"The Louisiana coast loses a football field’s worth of land every 38 minutes. This staggering rate of land loss has been brought on by climate change and coastal erosion accelerated by human activities, including water diversion projects and damage done by the oil and gas industry."

"The view from the observation deck over a meadow of brown marsh grasses would make a nice postcard. Eagles roost on tall pines, muskrats burrow in mounds of mud and straw, and black ducks splash in a pond."

"The Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, held annually in the first week of January in Las Vegas, is becoming the place to unveil exciting electric cars, upstaging the Detroit Auto Show held a week later, the usual venue for automakers to reveal new models."

"There was a time when whiting were plentiful in the waters of Rhode Island Sound, and Christopher Brown pulled the fish into his long stern trawler by the bucketful."

The transition from coal to renewables for electric power is so deeply rooted in free market forces that president-elect Donald Trump will have a hard time stopping it.

"China has announced a plan to phase out all ivory processing and trade by the end of 2017, the government said on Friday, a move that conservationists hope will stymie the mass killing -- and threat of extinction -- of African elephants."

"The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality this week approved a general mining permit and an air use permit for the Back Forty mine in the western Upper Peninsula despite tribal opposition over its location on sacred ground."

Attorney generals from states supporting President Obama's climate action plan signalled that efforts by Donald Trump to derail it will be met with legal challenges.

The Energy Department Wednesday unveiled five more energy-efficiency standards, covering portable air conditioners, swimming pool pumps, walk-in coolers and freezers, commercial boilers and uninterruptible power supplies.

"At first glance, food policy seems to be an afterthought in the Trump administration. The campaign saw few debates about food or farming. And the president-elect hasn't yet nominated someone to head the Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. But Donald Trump's lack of attention won't make future food battles any less cutthroat."