Marina owner Mitzi Richards carries her granddaughter in September as they walk on their boat dock at the dried up lake bed of Huntington Lake in California, which was at only 30 percent capacity as a severe drought continued. The state was in the grip of its third year of severe drought, the worst in decades.
Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
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Country representatives listen to opening remarks at the start of the United Nations' Conference of the Parties on Climate Change in Lima, Peru.
Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images
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An inside view of this fossil Pseudodon shell shows that the hole made by Homo erectus is exactly at the spot where the muscle attached to the shell. Poking at that spot would force the shell open.
Henk Caspers/Naturalis Leiden/The Netherlands
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Casa Dominique is an ecolodge on Lanzarote's northern coast. Julie Genicot, a French trekking guide, has lived in Lanzarote since her grandparents opened the Casa Dominique when she was a child. She worries that offshore oil drilling might ruin the natural environment she grew up in.
Lauren Frayer/NPR
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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy testifies at an oversight hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 23.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
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The Alabama gulf coast is heavily developed with condo and hotel properties. Now the state wants to use Gulf Coast restoration funds to build a new beach hotel and conference center.
Debbie Elliott/NPR
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"I began to learn at least what other people felt and what they wanted to say before cutting them off with my own diatribe. I used to do that." - John Francis
Andrew Heavens/TED
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"Clouds are the most egalitarian of nature's displays 'cause we all have a great view of the sky" - Gavin Pretor-Pinney
James Duncan Davidson/TED
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Pipes for Transcanada Corp.'s planned Keystone XL oil pipeline are stacked at a depot in Gascoyne, N.D. The House of Representatives approved the Keystone XL pipeline Friday; the Senate voted against it on Tuesday.
Andrew Cullen/Reuters/Landov
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