A new island is forming in the Red Sea. About 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the coast of Yemen, an undersea eruption began in mid-December 2011. Local fishermen reported an eruption near the island of Saba, while satellites captured a white plume rising from the sea, and a pulse of su...
It doesn't take much for the food industry to freak out over potential government action, but this latest corporate outcry is especially galling and self-serving. This month, after more than 20 years of "assessment," the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to finally release l...
West Virginia continues to win the game of exposing human beings to extremely hazardous conditions in exchange for working-class pay, then telling them to deal with it when they get sick. The latest example of this behavior doesn't even have to do with coal, but with Monsanto and Agen...
For decades, the lush Amazon rainforest in Brazil has served as the backdrop to escalating tensions between an indigenous population which calls the region home, and illegal loggers dead-set on exploiting its natural wealth -- though the worst of the resulting atrocities may be at han...
In a rare bipartisan move -- the policy was initiated under George W. Bush and finalized under Obama -- the federal government has enacted catch size limits in order to prevent overfishing of coastal seas, reports the Washington Post . "It's something that’s arguably first in the worl...
He could do the same thing on energy generally and Keystone specifically. It's not hard to draw a clear contrast. One side wants to allow Chinese oil companies to use (and pollute) America's land in order to facilitate the export of filthy Canadian oil back to China. In exchange for t...
Screwdriver-and-soldering-iron types have probably already made their e-readers solar powered , but what if you didn't have any Schottky diodes lying around? SolarFocus has the technologically inept among us covered, with a Kindle cover that charges your device with solar panels. An h...
TIM: We were living in Pittsburgh at the time, and she sent me down to West Virginia, to the Otter Creek Wilderness, in the Monongahela National Forest, which was a place that I’d been to several times. And I spent eight days alone there. And it was a really powerful experience that l...
Land that is currently being farmed doesn't capture carbon in the soil. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture Cross-posted from the Environmental Working Group . As a possible 2012 Farm Bill looms, the ag committee leaders and their industrial agriculture lobby remoras are sorting thr...
Walt Hubis via Flickr /CC BY 2.0 Here's some good environmental news to kick off a year that began rather depressingly in other regards : The United States has, for the first time, moved "to impose catch limits for every species it manages, from Alaskan pollock to Caribbean queen conc...
Street art isn't just gang tags -- it can revitalize and beautify urban spaces , increase community identity , and even be a form of nonviolent protest . The work of Edina Tokodi kind of does all of those, plus it's about as green as graffiti can be : Tokodi's studio Mosstika makes st...
The cause of this warm first half of winter is the most extreme configuration of the jet stream ever recorded, as measured by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The Arctic Oscillation (AO) , and its close cousin, the North Atlantic Oscillation (which can be thought of as the North ...
This striking photograph from the International Space Station features two examples of circular landscape features—labeled as craters—that were produced by very different geological processes. At image right, the broad grey-green shield volcano of Emi Koussi is marked by three overlap...
Who says that clean energy policies don't create jobs? The boom in biodiesel has created not only a new commodities market in cooking grease, but a new business opportunity for security professionals -- not to mention providing work for thieves and black-market fences, which is a kind...
Blanchard Randrianambinina The GERP mouse lemur, discovered in the Sahafina forest in Madagascar. Finding a new species may look easy on paper, the conservationist Jonah Ratsimbazafy says, but it takes a long, long time. He and his colleagues spent many a night in the jungle chasing a...
The U.S. installed about 1.7 gigawatts of photovoltaic panels in 2011, according to GTM Research. Germany installed more than 2 gigawatts of solar in the month of December alone. That's good news and bad news. Good news because there is still demand for solar and Germany is amazingly ...
Professional snowboarders Bryan Fox and Austin Smith have started a "Drink Water " campaign, urging people to stop drinking the $20-a-gallon sugar-juice that props up their industry. Biting the hand that sponsors you is a ballsy move, but it's also the right thing to do, not just for ...
By contrast with the US domestic hostage crisis where our Republican kidnappers barely permit our government to keep the lights on each week, the Chinese government issues updated renewable energy plans every five years, and these plans go into detail, for four decades; up to 2050, an...
Sprint will now require that all phones go through a certification process to meet stringent environmental standards set by the company and UL Environment . The pair, along with cell phone manufacturers and other industry players, began developing the first environmental standard for ...
BM&FBOVESPA , the Brazilian Stock Exchange, announced this week that it will now recommend that its listed companies either state that they publish a regular sustainability report and where it can be accessed, or explain why they do not do so. According to BM&FBOVESPA, the goal of the...
As Fukushima Cleanup Begins, Long-term Impacts are Weighed The Japanese government is launching a large-scale cleanup of the fields, forests, and villages contaminated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. But some experts caution that an overly aggressive remediation program could creat...
Photo: Tiny lemur discovered in Madagascar forest (01/08/2012) A new species of mouse lemur has been discovered in eastern Madagascar, report researchers from Germany. The species is described in a recent issue of the journal Primates . Cultural shifts in Madagascar drive lemur-killin...
Across a number of sectors, cutting-edge business leaders are integrating sustainability throughout their companies. As organizations strive to balance profit growth with the needs of our planet, it’s critical that they also invest in a pipeline of next-generation sustainability leade...
Joost Notenboom and Michiel Roodenburg On July 4, 2010, Joost Notenboom and Michiel Roodenburg set off from Deadhorse, Alaska, on a more-than-18,000-mile journey to the southern tip of Argentina. Their chosen mode of transport: bamboo bicycles. Their mission: to raise awareness of the...
In the north-east of Ecuador, bordering Columbia, the rainforest is still thick in places, lying as it does in the vast Amazon basin that stretches across nine countries. But within this biodiverse-rich corner of the country there is an ecological disaster - compared by some to the le...
As Amazon deforestation falls, food production rises mongabay.com January 09, 2012 New study associates sharp decline in Amazon deforestation with increase in food production . Soy and forest in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. A sharp drop in deforestation has been acco...
ElvertBarnes via Flickr /CC BY-SA 2.0 If you recall, Republicans inserted a rider into the payroll tax cut bill (the one that they bizarrely opposed despite being the self-proclaimed party of tax cuts) that forces Obama to decide whether to approve or deny the Keystone XL tar sands pi...
As with most new technology, it’s unclear if the use of these green sidewalks will ever be quite that prominent. Largely, it depends on how much they cost to produce – if they’re too expensive, they’ll probably never become widespread. It’s the struggle of most environmentally friendl...
Rather than preparing to listen respectfully to community members in British Columbia, the Canadian federal government is acting as a spokesperson for Big Oil accusing opponents of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline of being “radicals” and “foreigners.” When it comes to tar sands ...
Green jobs are among the most controversial topic in America’s clean energy economy. Confusion over what exactly makes a job green has created disagreement over the total number of existing and potential green jobs, but efforts in several states are helping define the sector, track it...
