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With many of the earth’s ecosystems nearing “critical tipping points,” the United Nations invited each of the seven billion people on the planet to mark this year’s World Environment Day by making one change towards a more responsible consumption of resources – “be it refusing to buy single-use plastic bags or riding a bike to work.”“Humanity continues to consume far more natural resources than the planet can sustainably provide,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in this year’s message for the Day, observed annually on 5 June. “It is time for us to change.”> “The goal of sustainable development is to increase...

Abundant, reliable, affordable oil and natural gas empower people. They support job creation, mobility, modern agriculture, homes and hospitals, computers and communications, lights and refrigerators, life and study after sundown, indoor plumbing, safe drinking water, less disease and longer lives. Hydrocarbons make plastics, pharmaceuticals and synthetic clothing. They create fertilizers and pesticides, to improve crop yields, reduce food prices and improve nutrition. But Sierra Club, 350.org and other radicals want to keep America’s oil and natural gas bounties in the ground. They block leasing, drilling and fracking. They block pipelines that transport oil and gas to refineries, power plants, factories...

White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett is quietly working behind the scenes to build a coalition of major U.S. corporations to back President Barack Obama’s goal of hashing out a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the upcoming United Nations summit in Paris.The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a letter that outlines how, by the end of June, Obama is looking to build a coalition of businesses to show support for UN climate talks. After that, the White House will then try to grow this group of businesses to 250 in the run up to the Paris talks...

Recent research by the climate analysts suggests that Mount Everest by the end of this century would be free from its glaciers. Located in Nepal, Mount Everest is reported to be the tallest mountain on the earth with the recorded height of 29,029 feet. The tallest mountain is situated on the border of Nepal and China. According to the rough estimate, it is estimated to be 9000 feet taller than the highest peak of North America.

Before he announces that he's jumping into the 2016 presidential race, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) wants to finish work on his latest state budget and in the process pack it with conservative goodies he can tout on the campaign trail. For Walker, this is key to his 2016 game plan. "The budget is important, because Walker has been delaying an announcement before he officially announces as President. It gives him a list of popular red-meat items to check off in the primaries," University of Wisconsin Public Policy Professor Donald Moynihan told TPM. Here is a list of five of...

Epic Fail: ‘Climate Change Voters’ Attempt To Protest Scott Walker NH Cruise With ‘Floating Iceberg,’ People Dressed As Moose Before Walker went on a fundraising cruise on Lake Winnipesaukee, Americans United For Change (AUFC)—a liberal organization—announced it would be organizing a counter-protest to Walker’s cruise. A couple things made this different than any normal protest, however. First off, the people “protesting” Walker on global warming—who they called “climate change voters”—would be dressed as moose. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, they’d be on a “floating iceberg” behind Walker.................................. ...........In fact, the protest was so successful that Sirius XM’s The David Webb...

Budget panel adopts Scott Walker's cuts to DNR scientists, bucks natural area buy moratorium The Legislature’s budget committee voted Friday to slow down conservation land purchases and eliminate half of the state Department of Natural Resources senior science staff as part of an overall reduction of 80 DNR positions. With their plan to reduce annual borrowing for purchases of natural areas, Republican lawmakers bucked Gov. Scott Walker, who wanted a 13-year moratorium to reduce debt payments that ballooned in 2012 because the state postponed payments during the recession. Joint Finance Committee leaders announced they would propose cutting stewardship land borrowing...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has signaled in a letter to President Obama that his state might not comply with a forthcoming rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants. The likely GOP presidential candidate told Obama in the May 21 letter that he has "deep concerns regarding our ability to develop a state plan to comply with" the proposed Environmental Protection Agency targets. The implicit threat makes Walker the highest-profile governor to consider endorsing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's strategy of undercutting the regulation through states refusing to submit a compliance plan, though he ultimately stopped short of doing so. "The...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule Wednesday that critics say would expand federal reach over U.S. waterways, but that the Obama administration contends will clarify which farming, development and other practices are subject to regulation. The battle over the "Waters of the U.S." rule has been brewing for months and will continue both on and off Capitol Hill. The regulation attempts to define Clean Water Act regulations as stretching to bodies of water that have a "significant nexus" with "navigable waters" to prevent pollution of drinking water. The EPA told various media outlets that the rule asserts the agency's...

A Washington state senator has survived a campaign by Western Washington University students who demanded their school revoke his master’s degree because he’s not radical enough on global warming. Doug Ericksen, a Republican and chair of Washington’s Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee, has blocked efforts to force businesses and residents to go green, but he supports voluntary compliance. He opposes mandated cap-and-trade programs and low-carbon fuel standards. But the effort to yank Ericksen’s degree — he earned his MA in political science and environmental policy at WWU — met with a stiff rebuke last week from the university’s president....

...after Hurricane Sandy bared down on New York, killing over 150 people and wreaking $65 billion in damage, federal leaders cried for help to make the Northeast more flood-proof. Dutch expert Henk Ovink answered..... ... there's good cause to be worried when the Dutch expert says there’s no place in worse shape today than Miami. He’s begun calling the city “the new Atlantis,” after the legendary and beautiful island subcontinent that was submerged by the sea in one night. “If we look around the world and take into account sea level rise and the increase of water related disasters, among...

"I think the reason these anti-bike policies are being proposed is it’s a red-meat issue for a lot of Republicans," Bike Fed executive director Dave Cieslewicz told Madison.com. "They have stereotypes about what cyclists are and they don’t see them as their voters. They see attacks on cycling as politically beneficial." WATERLOO, Wis. (BRAIN) — Trek Bicycle's president, John Burke, is urging Wisconsin cyclists to contact their state lawmakers in support of the state's Complete Streets Law, which Gov. Scott Walker has proposed eliminating. Burke, in an email sent this week, also urged them to oppose a $25 state bicycle...

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede. The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As...

.....Obama will use a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut on Wednesday to cast his push for urgent action to combat climate change as a national security imperative, arguing that the warming of the planet poses an “immediate risk” to the United States....

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- What a difference a border can make. Sometimes it marks a difference not just in altitude but attitude. When our neighbors in Oklahoma find the ground shaking beneath their feet, they know well enough what's causing it. Or they should know by now. As quake follows quake in the center of that state, the cause becomes undeniable: the injection of wastewater into deep wells as part of the process called fracking. The number of good-sized tremors in our neighboring state has multiplied tenfold within just the past three years. The revolution in oil-and-gas production that's making...

What do you do when you have 30 million young salmon ready for their big journeys downstream, but drought and development have dried your riverbeds to sauna rocks? In California this year, you give the fish a ride. State and federal wildlife agencies in California are deploying what they say is the biggest fish-lift in the state's history through this month, rolling out convoys of tanker trucks to transport a generation of hatchery salmon downstream to the San Francisco Bay.

JACKSON, MI – Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John McBain has been known to unload a healthy dose of candor when entering judgments. Anyone from a convicted murderer to a local politician can get caught in the judge's verbal volley. In the case of the city's illegal stormwater tax hearing on Tuesday, May 12, it was the latter. City leaders are required to repay their illegally collected stormwater fees by June 26 or face a $1,000-per-day fine, McBain ruled with fiery contempt. After creating the fee in 2011, a Michigan Court of Appeals' decision ruled the fee unconstitutional two years...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy will take a trip to a San Francisco nail salon Wednesday—a visit intended to shine a spotlight on health risks posed by the industry. [Snip] Nail polish and other products found in salons contain an array of chemicals that may pose a threat to public health and the environment. Without proper handling, exposure to chemicals such as formaldehyde can lead to difficulty breathing, skin irritation and other health problems. EPA already has put together a federal working group and doled out grants to organizations tackling the industry's public health and environmental impact created by...

Every December millions watch an array of familiar Christmas theme movies — "Scrooge," "A Christmas Story," "It’s a Wonderful Life" and so on. No similar tradition has been established for Earth Day, but if there were an appropriate selection would be The Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene from Disney’s classic movie "Fantasia." As explained below, the mousey parable is a metaphor for what has happened the environmental movement. When Earth Day was created in 1970 the environmental movement advocated practical approaches to real problems. The air and water, cities, rural areas and woodlands were being used as waste dumps. A broad consensus...

<p>How’s this as a gesture of love for the woman who bore you? Chop off the reproductive organ of a plant and send it to her in a box tied up with a pretty bow.</p> <p>No, it’s not a weird botanical twist on the van Gogh woo-a-girl-with-a-severed-ear legend. It is what millions of us (67 percent of those celebrating the holiday) will compulsorily do to mark Mother’s Day.</p>