"SPOKANE, Wash. — The Pacific Northwest’s sense of itself can sometimes seem green to the point of parody: a medium-roast blend of piney peaks and urban cool, populated by residents who look descended from lumberjacks or fishermen."

"TOKYO -- Contaminated water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a storage tank at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the most serious setback to the clean up of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl."

"President Barack Obama’s nominee to head a little-known energy commission has become the latest appointee drawn into the contentious debate over climate change."

"Despite the fact that more people now acknowledge that climate change represents a significant threat to human well-being, this has yet to translate into any meaningful action. Psychologists may have an answer as to why this is."

"WASHINGTON -- Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) has forced out the head of a key division of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in response to pressure from the coal industry, according to an email obtained by The Huffington Post."

"DANVILLE, Ill. -- It's been more than two years since Dynegy shut down its coal-fired Vermilion Power Station, but environmental concerns still remain at the idled facility's coal-ash waste ponds that were built next to the Middle Fork River, just upstream of Kickapoo State Park and other protected lands."

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 300,000 Americans are getting Lyme disease every year, and the toll is growing."

"New research finds that copper in amounts readily found in our drinking water, the foods we eat and the vitamin supplements we take likely plays a key role in initiating and fueling the abnormal protein build-up and brain inflammation that are hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease."

"While the mineral is important to healthy nerve conduction, hormone secretion and the growth of bones and connective tissue, a team of researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center suggested that too much of it may be a bad thing, and they set about to explore copper's dark side.

"In less than 40 years from now the cost to the world's biggest coastal cities from flooding is expected to have risen to $1tn – 0.7% of the value of the entire world economy in 2012."