"LOS CABOS, Mexico – Emergency workers struggled to evacuate thousands of reluctant slum dwellers as extremely dangerous Hurricane Jimena approached Mexico's resort-studded Baja California Peninsula on Tuesday."

Four years after Hurricane Katrina destroyed some 200,000 homes in New Orleans, the city has embraced a new and unexpected role as a laboratory for green building.

"U.S. Senate Democrats announced on Monday a new delay on climate change legislation, which could make it more difficult for President Barack Obama to win progress on that front before a global environmental summit in December."

"Getting involved in a social or environmental cause these days is as easy as clicking your mouse." Are we becoming a nation of slack-tivists?

"Carbon dioxide will soon be declared a dangerous pollutant - a move that could help propel slow-moving climate-change legislation on Capitol Hill, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday."

"The Station blaze [near L.A.] has destroyed more than 50 buildings and burned more than 105,000 acres of mountainous brush. Little hope of containment is seen as long as hot, dry conditions continue."

A University of Tennessee at Chattanooga study shows that the metals and organic chemicals found in used cigarettes can leak out, contaminating water and killing microorganisms.

"The Environmental Protection Agency should move immediately to adopt enforceable limits on the release of nutrient pollutants -- such as fertilizer and sewage -- into rivers and streams to halt the creation of dangerously low oxygen areas in water bodies, and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico should be one of its first targets, the agency's Office of Inspector General said in a report made public today."

Shallow rivate wells in part of West Palm Beach, drilled illegally by contractors, may be exposing homeowners there to drinking water contamination. People there fear a possible cancer cluster.

Talking Points Memo has obtained a set of talking points and an example script given to employees of the Bonner PR firm working on the coal-funded campaigh against the climate bill. "The talking points specifically instructed employees to lie to the community organizations they were calling, telling them they were working with seniors/veterans groups and that other seniors/veterans groups had written the letter they would be signing. They were in fact working directly for a coal industry front group, and the letter was written by Bonner and associates."

"A major problem facing municipalities around Albany County: sewer systems that are often overrun by heavy rain and governments that don't have the millions of dollars needed to upgrade often antiquated systems."

As the final rounds on the climate bill approach, environmentalists seem to be coming late, disunited, and outgunned to a battle they had years to prepare for.

The Democratic Party of Japan, which won that nation's elections Sunday, is poised to slash Japan's greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent, which could have an impact on climate treaty negotiations.

Perry County, Alabama, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black, is landfilling the coal ash from a spill in Tennessee in December 2008. County leaders are glad of the revenue and jobs it will bring, but some think the community "has been too easily persuaded to take on a wealthier, whiter community’s problem."

A dramatic rise of birth defects in India's Punjab breadbasket seems to be caused by uranium pollution, which in turn seems to be caused by ash from coal-burning electric power plants.