It has become clear that the full changes America needs will not be solved by simply swapping White House tenants. In fact, this has been emphasized by the new tenant himself: we can’t stand on the sidelines and expect to realize the full change we need.

Trees in old growth forests across the West are dying at a small, but increasing rate that scientists conclude is probably caused by longer and hotter summers from a changing climate.

Gilberto Câmara, a scientist who leads Brazil’s national space agency, is more at ease poring over satellite data of the Amazon than being thrust into the spotlight.

Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country.

In the gloomy shade deep in Africa's rain forest, the noontime silence was pierced by the whine of a far-off chain saw. It was the sound of destruction, echoed from wood to wood, continent to continent, in the tropical belt that circles the globe.

More than 3 million acres of pristine wilderness in Alaska's Tongass National Forest would be open to logging and road building under a new management plan released Friday by the U.S. Forest Service.

"Never before have we detected such a high deforestation rate at this time of year," said Gilberto Câmara, the head of the National Institute for Space Research (Inpe), which is responsible for monitoring the Amazon region. "We had never seen this before in Amazonia."

Almost 60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.

he all-male Bohemian Club, whose ranks include former President George H.W. Bush and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is feuding with conservationists over its plan to double logging from a private grove of California redwood trees.

The 44 trends tracked in Vital Signs illustrate the urgent need to check consumption of energy and other resources that are contributing to the climate crisis, starting with the largest polluter, the United States, which accounted for over 21 percent of global carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning in 2005.