BLUE PLANET ALMANAC™

For years violation after violation, often committed by plantation companies, has gone unpunished as Indonesia's farmers were forced from their land. Things began to change last year after some farmers were mobilized to fight back not with swords but with words: They became citizen journalists.

Peregrine falcons made a dramatic recovery after DDT was banned in 1973. About 25 years ago, Xcel began putting nest boxes on its power plant stacks. Since then, the program has been copied by other power plants worldwide.

After four years of tinkering in her garage for about an hour each day, Evie Sobczak's lgae-to-fuel project won first place and best in category at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix , beating 1,600 other finalists from 70 countries.

For KayLee Jenkins, studying for her computer concepts class on the Mt. Hood Community College campus was a little like a day at the park. Jenkins didn't have to worry about battery life for her laptop while sitting at one of the college's new solar-powered picnic tables.

Valid Cycles specializes in handcrafted bamboo bicycle frames. To be bike-ready, the bamboo must be cooked in an oven, stripped, and sealed. But after that, the founders of Valid Cycles say the bikes last as long as a metal one.

When Jamie Garratt started Idea Rebel, a Vancouver-based digital agency in 2008, there was one piece of technology he refused to have in his office: a printer. He came from a company where everyone printed everything and he didn’t want that much waste.

Finding gasoline for less than $1.50 a gallon is impossible. But drivers of electric vehicles are able to do just that. A new statistic - the eGallon - will now be calculated monthly by the Department of Energy to gauge the price paid by electric vehicle drivers.

A dramatic drop in the price of solar power technology last year helped the continued growth of renewable energy, according to a U.N.-backed report published Wednesday.

As cities across the country struggle to comply with federal regulations surrounding pollution, Philadelphia is emerging as a model of innovation in water management by opting for cost effective natural solutions to an expensive man-made problem.

High atop the Blue Mountain along the Kittatinny Ridge, a rocky moonscape exists courtesy of contamination from industrial heavy metals zinc, cadmium and lead. Now, along the mostly defoliated paths for the Appalachian Trail, there is a new green scene in the works.

Plans call for City Dock 1, which opened in 1913, to be converted into a nexus of laboratories and classrooms, fish hatcheries and berths for research vessels, which will explore the flows of Pacific currents, solutions to oceanic pollution and coastal erosion, and the rhythms of sea creatures from bacteria to 150-ton blue whales.

The rise in bald eagle population to 1,337 pairs of birds this year presents a contrast with the early 1970s, before the pesticide DDT was banned. The chemical thinned eggshells and decimated eagle reproduction. In 1973, there were just 108 breeding pairs.

Only a few miles and a busy freeway separate two of Kentucky’s larger blocks of forest. West of I-65, there's 170-square-mile Fort Knox. On the east side, there's the 22-square-mile Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest. Both are part of a new effort to create natural corridors.

No statistics are available on natural burials, but “there’s definitely a move afoot,” said Joe Sehee, founder of the Green Burial Council. He points to a 2007 study by AARP, in which 21 percent of people 50 and older expressed a preference for green burial.

Aside from the beauty of its water, cliffs and natural springs — known as blue holes — the Green River is recognized as an ecological treasure. The river flows through the 83-square-mile Mammoth Cave National Park. Now it's part of a new effort to create natural corridors in the region.

Four years ago, the trees on Larry Lipson’s property in western Montana began to die. Not just one or two, but 10,000 of them. The culprit was the mountain pine beetle, which has ravaged 23 million acres of forests in the United States since 2000. Rising temperatures have fueled their spread. Now one 'serial entrepreneur' has found something to sel […]

Sydney has recently become home to the biggest green wall installation in Australia, amid a wider campaign to green the cityscape. Currently 15.5 per cent of Sydney is blanketed in green canopy, but the city council wants to increase coverage to 23.5 per cent by 2030.

The Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee will assess the latest barrage scheme, an 11-mile dam, containing 1,026 underwater turbines, stretching from Lavernock Point, near Cardiff, to Brean, near Weston-super-Mare.

At this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, last years winner, Jack Andraka, presented another project: a handheld device (known as a raman spectrometer) that can be used to detect explosives, environmental contaminants, and cancer in the human body.

Boston’s Charles River was once so polluted with sewage, and industrial waste that people who accidentally fell in were advised to get a tetanus shot. Now, after decades of cleanup, the river is host to an annual swim.