"In some hardscrabble East Bay neighborhoods, people die of heart disease and cancer at three times the rates found just a few miles away in more well-to-do communities. Children living near busy freeways in Oakland are hospitalized for asthma at 12 times the rate of young people in Lafayette's wooded housing tracts."

"The Obama administration vowed today to streamline the patent review process for 'green' technologies and committed $100 million for federal research, development and demonstration projects."

"After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed a law instructing the federal government to help states build bigger stocks of a simple, cheap drug to protect people near nuclear power plants in the event of an accident or terrorist attack."

"A federal program that began as a safety net for Pacific Northwest logging communities hard-hit by battles over the spotted owl in the 1990s has morphed into a sprawling entitlement - one that ships vast amounts of money to states with little or no historic connection to timber, an analysis by The Associated Press shows."

"The Obama administration's greenhouse gas ruling Monday was meant to send a warning to industry, the U.S. Congress, and the world: with or without a law, Washington will tackle global warming in a serious way."

"The current decade has been by far the warmest decade on instrumental record, the U.K.'s Meteorological Office said Tuesday as it released new figures at the climate change talks in Copenhagen."

"The head of the U.N.'s panel of climate scientists on Monday strongly defended findings that humans are warming the planet, after critics said that leaked emails from a British university had undermined evidence."

"More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data."

"A Senate Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee will consider nine energy and climate policy bills this week, covering topics from engineering education and wind energy research to carbon capture technology development incentives and biofuels for small engines."

"Federal stimulus funding has provided $242 million to Illinois to weatherize more than 25,000 homes, but poor oversight of that work puts the funding at risk and in some cases puts the residents of poorly weatherized homes in danger, an audit report warns."

"Frequent accidents at 10 of the state's biggest refineries resulted in the release of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into the air and millions of gallons of polluted water into state water courses between 2005 and 2008, according to a report to be released this morning by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade."

"The Great Lakes are under threat from the Asian carp, an invasive species of fish whose presence is pitting neighboring states against Illinois in a showdown with no clear resolution."

"Poland's Bialowieza National Park is home to some of the most impressive trees in Europe. Old growth oak, ash, spruce, hornbeam, linden, lime, and pine tower out of sight, their trunks dripping with luscious moss. For millennia these trees (some of which are more than 600 years old) have harbored legions of top carnivores, rare bugs, birds, and plants. Three packs of wolves range the park's wilderness, along with bison, lynx, wild boar, roe and red deer, otter, cranes, storks, three kinds of eagle, and four owl species." The park faces a number of threats, especially logging."

"The largest and most important U.N. climate change conference in history opened Monday, with organizers warning diplomats from 192 nations that this could be the best, last chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming."

The Army Corps of Engineers is teaming up with The Nature Conservancy to change the way the Willamette River flows as part of their "Sustainable Rivers Project.