Civilization's Last Chance   [archive]
by Bill McKibben in the Los Angeles Times, 5/11/2008
Even for Americans -- who are constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start -- even for us, the world looks a little terminal right now.

Fire Managers Predict Bad Year for Blazes   [archive]
by Laura Zuckerman, Reuters, 5/10/2008
U.S. fire managers are forecasting a grim year for blazes in drought-plagued Western states, just weeks after a premature start to the Southwest's wildfire season.

8 Ways to Fix the Global Food Crisis   [archive]
by Marianne Lavelle and Kent Garber, U.S. News and World Report, 5/9/2008
The ideas that world leaders weigh will not ease the global food strife quickly, but they can lay the groundwork for a planet with enough resources for its growing and increasingly connected inhabitants. Among them are these 8.

Climate Change Could Hit Tropical Wildlife Hardest   [archive]
by Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters, 5/5/2008
In Chappaqua, NY, there is a school club called Kids Against Pollution, which conducted a weeklong protest leading up to Earth Day. Its goal was to reduce the number of cars dropping off students at the school in Chappaqua, a village of fewer than 10,000 with a median household income of more than $163,000.

Science

Sucking Up Carbon Dioxide to Combat Global Warming   [archive]
by Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times, 5/6/2008
Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University, said placing enough carbon filters around the planet could reel the world's atmosphere back toward the 18th century, like a climatic time machine. After a decade of work, his shower-size prototype whirs away inside a warehouse in Tucson, each day capturing about 10 pounds of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas as air wafts through it.

From Bountiful to Barren: Rainfall Decrease Left the Sahara Out to Dry  [archive]
by Adam Hadhazy, Scientific American, 5/9/2008
In a finding that may help scientists better predict the pace of climate change, research published in Science shows how the Sahara Desert, a region as big as the U.S. that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea across northern Africa, went from bountiful to bone-dry over a period of several thousand years.

Family Science Project Yields Surprising Data About a Siberian Lake  [archive]
by Cornelia Dean, New York Times, 5/6/2008
Scientists in the United States have analyzed data from a Russian professor's "family science project" and concluded, to their surprise, that the water in Lake Baikal is rapidly warming. As a result, its highly unusual food web is reorganizing, as warmer water species of plankton become more prevalent. These shifts at the bottom of the food web could have important implications for all of the creatures that live in the lake, they say.

Carbon Market

Confidence in Carbon Markets Fell in 2007: Survey [archive]
from Reuters, 5/7/08
Confidence in the global greenhouse gas emissions market dipped slightly in 2007 despite a surge in the market's value, a survey of market participants released on Wednesday showed.

The Color of Investment Money is...Green [archive]
by Jennifer Hill, Reuters, 5/7/2008
Environmental concerns are no longer the reserve of climate change campaigners. Fund management companies are increasingly moving into the "green" arena as public concern over the ecosystem increases.

Politics/Legislation

EU Grapples Over Biofuels  [archive]
by Leo Cendrowicz, TIME, May 2008
Like much of the rest of the world, Europe has invested heaps of money and even more hope in the promise of biofuels to provide secure supplies of environmentally friendly energy. But now rising food prices, trade tensions and social unrest are prompting a rethink of the E.U.'s ambitious hopes for running its cars and trucks on biofuel.

EU Lawmaker Defends Plans for Burying C02 by 2025  [archive]
by Pete Harrison, Reuters, 5/6/2008
An EU lawmaker said on Tuesday that the European Union should force power stations to trap all their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2025 and bury them underground, and he hit out at critics of the technology.

Broad Climate Fight Best, Not Just Tax Cuts: Study  [archive]
by Alister Doyle, Reuters, 5/8/2008
An assault on climate change on many fronts makes good economic sense but will be money badly spent if the world focuses exclusively on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a study said on Thursday.