Environment News

JAKARTA (AFP) - Palm oil companies are clearing massive swathes of untouched forest in Indonesia's remote easternmost Papua region, environmental group Greenpeace said Friday.

BEIJING - Beijing will ban half of its 3.4 million cars from the roads during periods of very heavy pollution, a state news report said Friday.

TOKYO - Smoke was detected Friday at a Japanese nuclear power complex that suffered a major accident a decade ago, but the operator said there was no release of radioactivity.

WASHINGTON - If you can't stand global warming, get out of the tropics. While the most significant harm from climate change so far has been in the polar regions, tropical plants and animals may face an even greater threat, say scientists who studied conditions in Costa Rica.

ABIDJAN (AFP) - The trial of nine people accused over the dumping of toxic waste off Ivory Coast's main city, killing 17 people, faced collapse Thursday as the defence threatened a permanent boycott alleging bias.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Global warming is driving tropical plant and animal species to higher altitudes, potentially leaving lowland rainforest with nothing to take their place, ecologists argue in this week's issue of Science.

NEW YORK - The financial turmoil rippling across the globe will set back efforts to fight climate change, drying up capital that could help poorer countries upgrade to clean energy technology, the U.N. climate chief said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If the United States focused on curbing climate change as soon as a new president took office -- or sooner -- it could help pull the world from the financial brink, environmental policy experts told Reuters.

BARCELONA (AFP) - Underwater cacophony caused by commercial and military ships has become so intense that it is killing whales, scientists at the World Conservation Congress here say.

WASHINGTON, Oct 8 (OneWorld) - The global financial, food, and fuel crises and the negative impacts of climate change pose a severe threat to the world's 37 million uprooted people, and will likely increase their numbers, warned the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Monday. 

BARCELONA (AFP) - An elusive consensus on the best way to reduce forest carbon emissions took shape Wednesday with the release of a joint statement by forestry companies, green organisations and indigenous peoples.

LONDON (Reuters) - Plummeting car sales, climate change, high oil prices and the threat of global recession. The answer? Free electric cars.

BARCELONA (AFP) - Half to three-quarters of major Antarctic penguin colonies could be damaged or wiped out if global temperatures are allowed to climb by more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to a report released Wednesday.

Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies - the power of the future.

CHICAGO (AFP) - Protecting pregnant pigs, banning gay marriage, restricting abortion, increasing renewable energy: US voters going to the polls on November 4 have more decisions to make than just picking their president.

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) - Indigenous leaders in five Amazonian nations, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia on Wednesday demanded a larger say on how best to manage tropical forests to fight climate change.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) - A "deadly dozen" diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - A European parliamentary committee on Tuesday broadly approved ambitious proposals to tackle climate change, refusing to bow to industry pressure to water down the measures.

BARCELONA (AFP) - From tiny tree frogs to gorillas, wild animals already facing extinction due to habitat loss, pollution and hunting must now cope with the added threat of virulent disease, conservation scientists said Tuesday.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - A committee of EU lawmakers approved an ambitious climate change plan Tuesday, resisting heavy pressure from lobbyists who sought to water down the bill because of the financial crisis.

ROME (AFP) - The UN food agency cast doubt Tuesday on the potential of biofuels to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions while warning that their development threatens food security.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - New Jersey is powering up an ambitious plan to become a world leader in the use of wind-generated energy.

BARCELONA (AFP) - Half the world's mammals are declining in population and more than a third probably face extinction, said an update of the "Red List," the most respected inventory of biodiversity.

MADRID (AFP) - Greenpeace activists boarded a cargo ship carrying Colombian coal at a port in northern Spain on Monday in protest at Spain's reliance on the highly polluting energy source.

BARCELONA (AFP) - A new tool for measuring biodiversity suggests that a quarter of all animal and plant species may be at risk of extinction, a top scientist said Monday.

If a Toyota Prius just looks too friendly for your tastes, you're not alone. People readily see faces and traits in cars, and a new study suggests that they prefer cars to appear dominant, masculine and angry.

As utility costs mount ever higher, Americans now have real options to take home energy matters into their own hands with "green" systems that can pay for themselves in as little as a few years.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Shanghai, China's most populous city and an aspiring global financial center, is also among the world's most vulnerable urban areas to a rise in sea levels as global warming melts polar ice.

WASHINGTON - Hurricane Ike's winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.