together because they have many of the same solutions and causes.

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Cops Replace Gas Guzzlers with Greener Cruisers

1/26/2009

Police Chief Richard Watson of Cahokia, IL admits his department's newest patrol car is a curious departure from its big-horsepower Ford Crown Victorias. But the four-cylinder Pontiac Vibe GT has plenty of pep for policing, he said, and gets twice the gas mileage.

1/26/2009

Human-induced global warming is real, according to a recent U.S. survey based on the opinions of 3,146 scientists. However there remains divisions between climatologists and scientists from other areas of earth sciences as to the extent of human responsibility.

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Climate Change Threatens Pacific, Arctic Conflicts

1/9/2009

Climate change and rising sea levels pose one of the biggest threats to security in the Pacific and may also spark a global conflict over energy reserves under melting Arctic ice, according to Australia's military.

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Japan to Monitor Greenhouse Gases from Space

1/9/2009

Japan's space agency will launch a satellite later this month to monitor greenhouse gases around the world, officials said Wednesday, hoping the data it collects helps global efforts to combat climate change.

The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT), to be launched on January 21, will enable scientists to calculate the density of carbon dioxide and methane from 56,000 locations on the Earth's surface, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said.

12/10/2008

We share two very different views on the "hot" topic of capturing carbon being freed by fossil fuel-burning power plants and injecting it deep underground.

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Obama Climate Goals Not Enough: China, India

12/10/2008

Developing nations welcomed Obama's plan for tougher goals than President George W. Bush but said Obama's target of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020 was not enough to avoid dangerous global warming.

China and the United States are top emitters ahead of India and Russia. But U.S. emissions per capita are almost five times those of China and developing nations say the rich have spewed out most heat-trapping carbon since the Industrial Revolution.

12/10/2008

Livestock = living smokestack?? It may sound strange, but it's true. Livestock spews incredibly large amounts of methane into the air everyday. But some innovative farmers-turned environmentalists have a way to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

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Indiana Lands on Group's Top 50 List of Mercury Emitters

11/24/2008

Three Indiana power plants have landed on an environmental group's tally of the 50 facilities in the nation that emit the greatest amount of poisonous mercury into the air and water.

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Obama Will Act Quickly on Climate Change

11/24/2008

President-elect Barack Obama will act against climate change early in his presidency, an environment adviser said on November 12th amid doubts that a US carbon-capping program will be in place before 2010.

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Walmart in Wind Energy Deal with Duke Energy

11/24/2008

Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Thursday that it had entered into a partnership with Duke Energy to have wind power supply up to 15 percent of its energy load for roughly 360 of its stores and facilities in Texas.

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Greenhouse Gas 4 Times More Than Thought

11/6/2008

Levels of a powerful greenhouse gas are four times as high as previously thought, according to new measurements released on 10/23/08.

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Science Advice for the Next President

11/6/2008

Hundreds of organizations are urging the next president to appoint a White House Science adviser by Inauguration Day, and give the position a cabinet level rank. There is broadening concern that the White House has not been sufficiently stressing science.

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A Final Campaign Focus: Coal & CO2

11/6/2008

The potential political costs of capping carbon dioxide from coal burning were on full display in the final hours of the presidential campaign.

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Greenorexia??

10/24/2008

Using a homemade composting toilet, unplugging the refrigerator and using iceblocks as coolants, producing your own food?? Some would call these people greenorexics, but they are going to extraordinary measures to seriously reduce their carbon footprint.

10/24/2008

Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world's largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers' natural habitat.

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GE Stepping Up Push for Battery Powered Cars

10/24/2008

General Electric Co is stepping up its investment in developing new battery technologies for autos as it looks to increase its role in electrifying cars -- one of the key strategies to boost autos' fuel efficiency.

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Windy City's Climate Plan

10/6/2008

Chicago is aiming for more than the nickname - the windy city. It hopes to become "the greenest city in America." And the Chicago Climate Action Plan is definitely a step in the right direction. The plan is aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to 25% below 1990 levels.

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First US Greenhouse Cap-and-Trade Market

10/6/2008

Ten states in the US Northeast kicked off the country's first cap-and-trade market on greenhouse gas emissions on 9/25/08, gaining accolades from environmentalists and many businesses but also eliciting concerns about how the states will spend the money the plan raises.

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Biden & Palin square off on CO2 caps & clean coal

10/6/2008

Just where do Biden and Palin stand on climate change, CO2 caps, and clean coal? Based on the VP debate on 10/2/08, here's what they have to say.

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Arctic Sea Ice Second-Lowest Ever

9/7/2008

Arctic sea ice shrank to its second-lowest level ever, US scientists say, with particular melting in the Chukchi Sea, where polar bears were recently seen swimming far off the Alaskan coast.

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Mobile Phone Software Tracks Your CO2

9/7/2008

A new mobile phone software has been created that allows users to use smart phones to track and reduce mobile carbon footprints.

9/7/2008

Dirty secret of clean energy - while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

8/4/2008

T. Boone Pickens, American business man who chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management, says drilling for oil is not the answer. "A nation holding less than 3% of the world's oil reserves while guzzling 20% of the world's production will never be able to drill its way out of its dependency on foreign oil. His answer is surprising - wind power!

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MIT Develops Way to Bank Solar Energy at Home

8/4/2008

A US scientist has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night.

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Solar "Trees" Help Light Streets

8/4/2008

Going green can do more than protect the environment. Solar-powered streetlamps also serve as pieces of modern art.

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Indianapolis Company Goes Green with Wind Power

7/20/2008

The Time Factory, a corporation on the leading edge of environmental awareness and energy efficiency, to host Wind Turbine event.

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Bridging the Gap on Climate Change

7/20/2008

Senator Richard Lugar and Henry Paulson Jr., secretary of the Treasury, encourage other politicians to support multilateral initiative to help finance the deployment of commercially available clean technology to the developing world.

7/20/2008

Penguin populations have plummeted at a key breeding colony in Argentina mirroring declines in many species of the marine flightless birds due to climate change, pollution and other factors, a study shows.

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Extreme Weather on the Rise

7/3/2008

Floods, droughts and severe storms are likely to occur even more frequently in North America as a result of the increase of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a U.S. government study.

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A Green Coal Baron?

7/3/2008

Chief Executive of Duke Energy, Jim Rogers, is not your typical power company CEO. He lives to brainstorm about clean energy technologies. And his latest idea is pretty radical...

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Humans Still Loading Climate Dice

7/3/2008

Dr. James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies revisits his startling testimony he gave before the Senate Energy Committee in 1988 - that the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests was already influencing Earth's climate. Watch his interview.

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Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal

6/20/2008

Just what is clean coal? As strange as it may sound, it involves taking the carbon dioxide emitted from coal-burning power plants and pumping it back into the ground. Sounds easy enough, right? But find out what some of the biggest obstacles are.

6/20/2008

On June 6th, a U.S. bill aimed at curbing climate change died in the Senate. But there is still hope as the bill's supporters look to the next president to enact a climate change law as soon as 2009.

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Melting Arctic Ice Could Spur Inland Warming

6/20/2008

Think polar bears are the only ones to feel the effects of climate change? Think again. A study released on June 10, 2008 suggests it could cause warmer temperatures hundreds of miles inland.

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Lowe's Partners with the Zoo

4/18/2008

The Zoo is very pleased to partner with Lowe’s on mycarbonpledge.com. Lowe’s is the primary partner of the site. “This will truly be the greatest partnership I have come across in my years at Lowe’s….and the difference we will make together will be PHENOMENAL,” says Priscilla Woodrum, District Manager for Lowe’s.

My Carbon Pledge

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Water Bottle Tracks Your Eco Karma

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Old Plastic Bottles Bring Light

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Action Now to Save Polar Bears

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Warming Could Exceed Safe Levels in this Lifetime

10/24/2011

The K-Cup Konundrum

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Loss of Key Climate Protectors

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A Medical Metaphor for Climate Risk

10/5/2011

Obama: Perry's State is on Fire yet Denies Climate Change Exists

9/26/2011

Climate Change: Who Thinks What

9/19/2011

Japanese Wind Turbine Triples Power Output

9/9/2011

Environmentalists Stung by Obama on Clean Air

9/6/2011

Smart Phones and Fuel Efficiency

8/25/2011

Ride-sharing App Changes the Way We Commute

8/19/2011

How Much Will Warming Raise Seas?

8/15/2011

Creating Crops That Capture More Carbon

8/8/2011

Create a Green Space Anywhere

8/1/2011

More Polar Bear Cubs Die as Arctic Ice Melts

7/19/2011

Indianapolis Zoo Named Lugar Energy Patriot

7/15/2011

Climate Change Reducing Ocean's CO2 Uptake

7/13/2011

The Truth about Polar Bears and Climate Change

6/27/2011

Time to Wave the Green-Spangled Banner

6/23/2011

Supreme Court Blocks Climate Change Lawsuit

6/20/2011

Thinning Snows in Rockies Tied to Climate Change

6/15/2011

Net Killing the Planet One Search at a Time?

6/6/2011

No Clean Tech Economy without More Recycling

6/1/2011

App Tracks Impact of Climate Change on Redwoods

5/27/2011

LED Bulbs Hit 100 Watts as Federal Ban Looms

5/23/2011

Zoos Get Involved in Climate Change Awareness Initiative

5/16/2011

Climate Scientists Told to Stop Speaking in Code

5/9/2011