Work in environmental journalism for very long and you can eventually become inured to catastrophe. Every ecosystem is on the brink of collapse; every endangered species is just a few steps from extinction; every government decision to authorize an oil well or a coal mine is the one that will push carbon emissions over the edge. The language of environmentalism is the language of scarcity and loss, a constantly repeated message that we cannot continue living the way we are...or else. Sometimes the sheer, ...

If you really want to go green, the conventional thinking goes, buy a hybrid. Practically speaking though, there is a faster and cheaper option: shift to a low-carbon diet. The meal plan of the average American family accounts for 2.8 tons of CO2 emitted annually, compared with 2.2 tons for driving. Worldwide agriculture contributes some 30% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, far more than transportation. So when it comes to cutting your carbon footprint today, the truth is that what you ...

Since his election, President Barack Obama has emphasized the importance of developing new sources of energy and cultivating the jobs that will come with them. "I am convinced that whoever builds a clean energy economy, whoever is at the forefront of that, is going to own the 21st-century global economy," Obama told a bipartisan meeting of governors at the White House on Wednesday. But, increasingly, the President's new clean economy seems to rely on old sources of ...

As we pump billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we're doing more than warming the planet and scrambling the climate. We're also conducting what climatologist James Hansen has called a "vast uncontrolled experiment." In effect, we're on our way to engineering a world very different from the one we were handed. Belatedly, we're trying to turn off the carbon spigot, hoping that by incrementally reducing the emissions we've spent a couple of centuries pouring ...

Dozens of protesters camped out on the roof of Britain's parliament overnight to "save the climate," police reported Monday. More than 50 protesters climbed onto the roof of Westminster Hall at about 3 p.m. (10 a.m. ET) on Sunday, police said, and 31 remained on the roof as of Monday morning, environmental group Greenpeace said. About two dozen came down voluntarily and were arrested on suspicion of trespassing Sunday night, both sides said. Police put the number at 23 while ...

Like many things in Japan, the message is subtle. At least Japan's All Nippon Airways hopes it is, now that the nation's second largest airline has started quietly asking passengers in Japanese to use the bathroom before boarding 38 domestic flights and four international flights between Tokyo and Singapore. The request is part of the airline's "ecological flight" program, now in its fourth year, to reduce its carbon footprint by lightening planes' loads and reducing fuel consumption. Through ...

The unveiling Wednesday morning of the Senate's long-awaited draft legislation to reduce U.S. carbon emissions and shift the country to a clean-energy economy signals that Washington is inching ever closer to addressing global warming. The sweeping bill, sponsored by Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and John Kerry, will cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 83% by 2050 — targets that in the short-term are a bit more ambitious than a similar carbon cap and ...

Chinese President Hu Jintao told a U.N. summit on climate change Tuesday that China will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase reliance on clean energy sources in coming years. In what was called the first speech on climate change by a Chinese leader at the United Nations, Hu outlined some specific steps but provided no firm target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. As one of the world's two largest greenhouse gas emitters, China is a major ...

New fuel-economy rules proposed by the federal Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency are the first major move by the U.S. toward cracking down on greenhouse-gas emissions. The proposed program includes miles-per-gallon requirements and national emissions standards under the EPA's greenhouse-gas-emissions guidelines for model years from 2012 to 2016. You'd think that environmental groups would be overjoyed. Hardly. What has them worried are all the pro-industry rule tweaks and what they see as slanted calculations. "Automakers ...

When Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon 40 years ago, it was a triumph of American scientific skill. It was also the result of the government's willingness to spend over $125 billion, in today's dollars, to take the country to the moon. The need to remake our energy economy and to replace fossil fuels with renewables like wind and solar is often referred to as the new Apollo Project, a challenge to our scientists ...