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  • Durban dispatch: U.S. takes ‘recourse to nonsense’

    It’s just a guidepost, guys. No need to panic.Photo: US Mission GenevaCross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. China limits commitments This week, China’s top climate envoy said that the nation would be open to signing a formal treaty limiting emissions after 2020 — but laid down conditions for doing so that are unlikely ever to be met. […]

    Brad Johnson Science

  • Bear bile farming is just as bad as it sounds

    Animal welfare foundation Animals Asia has just rescued 14 moon bears, which had been farmed and abused for a substance produced in their gall bladders. Gah. People are willing to perpetrate some real atrocities on animals in order to get valuable commodities — rhino horns, elephant ivory, tiger parts. But man, once you start doing […]

    Jess Zimmerman Science

  • Watch a time-lapse image of 2011’s crazy weather

    Sure, we all know 2011's weather was bananapants, but just how banana WERE those pants? The Natural Resources Defense Council has put together an interactive map showing all the record weather events from the last year. The map shows record snowfalls, record rainfalls, record high and low temperatures, and the affected range from disastrous events […]

    Jess Zimmerman Science

  • The young and the restless: Kids sue government over climate change

    As the U.S. delegation drags its feet at the climate talks in Durban, South Africa, this week, a pack of kids back home is trying to force the old folks into action, the American way: They’re suing the bastards. In May, a group of young people, led by 17-year-old Alec Loorz (founder of Kids vs. […]

    Claire Thompson Science

  • Polar bears may be driven to cannibalism by climate change

    If you watch nature shows, you know that male bears see cubs as tasty little McNuggets with fur, so it's not like one bear eating another is a big deal. Except that in the Arctic, polar bears are increasingly deprived of the sea ice they rely on to access seals and other tasty mammalian treats. […]

    Christopher Mims Science

  • Critical List: Same old U.S. and China at COP talks; Warren Buffett’s solar farm

    At the COP talks, the United States is driving all the other countries crazy. The U.S. response: "What, us?" China's conditions for a climate deal include the demand that it and other growing economies would have to meet different standards than rich countries. So, essentially, nothing has changed. Warren Buffett's buying Topaz Solar Farm, a […]

    Sarah Laskow Science

  • Walmart spends big to help anti-environment candidates

    In 2006, Walmart made headlines when its vice president for corporate strategy and sustainability, Andrew Ruben, told a congressional committee that the company “would accept a well-designed mandatory cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases.” Other major U.S. companies had spoken favorably of cap-and-trade, but Walmart made a bigger splash. Not only was it America’s second-largest corporation; […]

    Stacy Mitchell Science

  • Which countries fail the most at climate leadership?

    Sweden, the U.K., and Germany: The European trio leads the world in fighting climate change. That’s the finding of the most recent Climate Change Performance Index [PDF], which was released yesterday at COP 17 in Durban. But Swedes, Brits, and Germans shouldn’t cheer just yet; even their countries are not contributing their fair share. In […]

    Arne Jungjohann Science

  • Study: The climate is changing faster than species can adapt

    Whatever the Republican candidates for president may have told you, climate change and evolution are both realities of nature. But it turns out that in a fight-to-the-death throwdown, climate change would win by a mile. A new study published in the journal PLoS One has found that over the next 90 years, the climate in […]

    Jess Zimmerman Science

  • U.S. 2020 climate treaty proposal isn’t a delay — it’s a death sentence

    The U.N. climate talks desperately need a crisis. For the last 10 days, negotiations here in Durban, South Africa, have made little progress on the fundamental challenge these talks were set up to confront: how the world can come together to avoid catastrophic climate change. Instead, the pace of negotiations has been set by the […]

    Jamie Henn Science