Nine Baltic sea states all scored failing grades in an annual WWF evaluation of their performance in protecting and restoring the world’s most damaged sea. The assessment, presented today at the Baltic Sea Festival, graded the countries on how well they are doing in six separate areas - biodiversity, fisheries, hazardous substances, marine transport and eutrophication - and on how they have succeeded in developing an integrated sea-use management system.

With this year's legislative session in its final days, lawmakers Monday unveiled a bill mandating new fees from electricity ratepayers to fund a University of California-run global warming research center.

WWF has welcomed the initiative taken by a new group of countries in showing the way forward as the latest round of UN climate talks drew to a close in Accra, Ghana today.

The world's leading certification system for sustainable architecture is set to undergo its most sweeping changes in 2009. The proposed revisions encourage designs that would reduce a building's impact on global climate change.

Corporate boards can and should influence their companies' social and environmental performances finds a new report. Institutional investors are helping push the importance of social and environmental issues on companies' bottom lines.

Scientists and experts from around the world have warned that global food wastage must be halved by 2025 to meet the challenges of feeding the rapidly-growing population and preserving global water supplies.

U.N. climate talks in Ghana are making progress on ways to help developing nations slow deforestation and have eased disputes over use of greenhouse gas targets for industrial sectors, delegates said on Monday.

We've all been stunned by images showing the dramatic retreat of mountain glaciers. Yet few of us have given much thought to what happens next.

Have you looked at your energy bill lately? Felt the pain at the pump? Has solar been on your mind as a way to decrease and stabilize your business or home energy cost? You're not alone.

To keep coral reefs from being eaten away by increasingly acidic oceans, humans need to limit the amount of climate-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a panel of marine scientists said on Wednesday.

Alternative fishing technology has been shown to save turtles while not affecting fish catches, according to a report released by WWF and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC).

Batman has the Joker; real bats have wind turbines. The energy-generating machines kill bats the world over, yet the exact cause has remained as mysterious as the plot of a movie thriller. Now, a new study appears to have solved the riddle.

Small scale fisheries produce as much annual catch for human consumption and use less than one-eighth the fuel as their industrial counterparts, but they are dealt a double-whammy by well-intentioned eco-labelling initiatives and ill-conceived fuel subsidies, according to a University of British Columbia study.

A new "green" technology developed cooperatively by scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and North Carolina State University (NC State) could lead to production of hydrogen from nitrogen-fixing bacteria.

An investigation by the Associated Press (AP) has revealed that the drinking water of at least 41 million people in the United States is contaminated with pharmaceutical drugs. It has long been known that drugs are not wholly absorbed or broken down by the human body. Significant amounts of any medication taken eventually pass out of the body, primarily through the urine.

2008 was a good year for enviros in the boardroom. A record 57 climate related shareholder resolutions were filed this year—a figure that has doubled over the past 5 years. Support for these measures averaged more than 23% among shareholders-- another all time high.

Traces of a chemical once used by power plants leave birds looking fit, but singing another tune altogether. Wild chickadees exposed to permitted levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can't keep a tune as well as other birds.

TOKYO (Reuters) - The race to go green has taken to the high seas with two Japanese companies saying they would begin work on the world's first ship to have propulsion engines partially powered by solar energy. Japan's biggest shipping line Nippon Yusen KK and Nippon Oil Corp said solar panels capable of generating 40 kilowatts of electricity would be placed on top of a 60,000 tonne car carrier to be used by Toyota Motor Corp.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures turned lower on Tuesday, with Wall Street now looking set to add to Monday's drop, as the price of oil cut its earlier losses. Oil, which had earlier fallen more than $2 a barrel, was down just 50 cents.

Biofuels offer the promise of a low-carbon fuel that could power vehicles and stimulate the world's rural economies. Yet biofuels are also among the most vilified of environmental technologies. Ethanol refineries are not always clean. The labor on biofuel farms is not always fair. The diversion of feedstocks from food to fuel may be driving up global commodity prices.

With the boom in consumption of organic foods creating a pressing need for natural insecticides and herbicides that can be used on crops certified as "organic," biopesticide pioneer Pam G. Marrone, Ph.D., is reporting development of a new "green" pesticide obtained from an extract of the giant knotweed in a report scheduled for presentation here today at the 236th national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

There is a strong growing demand in the world for "organic" wool and consumers are willing to pay a bonus, which is a promising advantage for Uruguay and its textile industry, said Pedro Otegui, one of the country's leading wool and textile exporters.

HOUSTON — American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline.

Denmark's parliament on Monday approved the construction of a 400 megawatt (MW) offshore wind turbine park in the Kattegat arm of the North Sea between Jutland and the island of Anholt in 2012.

Researchers from Monash University have designed a nano-sized "trojan horse" particle to ensure healing antioxidants can be better absorbed by the human body. Dr Ken Ng and Dr Ian Larson from the University's Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences have designed a nanoparticle, one thousandth the thickness of a human hair, that protects antioxidants from being destroyed in the gut and ensures a better chance of them being absorbed in the digestive tract.