Global Warming

A 50-Year Farm Bill

We need a farm bill that addresses the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

In Obama’s Team, Two Camps on Climate

Barack Obama faces conflicting views among his top advisers on the balance between the environment and the economy.

Diamonds Linked to Quick Cooling Eons Ago

Researchers say that an abrupt cooling of the Earth about 12,900 years ago may have been caused by one or more meteors that slammed into North America.

An Emissions Plan Conservatives Could Warm To

We need to impose a tax on the thing we want less of (carbon dioxide) and reduce taxes on the things we want more of (income and jobs).

E.P.A.’s Doctor No

The ideologues who have been running the E.P.A. for the last half-dozen years have done little for the environment with the weapons Congress gave them.

The Hum of Green Cleaning

Isn’t the chore of vacuuming odious enough without worrying if it is contributing to global warming?

For Science Adviser, Dogged Work Against Global Perils

John P. Holdren, a physicist and environmental policy professor at Harvard, has been tapped to be the science adviser to President-elect Barack Obama.

A New Respect for Science

Sub-cabinet appointments affirm Barack Obama’s commitment to aggressively address the challenges of energy independence and global warming.

Forest Plan in Brazil Bears the Traces of an Activist’s Vision

This month, the Brazilian government introduced ambitious targets for reducing deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions.

Praise and Criticism for Proposed Interior Secretary

Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado was not the first choice of environmental advocates for the Interior Department.

• POLITICS; Obama Announces Salazar and Vilsack

Australia Unveils Targets to Cut Pollution

Australia announced plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 5 and 15 percent by 2020, angering environmental groups that had lobbied for much deeper cuts.

Climate-Change Defense, The

Few would fault someone who kicks down the front door of a neighbor's empty house to put out a fire. Neither would the law, generally: in Britain, the common-sense defense of ''lawful excuse'' (a variant is known as the ''necessity defense'' in the United States) usually succeeds in precisely this kind of situation. Which leads you to wonder: What acts might the law permit in the name of fighting a threat of global, even catastrophic, proportions? In September, a British jury shook up the world...

Eat Kangaroos to Fight Global Warming

Of all the ideas developed to combat the climate crisis, George Wilson of Australian Wildlife Services may have the least intuitive: eating more kangaroos. In a paper published in June by the U.S.-based Society for Conservation Biology, however, he explains that 11 percent of Australia's total greenhouse-gas emissions come from the methane produced by the rumen of cattle and sheep. ''It's been long known that kangaroos don't produce methane,'' Wilson says, noting that kangaroos' stomachs have d...

Carbon Penance

We all contribute to climate change, but none of us can individually be blamed for it. So we walk around with a free-floating sense of guilt that's unlikely to be lifted by the purchase of wind-power credits or halogen bulbs. Annina Rüst, a Swiss-born artist-inventor, wanted to help relieve these anxietes by giving people a tangible reminder of their own energy use, as well as an outlet for the feelings of complicity, shame and powerlessness that surround the question of global warming. So she ...

Amid a Hopeful Mood, U.N. Talks Set Countries on Path Toward a Global Climate Treaty

The talks concluded Saturday, having seemingly achieved their modest goals: setting the world on the track to a new global climate treaty with a renewed sense of purpose and momentum.