"President Obama’s ambitious goals to curb the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, unveiled last week, will get a fortuitous assist from an incipient shift in American behavior: recent studies suggest that Americans are buying fewer cars, driving less and getting fewer licenses as each year goes by."

"Tiffany Mellers jogs behind her two daughters as they pedal their bikes along a ribbon of packed sand along Long Island Sound. “They are good girls,” Mellers said. “They deserve a healthy life.” Behind them, a 500-foot tall candy-stripe smokestack, a fixture of Bridgeport’s waterfront for nearly five decades, rises in the distance. A third generation of residents is now growing up in its shadow. But today this old giant is merely a vestige of this region’s coal-fired past. New England is virtually coal-free."

"FURNACE CREEK--Blame it on dueling thermometers. The National Weather Service thermometer recorded a peak temperature at 4 p.m. Sunday of 128 degrees in Death Valley National Park, which ties the record for the hottest June day anywhere in the U.S."

"YARNELL, Ariz. -- Gusty, hot winds blew an Arizona blaze out of control Sunday in a forest northwest of Phoenix, overtaking and killing 19 members of an elite fire crew in the deadliest wildfire involving firefighters in the U.S. for at least 30 years."

"Today marks the 160th anniversary of a seminal, but largely forgotten moment in the history of the conservation movement. On Monday, 27 June, 1853, a giant sequoia – one of the natural world's most awe-inspiring sights - was brought to the ground by a band of gold-rush speculators in Calaveras county, California."

"WASHINGTON — As more nuclear reactors across the country are closed, the problem of what to do with their waste is becoming more urgent, government officials and private experts said at a conference here this week."

"From California to the Great Lakes, persistent water pollution shows that no beach is an island when it comes to public health threats like hepatitis, dysentery and stomach flu."

"President Barack Obama's plan to curb climate change could transform American energy, potentially dealing a blow to the coal-fired power plants that supply much of the nation's electricity but also pump planet-warming gases into the atmosphere."

"HOUSTON -- A federal agency investigating a deadly explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant told a Senate committee Thursday that regulation of the dangerous chemicals used in the industry fall under a 'patchwork' of standards that are decades old and are far weaker than rules used by other countries."

"President Barack Obama has vowed to tackle climate change in his second term, but so far has not acted to strengthen a tool that does not require backing from Congress - the National Environmental Policy Act."