After years of wrangling, and little significant action, federal legislative efforts addressing greenhouse gases and climate change are beginning to crystallize.

The Valencia science meeting is just a prologue to a meeting of diplomats from some 180 countries in Bali, Indonesia, to hammer out a new international agreement to control climate change. The current Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997 and took effect in 2005, expires in 2012.

As Congress members and international diplomats roll up their sleeves for serious efforts at action in coming months, a final "synthesis" report from the top U.N. climate science body will brief them this week.

In January of 2007, the Society of Environmental Journalists added a special section to its Web site to help reporters cover climate change - which seems to be shaping up as one of the biggest environmental stories of the next decade.

Looking for a story with timely consumer appeal, audio/video fun, a climate change connection, and the opportunity to unleash your inner punster? Check out high-efficiency toilets (HETs), also known as "low-flow" or "dual-flush" toilets.

National forests throughout the US are expected to be subject to substantial development pressure around their periphery in the next quarter century, according to a US Forest Service study announced Oct. 25, 2007.

One of those problem areas is the thousands of old mines that were dug to extract uranium ore. During the era from the 1940s to the 1980s when most were excavated, many were simply abandoned when they played out or the economic incentives changed. Radioactivity now contaminates many sources of human and environmental exposure.

Another effort to revamp the US General Mining Act of 1872 is under way. The House on Nov. 1, 2007, passed by a 244-166 margin a bill that for the first time would collect for the U.S. Treasury royalties for mining "hard rock" minerals on federally owned lands.

Stories that we think will have great impact on the lives of Americans, but which we suspect will slip "under the radar" because of war-related media inattention.