"But if Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will." --President Barack Obama, 2013 State of the Union

It is fitting that climate change featured prominently in the biggest political speech of the year. Our country is still absorbing the blow from 11 extreme weather events in 2012,...

By Peter Lehner & Cas Holloway

In acting this week to complete a $60-billion package of emergency aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy in the New York region, Congress came face-to-face with the rising costs that climate change is imposing on the nation.

The region badly needs the assistance, and...

On Jan. 12, an air pollution monitor atop the U.S. Embassy in Beijing rated the pollution index at a shocking 755 -- on a scale of 0 to 500. (The EPA categorizes pollution levels over 300 as "hazardous.") A TIME reporter wrote that the view from her 16th...

The Food and Drug Administration recently announced two sweeping programs for protecting Americans from contamination in our food. Every year tens of thousands of Americans get sick from the presence of Salmonella, E.coli, and other bacteria in the food we eat. These new programs will help prevent some...

This election was a resounding victory for climate action. Americans were presented with the clearest choice yet on global warming, and they chose the presidential candidate who confronted the climate threat, not the one who turned it into a punch line. Voters made the same choice in Congressional races across...

I love to swim, and when you spend a lot of time in the water, you get a good sense of how America is treating its rivers, lakes, and oceans. Decades ago, I used to swim past factories and refineries dumping polluted waste right into Boston Harbor, and I dodged...

President Obama loves basketball, but that's not the reason why the reigning NBA champions, the Miami Heat, are invited to the White House tomorrow. Representatives from the Heat, as well as other professional sports teams, including the Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners, Philadelphia Eagles, Portland Trailblazers, Saint Louis Cardinals, and others,...

Twice within the past three months, history was made when a federal court ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take action on the health threat posed by antibiotic misuse in animal feed.

This one-two punch, which was sparked by an NRDC lawsuit,...

Working families face countless challenges and many Americans are looking for a job, any job. Yet some politicians think the best way to keep their job is by not doing it. Take Sen. Inhofe who is just wasting Congress' time -- and therefore the taxpayer's money -- instead of getting...

The evening was foggy, but the mood was upbeat at NRDC's fourth annual Growing Green Awards, held in San Francisco last week. It was inspiring for me not only to meet our winners in person, but to see how our work making food and agriculture more sustainable has...

Thursday night, a federal court ordered the Food and Drug Administration to take action on the practice of giving antibiotics to livestock through animal feed. This victory will help protect American families against superbugs and other drug-resistant bacteria.

Right now, the vast majority of the nation's antibiotics...

With a landmark announcement this week, New York City has officially joined a growing number of cities around the country in embracing a smarter -- and paradigm-shifting -- approach to reducing water pollution. Using a suite of techniques like strategically located street plantings, porous pavements and green roofs,...

Thursday marks a major victory for the world's children, and the people of developing nations around the globe.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), working with NRDC in the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles, today announced toxic lead has been removed from gasoline in more than 175...

President Obama had some strong words about the value of innovation on Thursday. He was responding to a comment made by Representative Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who said, "We can't compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines."

"I don't buy that," Obama said...

The National Automobile Dealers Association is trying to put a major bump in the road for Americans drivers. The lobbying group for car dealers wants to block new fuel efficiency standards that will save drivers $80 billion a year at the pump and give us more choices for...

Over the next few months, the State Department will examine whether the proposed Keystone XL pipeline running from the Alberta tar sands oil fields to the Texas Gulf Coast is in America's national interest.

To answer that question, you have to decide what kind of...

American homeowners know that companies don't have the right to dump garbage in our backyards. If we found a pile of solid waste on our lawn, we would demand they haul it away. Even if we learned it would cost the company money to clean it up, we wouldn't just...

Last week, my colleague Luke Tonachel and I represented NRDC at the Washington ceremony where President Obama announced a triumph of American leadership, the single largest step we can take to break our costly addiction to oil.

By 2025, new cars and light trucks in this county will

Today NRDC and our allies filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration to finally end the use of antibiotics in animal feed -- a practice that's contributing to the rise in drug-resistant superbugs and endangering the health of our families.

Roughly 70 percent of all...

In about 50 days, America will mark the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout that unleashed the largest peacetime oil spill in history. BP will likely tell us that everything is fine now; they've clean everything up. But residents of the Gulf of Mexico offer a starkly different story,...