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In the battle to limit the risks of climate change, it has been clear for decades that focusing on the world's immense tropical forests - saving the ones that are left, and perhaps letting new ones grow - is the single most promising near-term strategy.

Californians aren't doing enough to reduce their water use, despite being caught up in a years-long drought, writes the editorial board of The New York Times. "The state must focus on longer-term policies that encourage people to alter their lifestyles and businesses to change how they operate," the board writes

Hoping to stem illegal wildlife trafficking, the Obama administration on Wednesday introduced an aggressive plan for taking on traffickers that will include using American intelligence agencies to track and target those who benefit from the estimated $20-billion-a-year market.

Coca-Cola and other corporations are starting to see global warming as an economically disruptive force affecting commodity costs and supply chains.

historian tries to hold oil and gas companies responsible for Louisiana's disappearing coast

A new Google-powered tool called Google Earth Engine is helping environmental groups and researchers to keep tabs on problems including Amazonian deforestation, overfishing, sea-ice melt and the spread of diseases. The tool's real-time data trove and mapping features make it easier to stay on top of the wealth of data now available, researchers say. "When you visualize it, you can get it at the gut level. ... You can see it happening," says Randy Sargent of Carnegie Mellon University.

Mayor Bloomber is starting a program to make food composting a requirement. Residents will sort trash in their homes and place food sraps in a brown trash can for curbside pick up. Going to start trial phase soon with actual residents and school

Chipotle in February will launch "Farmed and Dangerous," a Web series lampooning the factory-farming industry. The show, which will run on Hulu, stars a character named Chip but otherwise has little obvious connection to Chipotle's brand or products, Noam Cohen writes

Chick-fil-A announced this week that it will stop using meat from chickens raised with antibiotics within five years. The chain said consumer demands sparked the change; Chipotle and Panera Bread have taken similar measures recently. "This ... surfaced as the No. 1 issue for our customers," said Tim Tassopoulos, Chick-fil-A's executive vice president of operations.

Some amateur ranchers use free-ranging cattle as part of land management, and they are finding they can make money by selling grass-fed beef. TomKat Ranch aims to emulate the migratory patterns followed by wild herd animals, allowing land time to recover between grazings. "Ranches can be working landscapes if people understand how animals and land work together," says Wendy Millet, a ranch director who once worked at the Nature Conservancy.

Climate change is already taking a serious toll on the planet, leading to heat waves, water shortages, melting ice caps, dying coral reefs and the extinction or migration of fish stocks, according to a report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Decisions made -- or left unmade -- by policymakers in the immediate future will shape global society for the rest of the century, the panel's report warns. "Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change," said Rajendra K. Pachauri, the panel's chairman

Siemens will invest $264 million to build production facilities for its 6MW offshore wind turbines in the UK. The facilities are expected to create over 1,000 jobs and begin producing rotor blades by 2016.

John D. Rockefeller built a vast fortune on oil. Now his heirs are abandoning fossil fuels. The family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement that began a couple years ago on college campuses.

Climate change is already hitting America hard, according to a new study, leading to water shortages in dry regions, heavy rains in wet regions, more frequent and severe heat waves, worse wildfires, and forests die-offs. "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the National Climate Assessment warns

Coca-Cola is moving to eliminate an ingredient used in many of its citrus-flavored products after consumers expressed concerns.The company said on Monday that it was replacing brominated vegetable oil, which contains bromine, an element found in flame retardants, in products that contain it.

Archers Daniels Midland (ADM) said it would announce details of a new "No Deforestation" policy for soy and palm oil at its May 7 annual meeting. The move follows pressure from investors Green Century Capital Management and the New York State Common Retirement Fund.

Chipotle became the first major restaurant chain to announce it would use only non-genetically modified organisms in its food preparation across its over 1,800 locations, according the New York Times.