Green Options

Trees are good for people and for the environment. Forests act as natural sinks for absorbing carbon dioxide, prevent and reduce soil erosion and water pollution, and provide habitat for wildlife. Trees also add green space in urban settings and offer a sense of beauty and community. When appropriately landscaped around buildings, trees serve as wind buffers, create shade to reduce energy costs, and improve overall property value.

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Can your search engine offset your carbon footprint? How about funding breast cancer research, environmental conservation, or pubic schools? Calling all web surfers: don’t miss these easy opportunities for everyday activism.

How it works

In 2006, an estimated $24.4 billion was spent on Internet advertising. (CBS, ZenithMedia) Some of this advertising money is spent placing ads on Internet search engines like Google and Yahoo. Each time we search the web, we see ads that fund

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Last week China reiterated its commitment to renewable energy, particularly hydropower. The Asian nation plans to triple its hydropower production to 300,000 megawatts by 2020.

Chinese officials also asked the world to cut them some slack in their efforts to cut global warming pollution.

China’s contribution to global warming has been relatively small compared to the more developed Western nations, they argue, and they shouldn’t be held overly accountable. According to Chen Deming

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Currently over 250 million people experience the direct consequences of desertification. Many of them are the world’s most destitute and vulnerable citizens.

2000 participants are expected in Madrid for the eighth international conference of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which runs from September 3 - 14. Ecologists, representatives from 800 NGOs, and envoys from the 191 countries that ratified the Convention will meet to report on recent developments in the battle against

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There was a questionable bit of progress this past Friday at the Vienna Climate Change Talks, where negotiators agreed on loose targets for cutting the emissions that cause global warming.

The 158 nations represented agreed that industrialized countries should cut global warming emissions by 25-40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020. But nations like Canada, Japan, and Russia delayed the talks, arguing instead for a more "open approach" rather than setting hard and fast targets.

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It’s been a busy week for international climate change negotiations. A meeting of the United Nations and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have some watchers feeling cautiously optimistic of future global agreements, while others are less than impressed with the semantics.

The Vienna Climate Change talks saw more than a thousand people from government, industry, and research gather in the Austrian capital to discuss ways to fight global warming. This United Nations-backed meeting is

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"An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be." - Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises

"Blowin’ in the Wind," an homage to Bob Dylan’s 1963 song, has become the cliché for renewable energy advocates. Google "Blowin’ in the wind," and

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A U.S. District Court Judge has ruled that the Bush Administration broke federal law when it failed to produce two required global warming reports on time.

The ruling was based on a 1990 law - the Research Plan and National Assessment required by the Global Change Research Act - directing the President to regularly issue two global warming plans: one that guides research and another explaining global warming’s possible impacts on the U.S.

The research

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A Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement under the Clean Water Act was written in 1972 to set a cap on the amount of crud that could be dumped into Lake Michigan annually. The law set a limit on how much pollution companies could legally dump into the lake. The law also prevented any company that was dumping under the limit from increasing their dumped pollution.

Well,

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Arctic Tale brings us to a frigid world of snow dunes and sloshing sea ice. It follows the lives of a young female polar bear, “Nanu,” and a young female walrus, “Seela.” Like all children today, Nanu and Seela are growing up in a rapidly changing world. For Nanu and her family, a 20% decrease of sea ice and warmer, earlier summers bring a severe food scarcity. Meanwhile,

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Australian farmers have teamed up with environmentalists to create the Agricultural Alliance on Climate Change, a group that wants to cut emissions up to 60 percent by 2050.

Although they may not agree on all environmental issues, climate change is problem that they know requires immediate action and can be slowed. Farming groups like the South Australian Farmers Federation and Agforce are on the front lines of having

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