Environmental News Network

Soil database to help map CO2 storage, food output
New database of the world's soils will help better map agricultural output and storage and sequestration of heat trapping carbon dioxide (CO2), one of its creators, the United Nations' food agency FAO, said on Monday. >> Read the Full Article
Obama Shifts Stance on Environmental & Climate Issues
In May 1998, at the urging of the state's coal industry, the Illinois Legislature passed a bill condemning the Kyoto global warming treaty and forbidding state efforts to regulate greenhouse gases. Barack Obama voted "aye." >> Read the Full Article
Shell Revives Age Old Lime To Oceans Project In A Bid To Combat Global Warming
's been a while since the last big to-do about adding limestone to the planet's oceanic waters, but researchers sponsored by oil company Shell are saying that they've found the ultimate solution this time. Adding limestone extracts to the surface of the planet's oceans will dramatically lower the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is because adding lime to seawater creates an increase in alkalinity, which in turn improves the water's ability to scrub the air clean of carbon. >> Read the Full Article
Nature Conservancy Goes Public with Voluntary Carbon Offset Program
The Nature Conservancy is going public with its Voluntary Carbon Offset Program, offering individuals the opportunity to offset part of their own carbon footprints by contributing funds to set aside private lands that would othwerwise lay idle and degrade for conservation and forest regeneration. The first project on the Conservancyâ€™s carbon offset slate is protecting and regenerating part of Louisianaâ€™s Tensas River Basin, an ecologically key 47-acre tract of currently unproductive farmland that will soon form part of 3,600 acre conservation management system within the Lower Mississippi Valley. >> Read the Full Article
The UK's Green New Deal to Combat Economic Depression, Climate Change
Inciting the rhetoric of FDR during the days of the Great Depression, several economists, politicians, and environmentalists in the UK have made news recently with the proposal of the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to fight the triple threats of the credit crunch, high gas prices, and climate change that are factoring to degrade life and the world as we know it. >> Read the Full Article
The Ying and Yang of the Environmental Protection Agencyâ€™s Position on Climate Change
Less than a week after releasing its response to the April 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the EPA should take action to assess the risk of greenhouse gas emissions and regulate those emissions unless there is a good scientific reason for not doing so, the EPA issued a report entitled Analyses of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and Human Systems. >> Read the Full Article
Human rights a 'compass' for climate change policies
Human rights can be a "compass" to guide research and policy development for climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, according to a report. >> Read the Full Article
Climate report calls for leaders with vision
The world needs leaders with the vision to forge New Deal-type policies to tackle the potentially disastrous combination of climate change, high inflation and economic slowdown, a British think-tank said on Monday. "A New Green Deal", a report issued by the New Economics Foundation, uses the convergence of the credit crunch, climate change and booming food and fuel prices to make the case for a new economics for the 21st century. Key points in the report are that every home must generate its own power, an oil legacy fund must be set up using windfall taxes on oil and gas firms to help pay for green transformation, and carbon should be priced according to its climate impact. >> Read the Full Article
Climate change puts U.S. way of life at risk: EPA
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under fire for apparently discounting the impact of climate change, on Thursday said global warming poses real risk to human health and the American way of life. Risks include more heat-related deaths, more heart and lung diseases due to increased ozone and health problems related to hurricanes, extreme precipitation and wildfires, the agency said in a new report. >> Read the Full Article
Opinion: U.S. Environmentalists Finally Have a Leader
On Thursday, politician-turned-activist Al Gore called for the United States to rely 100 percent on zero-carbon sources of electricity by 2018. Regardless of the logistical practicality of the goal or of the existence of political will to achieve this target in a single decade, Gore's statements made it clear: the U.S. environmental movement finally has a leader. >> Read the Full Article