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WASHINGTON - It is time to craft new politics and economic policies to address the sustainability crisis, according to the latest edition of a flagship report by the Worldwatch Institute, a think tank here. “We need to rethink many of our basic economic assumptions and mechanisms, and aim not only for a better and wiser distribution of resources, but also a better sharing of available work. This can’t be accomplished via conventional forms of capitalism.” The global community has delayed addressing the issues associated with rapid climate change and environmental degradation for too long, according to the 294-page report, “Governing...

OLYMPIA – Gov. Jay Inslee appointed a new task force to find ways for Washington to reduce carbon emissions as part of an executive order to fight climate change. At a speech at Shoreline Community College on Tuesday, Inslee outlined goals in an order that calls for less carbon pollution and more clean energy sources, including a reduction in electricity generated by coal-fired power plants and increased use of electric vehicles and mass transit.

Changing cattle fields to forests is a cheap way of tackling climate change and saving species threatened with extinction, a new study has found. Researchers from leading universities, including the University of Sheffield, carried out a survey of carbon stocks, biodiversity and economic values from one of the world's most threatened ecosystems, the western Andes of Colombia. The main use of land in communities is cattle farming, but the study found farmers could make the same or more money by allowing their land to naturally regenerate. Under carbon markets designed to stop global warming, they could get paid to change...

If modern industrial capitalism were a person, he or she would be on suicide watch. The system that has brought us quantum physics and reality television, modern medicine and the columns of Andrew Bolt is set on a course which, by all the best reckoning, points directly to its doing itself in. If capitalism goes on — everything goes. Climate, coastlines, most living species, food supplies, the great bulk of humanity. And certainly, the preconditions for advanced civilisation, perhaps forever. Moreover, we’re not just talking risk, in the sense of an off-chance. These are the most likely outcomes for capitalism’s...

1) What do you make of the extension of the comment period for federal agencies to Keystone XL? President Obama said he would take his time to make a considered decision whether or not to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, and that appears to be exactly what he's doing. 2) The State Department wrote in a recent report that even if the pipeline isn’t built, the oil will still be exported by other means. So, is protesting the pipeline fruitless? Not at all. 3) For many, the debate on Keystone comes down to jobs. The presence of a pipeline will...

Climate activists just can’t seem to catch a break on Capitol Hill. Michael Grimm has become the first sitting House Republican to stop denying the science that humans cause climate change. But now the second-term lawmaker from Staten Island might be facing his own dangerous climate — inside a jail cell. POLITICO reported late Friday afternoon that Grimm, who has been the subject of an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations, expects to be indicted in New York. Shortly before that story broke, the pro-Obama group Organizing for Action had been celebrating Grimm’s about-face on climate change. “That’s huge —...

While researchers have sometimes connected weather extremes to man-made global warming, usually it’s not done in real time. Now a study is asserting a link between climate change and both the intensifying California drought and the polar vortex blamed for a harsh winter that mercifully has just ended in many places. The Utah State University scientists involved in the study say they hope what they found can help them predict the next big weird winter.

Virginia’s highest court has denied a conservative group’s effort to force the University of Virginia to turn over emails from a controversial climate scientist who worked at the school. The Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday held that the public university wasn’t obligated under the state’s freedom of information law to release thousands of emails that Penn State researcher Michael Mann wrote while he was a UVA professor several years ago. Mr. Mann in 2009 came under scrutiny among global warming skeptics after hackers leaked thousands of email exchanges between the professor and other researchers that suggested that the scientists sought...

The cult centered on “global warming” alarmism is getting hot under the collar. People seem to have stopped paying attention, and polls show “climate change” barely registers on a list of voters' concerns. This can only mean, as losing politicians like to say, that their message isn’t getting through. What to do? Why, shout louder, of course. A recent story in the New York Times sought to help alarmists raise the decibel level: “The countries of the world have dragged their feet so long on global warming that the situation is now critical, experts appointed by the United Nations reported...

THE WORLD now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Expect a certain part of our political class to insist that man-made climate change is not consensus science, and that until it is, nothing should be done. The problem there is obvious: By the time all the skeptics are persuaded, it will be too late for an effective response. In that regard, climate change poses a...

Climate change’s latest casualty appears to be fish — or more specifically, fish brains — as researchers say the carbon dioxide that’s being absorbed into the ocean is causing the scaly creatures to lose their survival instincts. In other words, the fish are losing their minds, The Daily Mail reported. The acid from atmospheric carbon dioxide seeps into sea waters, dissolves and ultimately lowers the pH balance, researchers said. The acidic waters then hamper the fishes’ sensory systems, so they’re not able to distinguish between smells any longer, the scientists went on.

For all the noise about the State Department's final environmental review of the Keystone XL Pipeline being a "blow" to pipeline opponents, the report contains more than enough information for Secretary of State John Kerry -- a respected environmental champion -- to conclude that the pipeline is not in the national interest. Although you have to dig a bit, the report recognizes the dangers associated with the tar sands fuel that the pipeline would transport. Kerry's obligation is to determine what is in the national interest. For all its flaws, the report acknowledges that the tar sands that would get...

--snip-- BANGKOK (AP) - A survey released Tuesday -- the first comprehensive one of its kind - says that only 10 killers of 908 environmental activists slain around the world over the past decade have been convicted. The report by the London-based Global Witness, a group that seeks to shed light on the links between environmental exploitation and human rights abuses, says murders of those protecting land rights and the environment have soared dramatically.

International efforts to combat global warming are so broken that it's come to this: hoovering massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the sky. A body of scientists convened under the auspices of the United Nations is giving more weight to the idea that vacuuming vast stores of CO2 from the skies and burying it in the ground may be necessary to limit the temperature rise to the internationally agreed safe level of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels. The plan's not quite like a giant thermostat for the whole globe, but the metaphor's not completely off either.

Correction April 12, 2014 An earlier version of this story said that the methane emissions associated with livestock come from their farts. In fact, most of those methane emissions come from belches. Sorry to ruin your appetite, but it's time to talk about cow belches. Humans the world over are eating meat and drinking milk — some of us a little less, some of us a lot more, than years past. Farmers are bringing more and more cows into the world to meet demand, and with them escapes more methane into the atmosphere. In 2011, methane from livestock accounted for...

BERLIN — It’s Plan B in the fight against climate change: cooling the planet by sucking heat-trapping CO2 from the air or reflecting sunlight back into space. Called geoengineering, it’s considered mad science by opponents. Supporters say it would be foolish to ignore it, since plan A — slashing carbon emissions from fossil fuels — is moving so slowly. The U.N.’s expert panel on climate change is under pressure from both sides this week as it considers whether geoengineering should be part of the tool-kit that governments use to keep global warming in check.

The Obama administration released a comprehensive strategy document Wednesday aimed at reducing wildfires, which it says are being exacerbated by climate change. The strategy recommends preventive measures like controlled burns, municipal and state zoning to reduce the effects of sprawl and incorporating watersheds into local management plans. “As climate change spurs extended droughts and longer fire seasons, this collaborative wildfire blueprint will help us restore forests and rangelands to make communities less vulnerable to catastrophic fire,” said Jack Boots, acting chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality.

Trust in technology: That seems to be the underlying message of a coming report from the world's top panel on climate change. Scheduled for release on Sunday, the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report will point to many possible ways - from burying greenhouse gases to going nuclear to encouraging biofuel production—to save humanity from the ravages of climate change. "I think we will see that there are a wide number of paths we can take to get to the mountaintop we want to reach," says economist James Edmonds. "We just have to pick what mountaintop we all want,...

Accuracy varies significantly across major cable news outlets. All of them can take steps to improve their coverage of climate science. To gauge how accurately these networks inform their audiences about climate change, UCS analyzed the networks' climate science coverage in 2013 and found that each network treated climate science very differently. Fox News was the least accurate; 72 percent of its 2013 climate science-related segments contained misleading statements. CNN was in the middle, with about a third of segments featuring misleading statements. MSNBC was the most accurate, with only eight percent of segments containing misleading statements * Mutual acceptance...

Will a warming world eventually kill off roe deer in France? That question is being raised in light of new research indicating that the animals are having a hard time adapting to climate change. In a study published Tuesday in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, researchers tracked the births and subsequent survival of roe deer fawns in France's Champagne region. They noted that spring vegetation on which the adult deer depend for food was starting to flourish two weeks earlier that it did nearly three decades ago, due to gradual warming. But although spring was arriving earlier, the animals' birth...