Matt Ball

The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to establish a committee on global geospatial information management in order to enhance international dialogue and cooperation on spatial data infrastructures.

 A quarter of the world's plant species may be headed toward extinction. Seed banks aim to prevent that.

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a quarter of the world’s known plant species – some 60,000 to 100,000 species – are threatened with extinction.

9 billion people live well, and within the limits of the planet:

WBCSD-VISION-2050

Vision 2050:  The new agenda for business

Under the WBCSD's Vsion 2050 Project, twenty-nice WBCDSD member companies developed a vision of a world well on the way to sustainablility by 2050 and the pathways leading to that world.

JUSTIN GILLIS

Oxfam, the antihunger group, has been running a campaign to call attention to the global food crisis, its consequences and its potential solutions.

Greece sneezed, and now most of Europe has a cold. The European debt crisis has already spread like a virus from Greece to Ireland and Portugal, and other countries are now at risk: Spain, and Italy are probable candidates for financial problems.

The physics of Earth’s natural systems show that a delay—of even a decade—in reducing CO2 emissions will lock in large-scale, irreversible changes.

Reuter

Molly O'Toole

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is on a pace in 2011 to set a record for the cost of weather-related disasters and the trend is expected to worsen as climate change continues, officials and scientists said on Thursday.

BRAD JOHNSON

Thirty-five years ago this week, Wallace Broecker predicted decades of dangerous climate change caused by humans. Unfortunately, he was all too prescient.

Renewable Energy World Editors

PARIS -- Renewable energy continued its global surge in 2010, accounting for about half of the 194 gigawatts of new installed capacity, according to the REN21 Renewables 2011 Global Status Report.