Saudis want aid if world cuts oil dependence Saudi Arabia is demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels. [News Source]

Polar bears, oil workers in closer contact

Oil companies scouring the coastline of Alaska's North Slope for new production sites are converging on the same territory as hungry polar bears trying to escape shrinking and thinning sea ice.

[News Source]

Green shoots rise from brownfields. Uncle Sam looks to eliminate the biggest hurdle to expanding renewable energy – the need for suitable sites to place commercial-scale wind and solar farms – by reusing hundreds of old mines, landfills and industrial sites. [News Source]

EPA carbon control seen fraught with problems. The Obama administration has warned it could use the Environmental Protection Agency to help cut carbon emissions if Congress drags its heels, but legal and logistical problems could thwart that strategy. [News Source]

What’s to become of the Kyoto Protocol? Whether to tweak, bolster or bury the Kyoto Protocol -- the only binding global agreement for curbing greenhouse gases -- has become a red-hot issue as UN negotiators in Bangkok try to lay the groundwork for a successor treaty. [News Source]

Disaster looms for Delta region. Egypt's Delta region faces a natural disaster of massive proportions by 2020 unless urgent action is taken to better manage scarce fresh water resources and come up with solutions to mitigate the effects of rising sea levels, according to government officials. [News Source]

Noted lecturers grapple with water, ‘the uncertain resource.’ Even with water puddling in the ditches, the Minnesota remains a piddly remnant of the boiling, gouging glacial river that carved this valley out. All that water is somewhere on the earth, but never has it been so sought after, so precious. [News Source]

Staring natural disaster in the face. Padang is a prime example of heedless growth on the site of great earthquakes and tsunamis. We're amassing too many people in risky places. Potential sea-level rise and frequent tropical storms from global warming will only compound the risk. [News Source]

Climate change discriminates against those least able to combat it. Considering the overwhelming human cost and future economic burden of a climate-sick world, it is this human rights deficit thats should be our guiding bottom line. [News Source]

Green shoots rise from brownfields. Uncle Sam looks to eliminate the biggest hurdle to expanding renewable energy – the need for suitable sites to place commercial-scale wind and solar farms – by reusing hundreds of old mines, landfills and industrial sites. [News Source]

EPA carbon control seen fraught with problems. The Obama administration has warned it could use the Environmental Protection Agency to help cut carbon emissions if Congress drags its heels, but legal and logistical problems could thwart that strategy. [News Source]