The
global discussion on climate change has quickly degenerated into a north-south confrontation, for perhaps obvious reasons. On average, carbon emissions per capita in the developed world are about five times those in developing countries.
BANGKOK - Delegates at the start of marathon climate talks in Thailand on Monday were told to speed up "painfully slow" negotiations as they struggle to settle on the outline of a tougher pact to fight global warming.
The Bangkok talks, which run until October 9, is the last major negotiating round before a gathering in Copenhagen in December that the United Nations has set as a deadline to seal a broad agreement on a pact to expand and replace the Kyoto Protocol.
A federal judge is expected to hear arguments Friday detailing why environmental activist Timothy DeChristopher should be allowed or prohibited from presenting evidence he acted out of "necessity" when he deliberately bid on and won oil and gas leases he couldn't pay for as part of a protest.
The December disruption of the Bureau of Land Management auction in Salt Lake City led to an indictment on two criminal charges against DeChristopher - violation of the federal oil and gas leasing reform act and providing a false statement.
RICHMOND - A Vermont group has called on the Obama administration to end logging and road building in undeveloped areas of the White Mountain National Forest and other federal woodlands to protect some of the last pristine public lands across the country.
"Americans have waited eight ... years to see our last pristine forests protected ..." said Mollie Matteson, a Vermont-based conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Three environmental groups have put the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on notice that they intend to sue the agency, alleging it has failed to regulate water pollution from the nation's electric utilities, including discharges into rivers and lakes from hundreds of coal-ash ponds.
Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project on Monday filed their notice of intent to sue the EPA - the first step in a federal lawsuit - alleging that EPA officials should have tightened their rules on power plant water pollution as far back as 1982.
MONTREAL - A new report from Greenpeace says oil production in Alberta's tar sands has made Canada into a "global carbon bully."
Little has been done to tackle climate change in Canada, and the federal government has actively tried to block international agreements and laws targeting climate change, says the report, called Dirty Oil: How The Tar Sands Are Fuelling the Global Climate Crisis.
Declaring the Chesapeake Bay a national treasure that needs urgent help, the Obama administration unveiled sweeping plans Thursday for jump-starting restoration efforts, including proposals to crack down on pollution from farming and development in the six-state region that drains into North America's largest estuary.
WASHINGTON - Changing weather patterns have decimated crops in several of the world's poorest countries this year, leaving millions in need of food aid and humanitarian workers warning about the dangerous effects of climate change.
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WASHINGTON - Carbon dioxide will soon be declared a dangerous pollutant - a move that could help propel slow-moving climate-change legislation on Capitol Hill, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters that a formal "endangerment finding," which would trigger federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, probably would "happen in the next months."
Everyone needs something to believe in, and for many Latin American progressives, that something for years has been Costa Rica. The country has long been cited as a beacon of progressive tranquility in a region better known for violence, inequality and poverty. Following an uprising in 1948 led by Jose Figueres Ferrer, the country embarked on its own unique path of social democracy, involving extensive progressive taxation, universal health and education availability, and no armed forces.
