Business Daily: A long list of factors have been blamed for the global food crisis which along with the energy crisis has hit developing countries hardest. Prices of staple foods have risen by up to 100 per cent in some cases. But few mention the declining supply of water that is needed to grow irrigated and rain-fed crops. An often-mooted solution to the food crisis is to breed high-yielding, low water-consuming crops. While this is important, it will fail unless we also pay attention to ...

Huffington Post: In a few weeks, elite athletes from around the world will gather in Beijing. Press coverage of the Games is likely to highlight competition between America and China about which will win the most medals. Media coverage will also -- as it has already -- focus on air quality and environmental conditions in China. As we compete on the playing fields, China and the U.S. should not lose sight of where our interests coincide -- climate change. And looking beyond the recently sooty skies of ...

Market Watch: The newly released Maplecroft Climate Change Risk Report includes the first-ever climate change vulnerability index and a set of best-to-worst rankings for more than 168 countries worldwide. It identifies the world's highest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters as well as those countries most and least vulnerable to climate change. The report finds many of the world's biggest CO2 emitters are also the countries least vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Despite being the biggest emitter, ...

Associated Press: Seven Western states have joined four Canadian provinces to plan limits on greenhouse gas emissions. It would cover up to 90 percent of the global warming emissions across Oregon, Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Washington and would extend to British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec in Canada.   The plan was drafted by the Western Climate Initiative, a group created by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and ...

Reuters: The Arctic Circle holds an estimated 90 billion barrels of recoverable oil, enough supply to meet current world demand for almost three years, the U.S. Geological Survey forecast on Wednesday. The agency's forecast comes as Russia is competing with Canada, Denmark, Norway and the United States to grab a chunk of the Arctic's huge energy resources as the area becomes more accessible due to global warming that is melting the region's ice. The government agency also said the area ...

San Francisco Chronicle: California, six other Western states and four Canadian provinces will launch a market-based carbon trading system in a major North American effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, according to a draft proposal released today. When it officially begins in four years, the program would first target heavy polluters such as electric utilities, oil refineries and large industrial and commercial facilities, which would be required to begin reporting emission levels ...

Associated Press:  A proposed rule expected next week from the Bush administration would allow approximately 100 new oil and gas leases to be developed in Colorado national forests currently protected from drilling under a plan backed by Gov. Bill Ritter that backfired, according to an environmental group. A report by the Pew Environmental Group to be released Wednesday says the plan recommended by a state task force and backed by Ritter was intended to be an "insurance policy" to protect the forests ...

New York Times: Neither State Senator Joe Simitian of California nor the state's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, bears much resemblance to Dr. Seuss's Lorax. But on Tuesday, like that fictional defender of the environment, they spoke for the trees. Trees Block Solar Panels, and a Feud Ends in Court (April 7, 2008) More than six months after two Santa Clara residents were convicted under a state nuisance law for letting their redwoods cast shade on a neighbor's solar panels, the governor signed into ...

Guardian: The show homes at the end of a winding, unfinished road feel isolated, stuck in a corner of what remains of Telford's fragmented countryside. The rain is pouring down and there are few builders working. The infrastructure of a major housing development is uncannily silent, and so too is the building site further up the road - and the ones after that. It's not the weather that's holding up work, it's the slump. This story is being repeated on hundreds of development sites around ...

BBC: Female bottlenose dolphins whistle 10 times more often than usual after giving birth in order to help newborns recognise who is "mum". The findings by a US team appear in the journal Marine Mammal Science. These "signature whistles" are unique to each animal, allowing them to be used for identification. Bottlenose dolphins are highly social; in their first weeks, calves encounter many adult females that they could potentially mistake for their mothers. "The ...

Reuters: The European Commission adopted proposals on Wednesday to ban the import of pelts from seals that have endured excessive suffering while being killed, risking possible trade conflicts with hunting nations. While stopping short of calling for a total ban, the EU's executive body said products from the 900,000 seals hunted each year should be accepted in the EU only with guarantees that the seal has been killed as humanely as possible. None of the 15 seal species that are ...

BBC: Tiny fossils have helped refine the timing of the climate shift that gave rise to Antarctica's remarkable Dry Valleys, a landscape akin to Mars. The famously ice-free terrain enjoyed more benign, tundra-like conditions 14 million years ago - but then flipped to the intensely cold setting seen today. Scientists tell a Royal Society journal that ancient lake-living shrimp-like creatures can pinpoint the big switch. The ostracods would not have coped with a harsh, dry ...

Los Angeles Times: The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to ban plastic carryout bags in the city's supermarkets and stores by July 2010 -- but only if the state fails to impose a 25-cent fee on every shopper who requests them. Council members said they hope an impending ban would spur consumers to begin carrying canvas or other reusable bags, reducing the amount of plastic that washes into the city's storm drains and the ocean. "This is a major moment for our city, to bite the bullet and go ...

ENN: Missouri's a pretty tough place to grow most crops. But there's one thing they've got plenty of: wind. So a small town, Rock Port, has decided to use the powerful breezes to its advantage, building four wind turbines to provide power to their town. "That's something to be very proud of, especially in a rural area like this – that we're doing our part for the environment," an area engineer, Jim Crawford, told LiveScience. Though the state may not be great for growing wheat or ...

Los Angeles Times: Berkeley and Palm Desert may be poles apart when it comes to politics. But the two cities are pioneering a new path to solar energy. Pushed by these unlikely municipal bedfellows, California on Monday enacted a law that allows cities and counties to make low-interest loans to homeowners and businesses to install solar panels, high-efficiency air conditioners and other energy-saving improvements. Participants can pay back the loans over decades through property taxes. And if a ...

Los Angeles Times: He spent much of his life drilling for oil, taking over other companies and using his vast wealth to fund Republicans. Now, T. Boone Pickens champions wind energy, has a Facebook profile and passes the time with grateful Democrats. On Tuesday, the legendary oil tycoon made his Capitol Hill debut to promote his new cause: using American wind to alleviate the nation's energy crisis and wean itself from dependency on foreign oil. He testified before a Senate committee and held ...

New York Times: The World Bank and its partners need to do a far better job of considering the environmental effects of projects they finance in poor countries, its internal review group concludes in a new report. The review, released Tuesday, examined some of the $400 billion in investments in nearly 7,000 projects from 1990 to 2007. It found that recent pledges for environmental sustainability by the bank and sister institutions, including the International Finance Corporation, were often not put ...

Guardian: Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region's renewable energy. Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of an ambitious scheme to build a €45bn (£35.7bn) European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind energy in the UK and Denmark, and geothermal energy from Iceland and ...

Guardian: A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun. Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity. Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf ...

Dow Jones: Amid concerns about meeting growing power demand and fighting climate change, California regulators and utilities are working to cut electricity use in amounts that would power millions of homes. Under state law, the state's three largest electric utilities are mandated to try to reach a goal of saving 23,183 gigawatt-hours per year of electricity from 2004 to 2013, or enough electricity to power about 2.3 million homes. A draft plan issued earlier this month by the California ...