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The Environmental Protection Agency's power plant emissions rules would save about 3,500 lives a year and have many other positive health effects, according to researchers at Syracuse and Harvard universities. The emissions reductions mandated by the rules would lead to 1,000 fewer heart attacks and other hospitalizations from air-pollution-related illness annually, the study found. 

ExxonMobil is to become the first fossil-fuel giant to report on threats to its oil and gas assets due to possible future regulation of carbon emissions. The move won plaudits from clean-energy campaigners, who say fossil fuels will become economically unviable as governments tackle carbon emissions. "That the largest American oil and gas company is the first to come to the table on this issue says a lot about the direction that energy markets are taking," says Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow

President Obama is expected to announce on Monday an Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut carbon pollution from the nation's 600 coal-fired power plants

The world's climate negotiators are in Lima this week for talks that it's hoped could yield a new global accord on tackling climate change. The deal between Beijing and Washington has paved the way for meaningful discussions at the global level, participants say. "The prospects are so much better than they've ever been," said former Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

China expects to launch a national carbon market in 2016, drawing together regional pilot projects into a single unified marketplace. The new carbon trading system will be the world's biggest emissions market

The U.S. Senate rejected by a one-vote margin a bill passed by the House to allow construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada to Gulf of Mexico refineries. The measure needed 60 votes to go forward but received 59. White House advisers have suggested that President Barack Obama might eventually let the project proceed.

Environmentalists would prefer that everyone drank tap water -- but with consumers still clamoring for bottled beverages, water companies are trying to find ways to make their products more eco-friendly. Just Water uses bottles made from "green" plant-derived plastics, while other companies offer water in cardboard or easy-to-recycle aluminum packaging.

NEW DELHI - Violent protests broke out in the southern state of Karnataka on Monday after the Indian Supreme Court ordered the state to release water to the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, the latest chapter in a longstanding dispute.

Trudeau (Chris Jackson/Getty Images) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will implement nationwide carbon emissions pricing in 2018. According to Trudeau's plan, provinces will be charged CA$10 per metric ton of carbon emissions produced, which will increase to CA$50 per metric ton during 2023.

President Barack Obama announced a new ban on offshore oil and natural gas drilling across broad areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, using part of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that would make it hard for his successor to reverse the decision. "They'll be arguing about this for years in the courts," said environmental lawyer Patrick Parenteau.

Logging emissions is an important step in securing the transparency that China needs to solve its pollution problems, Mr. Ma argues. Among the harmful pollutants are air particles known as PM2.5, which can enter deep into the lungs and even into the bloodstream. In an interview, he talked about the considerable progress he sees in the Chinese government's approach to air pollution, but also how concerns about social unrest continued to constrain discussion of pollution's damage to public health. Before 2013, levels of PM2.5 [the finest and deadliest particulate matter] were not monitored or made public in a single city. Now it's monitored and released in more than 400 cities. China has entered an era when air quality information is released. It's much more transparent. The 11th and 12th Five-Year Plans only referred to "emission reduction targets," so local governments could play games by claiming they had reduced emissions. Now, by saying by what year the PM2.5 must be below a certain amount, it's much harder to fake. The 13th Five-Year Plan is a progressive plan because it says that the public has the right to participate, to monitor, and that it's the public's right to know.

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas extraction technique also known as fracking, has contaminated drinking water in some circumstances, according to the final version of a comprehensive study first issued in 2015.

Warming ocean waters are bleaching the world's corals to an unprecedented degree and could destroy huge swaths of coral reefs in areas ranging from Australia to Africa. "This is a huge, looming planetary crisis, and we are sticking our heads in the sand about it," says Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland in Australia.

Demand for soy and other crops grown in Bolivia and Brazil may be contributing to a rise in deforestation in the Amazon basin. In Bolivia, for example, estimates are that 865,000 acres of land have been deforested annually since 2011, up from 667,000 acres a year during the previous decade.

Fashion houses and animal-rights campaigners are squaring off again over the ethical status of fur, which some designers and trade groups are seeking to reposition as an environmentally sustainable material. "There will be fur long after the last oil wells are empty," said Alan Herscovici of the Fur Council of Canada

United Airlines is preparing to launch its first farm-waste powered airplane and will today announce a $30 million investment in aviation biofuels producer Fulcrum BioEnergy. The move comes as airlines face increasing pressure to reduce their fuel-related emissions. 

The Obama administration is poised to announce the first federal rules mandating reductions in methane emissions. The proposals would require 40% to 45% reductions in methane emissions from 2012 levels over the next decade

Pope Francis will release a major encyclical this week calling for the world's Catholics to take a stand against climate change and environmental degradation. The letter, the first such statement by a pope, will frame environmental activism as a social justice issue. "Pope Francis is personally committed to this issue like no other pope before him. The encyclical will have a major impact," U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said. 

Continuing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change could cause Nepal's Everest region to lose 99% of its glaciers by the end of the century, researchers say. "The numbers are quite frightening," said Joseph Shea, a glacier hydrologist at Nepal's International Center for Integrated Mountain Development

The industry has resisted pressure for years from environmental groups to warn investors of the risks that stricter limits on carbon emissions could have on their businesses, although that appears to be changing. Energy experts said prosecutors may decide to investigate companies that chose to fund or join organizations that questioned climate science or policies designed to address the problem, such as the Global Climate Coalition and the American Legislative Exchange Council, to see if discrepancies exist between the companies' public and private statements.