City dwellers around the world face more water shortages without investment in water conservation and planning for climate change now.

Some in Congress are threatening to reverse the progress EPA has made in fighting carbon pollution. On Wednesday, the Senate is expected to consider amendments to a small business bill that would handcuff EPA in its ability to make forward progress on climate change.

Today, a story about a new city park in development in Sydney, Australia caught my eye. They’re calling it Central Park, and if early planning is any indication, it will make New York’s Central Park blush

Personal and collective action can be a powerful thing.

Check out our Use Your Outside Voice page on Nature.org for more information and to see how you can take action. As we have covered in this space, there are places and people all over the world who will be affected by the long list of dramatic cuts to international conservation and climate change solutions [...]

A toast to water – and a new film on people, rivers, dams and climate change.

As hard Congressional decisions continue to unfold for budget cuts across domestic and international programs, it seems like at least one proposed reduction should be off the table: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s early-warning systems. Early-warning systems like those managed by NOAA unquestionably save lives. Yet Congress wants to cut money from our country’s ability to keep abreast of changing natural conditions that have the power to send our highly developed society reeling from disruptive and extreme disasters.

Despite the current lack of a promising global climate change policy solution, there is at least one bright spot: an expanding global conservation and development effort to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation that could address 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — more than all the world’s trains, planes and cars.

In her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver marks the beginning of her family’s quest to eat locally with a chapter entitled “Waiting for Asparagus” that reflects how many people (especially gardeners like me) feel right about now.

Spring flood worries rise with rivers, as risks expected to increase with climate change.

Study of climate change effects in Chiapas, Mexico to analyze risk of mudslides and how forest conservation may help people avoid damage.

I was lucky enough to recently attend a Boeing-hosted pre-screening of the movie Carbon Nation. Overall, I think the movie is fantastic (it is worth at least checking out the trailer above). The movie mostly focuses on what positive innovations people are finding to reduce our overload of carbon pollution. Stories are included on wind, solar, algae fuel, geothermal, coal vs. trees, forest carbon, grassland carbon farming, energy efficiency, Department of Defense energy efficiency, green building, building green retrofit, and more.

I recently heard about a really cool story from the Ohio town of Avon Lake, a small Lake Erie town west of Cleveland, where folks were able to save about 170 acres of woods (maples and oaks) from being cut down and developed. It was a grassroots citizen-led campaign they called “Save the Woods.”

The severe degrading of our planet’s coral reefs is an issue that needs to be quickly taken seriously, or one of the wonders that make our lives so beautiful will be gone forever. Recently in DC, the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force held its annual meeting and the “Reefs at Risk Revisited” report was launched at the National Press Club, bringing more attention to the issue.

“People like me are the ones who told the [climate change] deniers about the natural cycles” that they claim are the cause of rapid climate change, Stager says. Indeed natural cycles do affect the climate, but in the last 30 to 40 years, the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels have placed an additional influence on the climate system.

People in New Hampshire should make sure their state senators know they want clean air and they want to keep RGGI.

Clearly, scientists need to do a better job communicating scientific understanding to the American public and policy makers if we are going to make strides in solving the problems that climate change poses. To this end, I am honored to have been selected as one of 21 scientists to be a part of Google’s Science Communication Fellows.