Steven Cohen

Executive Director, Columbia University's Earth Institute

With current technologies and the economic and political power structure governing the planet, the climate crisis cannot be solved. It is far easier to change technology than to alter the distribution of the world's political and economic power.

Susan Buchanan

Business Writer

ExxonMobil must pay $2.329 million in a settlement, announced by Louisiana's Dept. of Environmental Quality last August and finalized early this month, to address violations from 2008 into 2013 at its greater Baton Rouge facilities.

Boria Sax

Author, 'Imaginary Animals,' The Mythical Zoo,' 'Animals in the Third Reich'

What does the future hold for dogs in the West? Perhaps, if the integration into human society continues, we could come to regard them as almost fully "human," with the rights and responsibilities that entails.

Rena Steinzor

President, Center for Progressive Reform

The very week that the people of Charleston were unable to drink the water that comes out of their taps because of a coal-related environmental disaster, the Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate proposed to make it easier for the coal industry to pollute.

Ric O’Barry

Activist in the Oscar-winning "The Cove"

WAZA should stop making claims based on the false assertion that the dolphin hunts are somehow part of "Japanese culture." This is just a lame excuse for the lucrative captures and killing to continue.

David Wilkie

Director of Conservation Support, Wildlife Conservation Society

We have credible evidence that where national park rangers and community ecoguards are out patrolling, and risking their lives doing so, elephants have a much greater chance of escaping the poacher's bullet, axe and chainsaw.

Dirk Adams

Montana rancher and Democrat running for the U.S. Senate

For Montana and our country, the Keystone XL Pipeline is a bad deal wrapped in pretty packaging. After researching the issue and speaking with Montanans from all over the state, here are my top 10 reasons for opposing it.

Javier Sierra

Media consultant and Sierra Club columnist

it's simply astonishing that Congress still is to renew the Production Tax Credit (PTC), one of the several tax incentives that invest in job creation in the clean energy industry. Just wind supports 80,000 jobs in the U.S., and 72 percent of the equipment needed to build wind turbines is manufactured in our country.

David Loy

Zen Teacher

By continually enhancing our awareness, we can increasingly notice when we are causing harm to others, the climate, or ourselves, and strengthen our capacity to rapidly shift gears and think and act constructively.

Matthew Bershadker

ASPCA President and CEO

Some foreign companies look at beloved American horses and see only two things: profit and food. They want to turn these majestic animals into frozen meat products for Europe and Asia, with no concerns about the unconscionable cost on life, health, the environment, or the integrity of our culture.

Dileep Padgaonkar

WORLDPOST editorial board member

All our key challenges in the next decade are interlinked. In order to meet them, we need to fully understand how they are related.

Marc Ross

Founder and executive director, Rock the Earth

How do we motivate a nation to take up environmental causes when so very few are listening?

Sara Aminzadeh

Executive Director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance

The drought proclamation formally recognizes that "extremely dry conditions ... may continue beyond this year and more regularly into the future." This calls for permanent and fundamental changes in our behavior. Here are five ways to get started.

Ed Felker

Fine artist; Outdoorsman

To me, the majesty of eagles is unequaled in nature. It is a powerful sight to behold, even more so when one considers this is not a captive bird.

Linda Buzzell

Psychotherapist, ecotherapist, co-editor of "Ecotherapy: Healing With Nature in Mind"

So the general numbness and Business As Usual among people of good will continue, as the clock ticks and the planetary temperature climbs. What's the rush?

Bill Chameides

Dean, Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment

Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech in 2011 that Martin Luther King Jr. "plant[ed] the seeds of the environmental justice movement" and that environmental justice is "a civil rights issue." In that spirit, let's look at some metrics on how equitable environmental risk is distributed in the U.S.

Susie Middleton

Author, 'Fresh From the Farm: A Year of Recipes and Stories"

If you're willing to hang with me here (knowing I'm not the last-word-expert on any of this), I'll give you a list of things that worked for us in our small farm start-up, in case you're dreaming (or acting on the dream) of starting one.