Tornadoes, Climate Change and the Disaster Gap

There are storms and then there is what happened to the town of Sanford, North Carolina on the night of April 16. A boisterous storm system had begun in Oklahoma on April 14, bringing flash floods, tornadoes and thunderstorms from the Midwest through the Southeast, part of a massive weather system that could be felt [...]

Fresh Concerns Emerge as Japan Unveils Timetable for Fukushima Shut Down

Assessing the full impact of Japan’s crisis has been a moving target since the first minutes after the 9.0 earthquake struck on March 11. So it’s with a cautious sense of optimism that Sunday’s news from Tokyo Electric and Power Company (TEPCO) – that the crippled power plant could be in cold shut down before [...]

Congress Fiddles With Wildlife Management — and Greens Cry Foul

[This is a guest post by my colleague, TIME reporter Katy Steinmetz:] One of the collateral matters riding on the budget vote this week was the removal of gray wolves from the endangered species list.  While some of the sound bites in the news were dramatic — “So Congress will be voting Thursday on the [...]

How Whale Songs Rocket to Number One

There’s no accounting for musical taste — particularly when the kind of music you’re talking about doesn’t even originate in your own species. Bird songs may be lovely, but whale songs? Say what you will about the combination of whoops, clicks groans and faintly flatulent rumbles that whales use to communicate and woo, the odds [...]

The Greenest Buildings in North America

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) have come out with the top ten examples of sustainable architecture and green design. COTE has been listing the top green projects for the past 15 years—each of the winners will be honored at the AIA 2011 Convention and Design Exposition in [...]

The Planet’s Natural Air Filters

The Earth as one great organism has always been one of the most appealing metaphors of the green movement. From the moment environmentalist James Lovelock first articulated his so-called Gaia hypothesis—after the Greek goddess of the Earth—in the 1970s, the theory has continued to charm environmentalists. It doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, of course. [...]

A Win for Clean Air in the Southeast—and a Blow to Coal

Yesterday Tom Fanning, the CEO of the majority coal-powered utility Southern Company, made a few headlines when he told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a speech that the Obama administration has “virtually declared war on coal,” continuing: The existing coal industry is under attack by some in America. Decisions are being made today that [...]

How the Ice in Your Drink is Imperiling the Planet

Want to save the Earth? Easy, just buy a couple of ice trays. To the long list of human inventions that are wrecking global climate—the internal combustion engine, the industrial era factory—add the automatic ice maker. Climate modelers have long known that households are far bigger contributors to global warming than most laypeople realize. For [...]

Eat Seafood. A Little Bit. And Mostly Plants.

I met Barton Seaver about a year ago, on a TED expedition to the Galapagos Islands. We were there as part of oceanographer Sylvia Earle’s TED wish—she had brought scientists, celebrities, financiers and a few writers on board a National Geographic ship to talk about the best ways to protect the world’s oceans. During the [...]

Japanese Fishermen Bring Back First Tuna Since Quake

Photos of big tuna hanging from their tails usually leave me a little cold, particularly when those tuna have been caught in Japan, the world’s largest consumer of the endangered bluefin. But this picture released today by the Yomiuri, a Japanese daily, makes me feel… if not exactly warm and fuzzy… at least a little [...]