The European Environment Agency published a report on the cost and toll of air pollution due to industrial facilities to the European Union last November.

The costs are staggering as the 10,000 facilities induced up to 102 and 169 billion euros in 2009 alone. (more…)

Duke University researchers have predicted that climate change in California will result in a declining percentage of rangeland. Such a change will have widespread impact on the state’s large cattle industry of California’s Central Valley. No matter if climate change will cause wetter or drier weather, available pasture will decline. Forage areas, known as one of (more…)

When one thinks of cruise ships, one thinks of grand luxury, solitude, safety, and big. The January 13 capsizing of the Concordia off the coast of Italy, in which at least 11 people died, caught the world — including the cruise ship industry and its passengers — off guard and is shining a spotlight on cruise ship safety and environmental issues. The cruise ship hit (more…)

It is hard to believe there was a time when we, as a united people on Planet Earth, didn’t really focus on the environment. However, it really wasn’t until 1970 that the collective global eye turned towards the environment and how the global human footprint was making a forever-impact.

In 1972, the United Nations took notice and held the (more…)

The Chinese government has ordered five cities and two provinces to set caps on greenhouse gas emissions in preparation for a series of regional carbon markets.

Last week, China’s National Development and Reform Commission urged Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, (more…)

For the first time, an inventory of the largest stationary greenhouse gas emitters in the United States has made been made publicly available. On Wednesday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published the first-ever inventory of greenhouse gas emissions from large polluters. (more…)

Using NASA-Patented technology, designer Francesco Codicè has designed a new concept for purifying air on trains.

Trains provide a greener alternative to transportation than driving or flying, but US trains could definitely use a design update. Codicè’s AirTrain is a modern and elegant solution to the often stuffy and stale air of the indoors. AirTrain purifies air with live plants and recycled rain water. (more…)

One of my very first posts in 2010 was about what I called the triple crisis. As I noted back then “our economies are crumbling, our climate is warming and our energy supplies are getting scarcer.”

You would think that after two years, we would have started to do something about them. Well, (more…)

Here’s environmentalist Bill McKibben at his best, pointing out that we should shelve the resentment and cynicism that we feel for corruption in Congress, and start to show how we truly feel: Angry. He writes, “We’ve reached the point where we’re unfazed by things that should shake us to the core.” (more…)

The deployment of sensors in 15 regions of the world’s oceans shows an extremely wide variation in how rapidly waters are becoming acidified, according to research conducted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Scripps scientists have deployed more than 50 of the (more…)