The green economy in the midst of meltdown. Obama talks a green game. Can he now deliver?

What you and your community can do to curb carbon emissions. We talk with The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert about direct action on the big problem of climate change.

The Senate debates a global warming bill this week — and its backers say it’s made to save the planet.
It is huge legislation that would cap CO2 emissions and — to fight climate change — would radically reshape the US economy and energy use.
No one thinks it’s going to pass this year. But Barack Obama [...]

The Irrawaddy delta in Myanmar is underwater, thousands dead, and environmentalists say it’s global warming. Monster tornadoes are plaguing the U.S. — last weekend in Missouri, Oklahoma and Georgia.
Meanwhile, far away, on the west coast of Alaska, the tiny fishing village of Kivalina is falling into the sea. And its attorneys are suing 24 oil, [...]

Warming in last decades has pushed spring forward — cherry blossom and lilac festivals across the country now celebrated days earlier than ever before. It also means birds are laying eggs earlier than before, or — sometimes — not at all.
It’s this kind of subtle mistiming that could spell disaster for our environment, jeopardizing the [...]

A thousand years ago, from the pueblos of the American southwest to what’s now Cambodia to the wheat fields of northern Europe, the world was in the midst of a great warming.
The years from around 800 to 1300 were a balmy time for some. The Vikings roamed the seas. Europe had lovely long summers.
But for [...]

Last week, in the frozen north of Norway, the seeds began to pour into the Global Seed Vault — the “doomsday vault,” some have called it. Five hundred feet of a super-secure cave in an Arctic mountainside is filling now with millions of seeds from all over the world.
As climate change and genetic engineering put [...]

Half of all electricity in America is generated from coal. As oil wanes and world energy demand grows, coal’s role is destined to only grow bigger.
The problem is, coal is dirty. Carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants are a major contributor to global warming.
Five years ago, the Bush administration announced what it called one [...]

As stock markets around Asia and the world headed south today, India’s finance minister tried to calm the selling: “Look,” he said, “India’s economy is headed for a booming 9 percent growth this year.” So he hopes.
And what will Indians spend that plenty on? India’s industrial giant Tata hopes they will soon be spending it [...]

Climate change is on the table this week at the world conference in Bali, Indonesia, and on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
But as the politicians haggle over much-needed climate policy, scientists and venture capitalists, students and inventors, are looking to give us an extreme energy makeover: pursuing breakthroughs in everything from biofuels to green buildings, [...]

Since before history, man and bear have shared hunting grounds and homes: in the caves of Europe, the bamboo forests of China, the mountains and woods of North America. Bears are woven deep in human mythology. Bears as friends, enemies, gods, entertainers, even lovers.
Now, with human populations and appetites so vast and climate change rolling [...]

Last week’s Nobel Prize for Al Gore on climate change has lit up the issue again globally, including on the American campaign trail in the ‘08 race for the White House.
As in no other election cycle in American history, candidates are being aggressively buttonholed on what they would do about global warming. The range of [...]