Icy HotRemember “Al Gore’s igloo” on the lawn of the US Capitol? Climate change denialists had a blast when much of the US and Europe got clobbered by exceptionally cold and snowy wi...

Scientists and Recreational Scuba Divers Are Working to Protect the Spectacular Marine Life in the Waters Around Costa Rica’s Cocos Island

At least since the time of Thomas Malthus, people have worried about when the planet will be too full of people. Today there are more than 7 billion Homo sapiens on Earth, a number projected to grow t...

In the fall of 2010, I was faced with the toughest decision of my life. I had to choose between keeping my photography career in Seattle, my home, my pets, and most importantly, my husband of seven ye...

Solar energy may soon eclipse nuclear power – only not in the way we hoped. According to NASA, the planet will soon face an outbreak of powerful solar flares capable of collapsing global power g...

Few tourist destinations garner the type of shameless, heaping praise that Costa Rica has long enjoyed. Much of it is deserved. Costa Rica, in the eyes of millions of travelers who arrive here each ye...

Julie Zickefoose is a writer and illustrator who has contributed to The New Yorker, Bird Watcher’s Digest, and NPR, where she was a regular commentator. Her latest book is The Bluebird Effect. ...

They’re reclusive by day and highly mobile by night. So how do we go about counting bats, let alone assessing how many have died due to a mysterious disease? It’s not easy, says Carthag...

Waste Not

Alexis Rockman

Veteran reporter Erica Gies has covered the environment for The New York Times, New Scientist, and the International Herald Tribune, among other publications. She writes a regular column about energy ...

While white-nose syndrome poses a risk to many species of cave-dwelling bats in the Northeast, migratory tree bats across the nation face a different type of threat: wind turbines. Unlike thei...

Continued Vigilance Reduces Taiji Slaughter

Rising Temperatures, Unseasonal Rains, and New Pests are Changing Farming as We Know It

In 1990, Doug Tompkins, founder of clothing companies Esprit and The North Face, decided to get out of “making stuff that nobody needed” and instead focus on the issues that really mattere...

Coyotes Win in California

The night of March 1, 2010 changed everything in Bududa, a district in the Arabica coffee-growing heartland of eastern Uganda. That night it rained for seven hours. As the water kept coming down, huge...

A Mysterious Disease Has Nearly Wiped Out Bat Populations in Parts of North America and No One Knows How to Stop It

Victory is sweet. In January, the Obama administration rejected the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline that would have moved Canadian tar sands oil across the United States. A year ago, the pipe...

A Spring of Online Learning

Last year, record rainfall during the spring turned his fields so slushy that wheat farmer Carl Mattson was unable to sow a crop in some sections of his 4,000-acre farm in Liberty County, Montana. But...

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World
By Jeremy Rifkin
Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 270 pages

A Biological ProblemChristopher Ketcham’s recent cover story makes a compelling case that electro-hypersensitivity exists (“Warning: High Frequency,” Winter 2012). Too many people re...

Ten Best Ethical Destinations

Betwa Sharma

Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance
By Jason Hribal
AK Press, 2011, 280 Pages

AfricaHorns a Plenty Pachyderms had a bad year in 2011: Data indicate that poaching of African elephants and rhinos has risen steeply. TRAFFIC, a conservation group that monitors wildlife trading, ...

As Voracious Lionfish Infest Atlantic and Caribbean Reefs, Underwater Hunters from One Little Island Battle to Keep their Numbers Down.

Families in One Indian Township Must Choose Between Food to Eat or Air to Breathe

The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food
By Ben Hewitt
Rodale Press, 2010, 256 pages

From Rural Pennsylvania to South America, a Global Alliance is Promoting the Idea that Ecosystems Have Intrinsic Rights