Last week California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) called on automakers to build cars and trucks that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent within the next 12 years. As a state that is by itself the sixth-largest economy in the world, California plays a vital regulatory role in efforts to reduce pollution. The decision by the Air Resources Board ups the ante against global warming, as automakers will most likely comply with the new regulations on all vehicles intended for sale in the U.S.

The government of Kenya is lobbying the U.N.’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to give the African lion its most protected status. Kenya’s Wildlife Services estimates that the overall population of the king of beasts—now numbering about 23,000—has been cut in half over the past decade due to habitat loss, a decline in prey, and unsustainable trophy hunting.

When is the American auto industry going to "get it" and start producing gas-electric hybrid vehicles to compete with the Japanese models already here from Toyota and Honda? From the looks of the New York International Auto Show, which runs from April 9 to April 18, the environment is still not coming into focus in Detroit.

Twenty-five years ago, the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island decimated what had been a bright future for nuclear power in the United States. While no one was killed and only a small amount of radioactivity escaped, no American utility has dared to build a new nuclear power plant since.

Last week the Bush Administration took the controversial survey-and-manage provision–which required the review of potential timber sales for the presence of endangered species–out of the Northwest Forest Plan.

The California Rice Commission voted six to five last week to approve the nation’s first commercial-scale planting of a crop genetically engineered to produce drug compounds.