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

Terry Tempest Williams takes us from Byzantine Italy to post-genocide Rwanda in search of “beauty in a broken world.”

We talk with Dr. Stuart Pimm, a Duke University ecologist who has travelled the world studying exactly how species go extinct – and how to bring them back from the brink.

We look at the McCain and Obama visions on the giant issues of energy and the environment.

Renowned author and nature writer Peter Matthiessen on the 30th anniversary of his landmark travel tale, “The Snow Leopard.”

A new take on the tuna — the world’s favorite fish — and why we’re in danger of loving it to death.

Ecuadorean Indians, and American trial lawyers, say Chevron is liable for a huge toxic oil dump, an “Amazon Chernobyl.” The fight reaches from a jungle courthouse to Washington, DC.

The environment and the green grass of home. Will Americans ever let go of their lawns?

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.

You’ve heard it a thousand times in recent years: being a citizen of the developed world — and especially a citizen of the United States of America — is bad for the planet. We all know we produce too much carbon, but it’s hard to know exactly how, and how much.
Now a new documentary from [...]

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 [...]

For a long, long time, the world’s oceans have seemed just too vast to be seriously affected by the hand of humankind. The endless rolling waves, the briny depths, the creatures beyond number — all these seemed to dwarf our footprints on the beach and ships at sea.
No more. A new global mapping of human [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

It’s a chemical world. In our water bottles, our furniture, our cosmetics and lawns and food, we are surrounded by synthetic chemicals. Since World War II, some 80,000 have been introduced. Forty-two billion pounds worth are produced or imported in the U.S. every year.
At the same time, Americans face a phalanx of disease and health [...]

Fires — big wildfires — are as natural as wind and rain and sunshine in Southern California. But there’s nothing natural about the giant human populations that now live in Southern California’s burning hills — or did live there until more than half a million were ordered out this week in the teeth of the [...]

The warning bells could hardly be louder: oil at $90 dollars a barrel on Friday and polar bears bobbing on too little ice.
If global warming and war in the Middle East were provoked by a century of fossil fuels and cars, just maybe changing cars can change the problem.
The race is on for cars that [...]

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 [...]