Serengreenity

One reason it is so hard to slash carbon emissions is that climate change occurs globally. The countries that produce the most greenhouse gas all need to take action to fix the problem. That raises a classic economic dilemma called the tragedy of the commons.

Next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen seeks to transform the way we run the planet, from the generation of energy, to the building of homes and cities. It would also shift wealth from rich to poor countries in the process.

Have the climate wars of Africa begun? Tales of conflict emerging from a remote, arid region of Kenya have disturbing echoes of the lethal building blocks that turned Darfur into a killing ground in western Sudan.

Only one fifth of the world's forests remain but an area bigger than Canada could be restored without harming food production, a new study concludes. An estimated 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation and agriculture.

China is touting its carbon-limiting plan as a "major contribution" to the struggle against climate change, but its already massive greenhouse gas emissions will still rise for years to come.

Americans’ day-to-day lives won’t change noticeably if President Barack Obama achieves his newly announced goal of slashing carbon dioxide pollution by one-sixth in the next decade, experts say. Except for rising energy bills.

President Obama has a mountain to climb to sell his new climate change commitments to a sceptical American public. For all the President’s aspirations to global leadership on climate change there remains a gulf between what the world expects and what he can deliver.

US President Barack Obama had been wary of attending the global climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. Many hope his decision to attend will increase the meeting's chances for success. But doubts remain about his commitment.

While the U.S. Senate considers a climate bill aiming to dramatically slash air pollution linked to global warming,, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other Republican leaders in the state that leads the nation in greenhouse gas production are watching closely - and objecting loudly.

The world's top two greenhouse-gas-producing countries for the first time offered specific targets for controlling their emissions, but their broad promises ahead of a UN climate summit merely set the terms for a high-stakes struggle over money and future economic growth.

The Brazilian Amazon is arguably the world's biggest natural defense against global warming, acting as a "sink," or absorber, of carbon dioxide. But it is also a great contributor to warming.

Brazil's president said Thursday that "gringos" should pay Amazon nations to prevent deforestation, insisting Western nations have caused much more environmental destruction than the loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees.

Global warming is melting the fringes of the frozen world where Greenland's Inuits have hunted seal, whale and polar bear for generations. It's thawing the permafrost on which their homes are built. But all is not doom and gloom.

Rising sea levels, ocean warming, cyclones and droughts caused by climate change are set to hit food security hard in the Pacific islands, the United Nations' food agency said, urging governments to take immediate actions.

Unusually warm and cold periods in Earth's pre-industrial climate history are linked to how the oceans responded to temperature changes, say scientists.

Australia's opposition party has splintered over a contentious bill aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, with top officials resigning over the party leader's support for the legislation.

Scientists have given the state of Australia's marine environment a low grade in the country's first Marine Climate Change report card released today.

After 18 months, Pittsburgh-based food giant Heinz says it has already achieved substantial progress in reaching its sustainability goals, cutting greenhouse gas emissions 13 percent and energy use 15.8 percent.

There is broad agreement among climate change education specialists that before you can do meaningful work in the climate change realm, you need a good foundation in at least one discipline. But which one?

Opportunities are expanding for natural and social scientists who wish to take on the scientific and practical challenges posed by climate change.

Consumers might be more willing to bite into genetically modified apples if they were labeled differently, according to research published this month in the Journal of Food Distribution Research.

A new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington assesses the potential economic losses from shutting down Washington State's razor clam season in response to a harmful algal bloom.

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.

From elderly elephants to ice-loving beetles, the pick of this week's images from the natural world

Far fewer cyclists can currently be seen commuting to work as feeling the wind, rain and cold on your bike can be a pretty unpleasant experience. But are there things we can do to make cycling in the winter more bearable? And are there simple things we can do to our bikes to make them safer and smoother in the colder months?In this month's bike podcast, […]

A ranger at a wildlife sanctuary in Australia gets a bit too up close and personal with one of his razor-toothed charges

Feral camels have caused havoc in the small Australian town of Docker River as they search for drinking water

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 […]