With a limberness that defies his 69 years, Frank Mirarchi heaves himself over the edge of a concrete wharf and steps out onto a slack, downward sloping dock line bouncing 20 feet above the lapping waters near Scituate, Mass. He shimmies laterally along the pylons, steadying himself with a grip...

Public opinion on the topic of climate change is notoriously fickle, changing -- quite literally sometimes -- with the weather. The latest bit of evidence on this: Yale's April 2013 climate change survey, which found, among other things, that Americans' conviction that global warming is happening had dropped...

More than four years ago, a newly elected Barack Obama instructed the heads of departments and agencies under his watch to deal openly and honestly with the public, promising in a 2009 memorandum that his ascendant presidency would usher in "an unprecedented level of openness" in government.

TransCanada, the Calgary-based energy conglomerate behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project, has often stumbled in trying to win the hearts and minds of Americans.

It has, for example, infuriated property-rights advocates from Montana to Texas by aggressively invoking eminent domain when landowners in the...

According to findings made public earlier this month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently uncovered potentially significant flooding vulnerabilities at two Tennessee nuclear power plants and, after a thorough investigation, the agency aggressively sanctioned the errant operator for several safety violations -- although...

Again comes Earth Hour, a well-meaning if somewhat amorphous gimmick born in Australia six years ago, when the Sydney contingent of the environmental group WWF sought the help of the Leo Burnett advertising agency in focusing the popular mind on climate change. The result: a campaign...

To some critics, there is no riskier source of electricity than nuclear power. For others, nuclear power's minimal greenhouse gas footprint makes it a vital alternative to carbon-belching coal and natural gas in the pitched battle to curb climate change -- and a far more reliable energy source, at least...

Is kickstarting a clean-energy industry and accelerating a movement away from fossil fuels worth the expense of, say, a few desert tortoises or a collection of piping plovers? If so, how many of these threatened species would you be willing to sacrifice to build a commercial wind farm, or a...

If you're the sort of person who woke up Friday morning worrying not just about the potential for sudden economic chaos following the sequester, but also the potential for human population growth and industrial activity to spur sudden ecosystem collapse on a planetary scale, take heart (and perhaps...

In 2001, Jim Gordon, a well-heeled developer of natural gas plants in New England, took up a long-discussed but never-pursued idea that advocates said would usher in a new era of clean energy in America: an ocean-based wind farm off the shores of Cape Cod.

The advantages of the site...

The Union of Concerned Scientists has posted an informative breakdown on the connections between the winter storm bearing down on the Northeast and the planet's changing climate.

"It’s Cold and My Car is Buried in Snow. Is Global Warming Really Happening?," notes that storms like this one...

In a wide-ranging and sometimes defiant letter to staff announcing his resignation on Friday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, while highlighting his agency's achievements over the last four years, blasted critics of the administration's investments in the renewable energy market, suggesting that opponents were living in the "Stone Age."...

When he delayed a decision on permitting the contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline in November of 2011, President Barack Obama effectively sidestepped a divisive issue that had no political upside as he entered his 2012 reelection race.

Approving the project -- which aims to transport a diluted...

If rhetorical flourishes are an indication of future action -- and that is a substantial "if" -- then President Barack Obama's comments on climate change suggest that the next four years may provide much of what climate activists have been hankering for.

But just how much the president might...

ÉTATS-UNIS - Serment face à des centaines de milliers de personnes, grand discours et défilé: Washington en fête accueille lundi les cérémonies d'investiture du président Barack Obama, entré la veille dans son second mandat à la tête des Etats-Unis. Le 44e dirigeant américain est attendu avant midi, soit 17 heures...

Setting aside other concerns about potential pipeline leaks and the localized pollution associated with oil sands mining, much debate has centered on the potential climate impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline project, which would deliver heavy crude from Alberta's substantial oil sands deposits (also known as tar sands)...

On the night of his re-election, President Barack Obama described grand ambitions for his second term, including a desire to bequeath to future generations a nation not only free of debt and unencumbered by inequality, but also one "that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming...

Lots of interrelated news happening on Thursday. Let's run down some of the highlights:

The folks at Forest Trends, an international coalition of conservation organizations, researchers and the forest products industry, released an update on Thursday to their ambitious 2008 analysis of global funding -- now topping...

THE DENVER POST
"Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will step down from his cabinet position in the Obama administration and return to Colorado to spend time with his family."

THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
"A new University of Texas at Austin study has found that the...

WASHINGTON -- It takes just minutes to cross the bridge between downtown Washington and the impoverished, predominantly black neighborhood of Anacostia, but it might as well be a world away from the polished marble and well-heeled bustle of the capital. In Anacostia, trash-strewn streets are lined with abandoned buildings encircled...