Serengreenity

Corporate America has long been bracing for the day it would be required to sharply cut emissions that cause global warming. That day moved closer Wednesday, when President Obama outlined a national target for such reductions.

China announced plans Thursday to cut its carbon emissions by up to 45 percent as measured against its economic output--a target aimed at keeping its surging growth while still reining in pollution.

When people talk about the impact of rising sea levels, they often think of small island states that risk being submerged if global warming continues unchecked. But it's not only those on low-lying islands who are in danger.

Estimates vary widely on the costs of damage from climate change, easing these impacts and taming the carbon gas stoking the problem, but economists agree the bill is likely to be in the trillions of dollars.

A new report says governments, businesses and residents are woefully unprepared to deal with the destruction of roads, buildings, toxic waste dumps and communications systems that are founded on the assumption that it's cold up there and will remain that way in the years ahead.

At the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next month, Mr. Obama will tell the delegates that the United States intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions “in the range of” 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, officials said.

Pretty much everything you encounter on a daily basis will have to be drastically changed to be environmentally friendly within a decade if Japan wants to achieve its goal of a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared with 1990 levels, a national report cautions.

As the prospect of a global climate deal this year recedes, European governments worry that their critical industries will be left dangerously uncompetitive.

President Barack Obama's decision to drop in on the international climate conference in Copenhagen next month lends some star power to an event that's lost much of its luster -- but at considerable risk for Obama himself.

China's top climate envoy lashed out at Europe for failing to meet its previous greenhouse-gas commitments, and said reaching an agreement at the global warming summit in Copenhagen next month is essential.

So far, Mr. Obama doesn't have anywhere near the Senate votes he needs to implement any agreement that may evolve – sooner or later – from the United Nations climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month.

Duke Energy Corp. says the cost of the coal-gasification power plant it's building in southwestern Indiana has risen another $150 million, boosting the project's estimated price to $2.5 billion - nearly twice the original estimate. And it won't be the project's last cost hike.

Aggressively reducing emissions of non-CO2 climate drivers could forestall abrupt climate change for up to 40 years, according to a recent study. Without such efforts, we will fail to put the brakes on planetary warming.

Climate change is likely to hit the water-starved Arab world harder than many other parts of the globe and threatens to slash agricultural output in the area, U.N. and Arab League officials said.

Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, said climate change is “one of the biggest challenges facing mankind” and must be fought with ambitious targets to curb a costly rise in natural catastrophes.

Fresh questions surface about estimates of economically viable uranium deposits.

People should eat less meat to reduce climate change and save thousands of lives a year, a Government-funded report has said.

The tourism sector is seeking sustainable ways of doing business in the face of growing concerns over environmental degradation. Climate change is one of the major challenges the sector is facing and has to contend with in order to survive.

The impacts of climate change on health are a "very real and present danger", the health secretary, Andy Burnham, warned today at the launch of a new report on how rising temperatures will affect the public.

Europe is waging war on the boar, whose numbers have been surging as a result of global warming and the large-scale cultivation of maize and rapeseed for biofuel.

From Colombia to Brazil, new funds are combining private contributions and state money to help protect the watersheds around cities.

With innovations such as burning leftover potato peels for natural gas and switching to alternative fuels, the food giant says it has made substantial cuts in emissions and waste, as well as energy and water use.

President Obama's decision to appear at a United Nations climate conference in December is under scrutiny in Europe.

A proposed 100-megawatt coal plant has environmentalists, business interests and government officials facing off.

President Barack Obama plans to deliver a speech at next months climate meeting in Copenhagen. The White House also revealed rough emissions targets for the United States on Wednesday.

A new report suggests that China could reduce its carbon intensity by as much as 23 percent.

Thirty-five years after Canada slapped sanctions on India for using a reactor to help detonate a nuclear warhead, the two countries agreed to resume fuel-grade uranium sales.

With energy demand growing quickly, development of clean energy technologies cannot afford to be undertaken in silos, a new report says.

When Michael Mack, the chief executive of Syngenta, a Swiss agribusiness giant that makes pesticides and seeds, hears people say that organic food is better for the planet, he has one response: "Au contraire."

Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, sent letters to many of the scientists whose e-mail messages were made public, asking them to preserve all correspondence.

Wind power in Kenya, hacked e-mail messages, and other energy and environmental news from around the Web.

The Mother Nature Network identifies 40 young chefs practicing local food sourcing and other sustainable practices.

Climate change mitigation must not come at the expense of indigenous peoples' rights, a new report asserts.

I was eager to explore my options for bringing green power to my home in Long Island. Turns out, I didn't have many.

The world's first osmotic power project opened today, harnessing the saltiness of the sea, along with freshwater, to produce a tiny amount of electricity.

26 November 2009: Northern Territory officials plan a mass cull of about 6,000 wild camels which have converged on the town of Docker River in search of water

Answer the question correctly and you could win one of 10 copies of the new edition of the Rough Guide to Green LivingEnvironment editor

Bainbridge Island offers incentives to Living Building Challenge developments.

The build-out of the smart grid holds opportunities for energy savings and a boon to the green building industry, but only if it connects to ‘smart’ buildings.

Green Light cooperative turns development model upside down.

Near downtown Portland, Leftbank Project is looking to build a viable community.

An investment fund focused on energy efficiency launches.

Human health impacts could soon play a bigger role when sizing up building projects.

Green building experts bring EcoDistricts to the West Coast.

Version 2.0 of the Living Building Challenge is launching.

Seattle designer Lucia Athens pinpoints emerging trends in green building.

Seattle plans to test software that creates home-efficiency scores.

Architectural photographer Robert C. Lautman, Hon. AIA, died of pancreatic cancer in Washington, D.C., on October 20, 2009.

After years of rumors, speculation, and rhetorical jousting, the George W. Bush Presidential Center is finally public.

After growing almost exponentially in recent years, attendance at the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo, held November 11 to 13 in Phoenix, hovered around 28,000, roughly equivalent to the size of the 2008 conference in Boston.

A recent report by the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers projects that most development sectors will not recover until 2012 or even 2013.

As an expansion of PlaNYC, the sustainability plan of New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has announced a 30-point proposal to bolster the region’s green economy.

Despite reports of stalled skyscraper projects across the globe, at least one super tall tower is moving forward: On October 21, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates unveiled its slender, cone-shaped design for what will become one of Asia’s tallest building.

In a surprise move Terence Riley, AIA, resigned as director of the Miami Art Museum (MAM) on October 26, just days after unveiling the final design for the museum’s new home, designed by Herzog & de Meuron.

Donald Albrecht is the curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York. In recent years, he also has served as curator of the traveling exhibition Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the first-ever retrospective of the influential Finnish-American architect.

Dia Art Foundation is having a homecoming. On November 6 the nonprofit organization announced it will construct an exhibition space at 545 West 22nd Street, just steps from a facility it shuttered five years ago.

It’s unlikely that Prince Charles heads the Richard Rogers fan club, but Lord Rogers recently received validation from another luminary when the Royal Institute of British Architects named the Rogers Stirk Harbour–designed Maggie’s Centre the winner of its RIBA Stirling Prize 2009.

Michael Mack, the chief executive of the Swiss agrobusiness conglomerate, Syngenta, says organic farming does far more harm to the planet than conventional farming because organic methods often require 30 percent more land. Given the need to feed rapidly rising populations this century, increasing productivity on existing agricultural land is crucial, which […]

Slashing carbon dioxide emissions has the added benefit of significantly reducing air pollution and could prevent millions of premature deaths each year, according to a series of studies in the British medical journal, The Lancet. The six studies demonstrate that cutting greenhouse gas emissions will significantly reduce air pollutants such as fine particula […]

A recent survey of Siberian tigers shows that populations of the majestic cat — numbering roughly 500 in the wild in 2005 — may have declined by as much as 40 percent because of increased poaching and habitat loss. The New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), working with the Russian government and conservation organizations, said that a survey of […]

Obama administration officials say they will offer provisional CO2 emissions reductions goals at the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference, although the targets are likely to be far more modest than those proposed by the European Union and other industrialized nations. U.S. officials, not wanting to show up at Copenhagen empty-handed, said the administratio […]

On the eve of the Copenhagen conference, a group of scientists has issued an update on the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their conclusions? Ice at both poles is melting faster than predicted, the claims of recent global cooling are wrong, and world leaders must act fast if steep temperature rises are to be avoided. BY ELIZABET […]

U.S. researchers have demonstrated a technology that uses the sun’s heat to convert carbon dioxide and water into the building blocks of traditional fuels, a reverse combustion process that may emerge as a practical alternative to sequestration of CO2 emissions from power plants. The prototype “Sunshine to Petrol” system, developed by Sandia National Laborat […]

Scornful of the positions taken by so-called global warming skeptics, climate scientists discussed taking steps to prevent the skeptics’ work from being published in international reports and scientific journals, according to e-mails stolen from Britain’s Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The Washington Post reports that the center’s di […]

East Antarctica’s massive ice sheets, which scientists believed to be relatively unaffected by global warming, have been melting at an accelerating rate since 2002, according to a new study. Using a NASA satellite that can measure gravity and mass from space, researchers from the University of Texas estimated that East Antarctica lost an average of 57 billio […]

For months, hopes that a climate treaty would be signed at the upcoming Copenhagen conference have been raised, then dashed, then raised again. Now, with prospects waning that a binding accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be reached this year, ten environmental leaders and climate experts outline for Yale Environment 360 what they believe can sti […]

A U.S. company has come up with a new way of producing biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks, such as agricultural waste: Using enzymes from the guts of termites to more efficiently produce ethanol. The startup company, ZeaChem, says using the enzymes from the wood-eating insects has achieved ethanol yields in the laboratory 35 percent higher than other produc […]

Britain’s Prince Charles has struck an agreement with 35 nations to contribute $22 billion to $36 billion to reduce the destruction of tropical forests by 25 percent by 2015. The Prince of Wales said the U.S. has agreed to contribute $275 million to the rainforest protection fund, which will pay countries such as Indonesia and Brazil to preserve forests rath […]

A study of the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the world’s oceans from 1765 to the present shows that as humanity pumps more CO2 into the atmosphere, the capacity of the world’s oceans to continue absorbing carbon appears to be decreasing. Researchers from Columbia University and NASA estimate that since 2000, the proportion of fossil-fuel emissions absorb […]

The Kenyan government has begun evicting an estimated 30,000 families that have squatted illegally in the vital Mau forest and caused major environmental damage to the one-million-acre woodland. The Mau forest, located in the Rift valley, is Kenya’s largest water catchment area, the source of at least a dozen rivers that feed Lake Victoria, the Masai Mara na […]

A number of biologists are challenging the long-held orthodoxy that alien species are inherently bad. In their contrarian view, many introduced species have proven valuable and useful and have increased the diversity and resiliency of native ecosystems. BY GREG BREINING

Major corporations in the U.S. have shown an increased willingness to voluntarily reduce their impact on climate change despite a sluggish economy, according to a new scorecard produced by the nonprofit group Climate Counts. Eighty-one of the 90 major companies assessed saw an average increase of 22 percent from last year’s scorecard, with Nike topping the l […]

Emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels soared by 41 percent from 1990 to 2008 and have jumped 29 percent since 2000, according to one of the most comprehensive studies to date of global carbon emissions. The study’s lead author, Corinne Le Quere of the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, said that unless these runaway e […]

The widespread use of genetically modified crops engineered to tolerate herbicides has led to a sharp increase of the chemicals in the U.S. and is creating herbicide-resistant “super weeds” and an increase in chemical residues in U.S. food, according to a new report. As more farmers have adopted variations of corn, soy beans, and cotton bred to tolerate weed […]

U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao have announced the creation of a joint program to develop clean energy, including the creation of a $150 million clean energy research center. Meeting in Beijing, the two presidents agreed to a seven-point plan designed to speed the development of renewable energy and improve energy efficiency. The […]

In an effort to reduce automobile usage and greenhouse gas emissions, the Dutch cabinet has approved a driving tax that would charge motorists seven cents a mile. The plan, which must still be approved by parliament, would use GPS systems installed in each car to keep track of mileage and automatically bill drivers. The mileage charges would be higher at rus […]

With the announcement by President Obama and other world leaders this weekend that no binding climate agreement will be reached in Copenhagen next month, numerous officials expressed hopes that a treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions could be signed by mid- to late-2010. Meeting in Singapore, Obama and other leaders agreed that lack of accord on setting p […]