"Recently retired Environmental Protection Agency environmental engineer Weston Wilson is best known for criticizing his employer’s 2004 finding that hydraulic fracturing poses little or no risk to domestic groundwater. Now, the Denver EPA whistleblower is encouraged by the agency’s interest in studying the natural gas development procedure’s potential impacts on air quality as well."

Residents of West Virginia's Raleigh County hope to save Coal River Mountain from being destroyed by mountaintop removal mining by building a wind energy project there.

"Without DDT and the other now-banned pesticides that kept bedbugs in check for more than 50 years, the United States is as vulnerable as parts of the world where the insects remain a plague."

While cruise ships can be a boon to local economies, they also produce huge amounts of waste and pollution.

"A federal judge has revoked the government's approval of genetically altered sugar beets until regulators complete a more thorough review of how the scientifically engineered crops affect other food."

"To ensure that oil rigs, tankers and other commercial ships are in safe operating condition, governments around the world, including the U.S. government, often rely on inspections by private firms that are hired and paid by the vessels' owners. But how much confidence should the world have in the maritime watchdogs?"

"U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he has never seen anything like the flood disaster in Pakistan, and urged foreign donors to speed up assistance to the 20 million people affected."

"Trains carrying deadly chemicals rumble through our backyards every day, but railroad companies hauling them refuse to publicly disclose exactly what those substances are, or how often they travel through the area."

"In the race to build hybrid cars and wind turbines to feed growing demand for green technology, China has one clear advantage, it holds the world's largest reserves of rare earth metals and dominates global production."

As archetypal as a scene from Grimm's tales, the 580-square-mile Bialowieza Forest, said to be the last remaining stand of primeval forest in all of Europe, is being logged.