Washington, D.C.—More than 1.9 billion people worldwide were overweight in 2010, a 25 percent increase since 2002, a new Worldwatch analysis shows. A survey of statistics in 177 countries shows 38 percent of adults – those 15 years or older – are now overweight. The trend is strongly correlated to rising income and to an…

Often, when you think about food production, it is only the carbon emissions in terms of fertilizer use, transportation etc that is accounted for. However, food production also has a steep water footprint. The water footprint is yet another environmental yardstick that measures how much water goes into the making of something.

American Electric Power, one of the country’s largest coal-burning utilities, said on Thursday it plans to retire nearly one-quarter of its coal fleet and retrofit other units at a cost of as much as $8 billion to comply with proposed environmental regulations. To meet stricter pollution limits for air, water and coal waste, AEP said…

Mosquitoes are not very popular with human beings. They suck your blood and can cause infections. Many ways have been devised to limit their attacks. Female mosquitoes are efficient carriers of deadly diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever, resulting each year in several million deaths and hundreds of millions of cases. To find…

The hottest summer day you remember from childhood could be the norm in a few decades; in fact it looks like the heat has already been cranked up. “When scientists talk about global warming causing more heat waves, people often ask if that means that the hottest temperatures will become ‘the new normal,'” said Noah…

The nation’s first tidal energy power plant may take shape in New York’s East River, under a pilot project recommended for approval last month by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”). In December 2010, Verdant Power applied for a license to install 30 underwater turbines between Roosevelt Island and Queens, which would enable tidal power…

China’s carbon dioxide emissions rose 10.4 percent in 2010 compared with the previous year, as global emissions rose at their fastest rate for more than four decades, data released by BP on Wednesday showed. “All forms of energy grew strongly (last year), with growth in fossil fuels suggesting that global CO2 emissions from energy use…

The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class (minor) radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection on June 7, 2011. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface. A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed…

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced Thursday, May 26 that New Jersey would withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (“RGG”), a cap-and-trade initiative of 10 northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. New Jersey is the first state to withdraw from RGGI.

A new study concludes that models may be predicting releases of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are either too high or too low, depending on the region, because they don’t adequately reflect variable temperatures that can affect the amount of carbon released from soil.