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WildAid is running a campaign featuring celebrities biting their fingernails in an attempt to drive home the message that rhino horns -- widely consumed in Asia as a traditional remedy -- are made of the same material found in human nails and hair. That could blunt demand for the horns, helping conservationists defeat poachers who are pushing rhinos toward extinction.

Humanity should stop pointing fingers and start finding solutions to climate change, writes astrophysicist Adam Frank. "While triggering climate change might not be our fault, not doing everything we can about it now that we know it's happening -- that would be our fault. Worse, it would be our failure as a species," he writes. 

It may come as a surprise to learn that we are in the middle of the third great coral bleaching event in human history. And scientists are calling it the severest yet. The last great bleaching event was in 1998 when 11% of the world's coral reef coverage was lost. Some areas like the Maldives lost as much as 90% of their reefs. This event is worse, possibly much worse. 38% of the planet's reefs will be affected, with 12,000 sq km of reefs killed off entirely according to experts.

The world's largest canned tuna company, Thai Union Group (TU), has been connected to forced labor, human rights abuses, and environmental devastation. This week, Greenpeace launched a global campaign demanding that TU take urgent and far-reaching steps to clean up its act. To press the issue, Greenpeace's #JustTuna campaign asks consumers to sign a petition to tell brands that they will not buy unsustainable or unjust tuna.

This month, Sodexo unveiled a new 200-item plant-based and plant-forward menu, developed in partnership with the Humane Society of the United States. Some of the dishes are vegan, some are vegetarian, and the rest include meat but still give plants a starring role, like a blended burger that replaces 25% of the beef with mushrooms.

A new study has unveiled humanity's sweeping impact on the world's oceans. Commercial fishing, climate change, agricultural runoff and other human-caused stressors have wiped out nearly 90 percent of Earth's marine wilderness, researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Queensland, Australia revealed.

For thousands of years humans have existed on Earth, but it is only in the last 100 or so that plastics have entered our lives. These days you can barely go a minute without touching something made from some kind of plastic. But while we've been getting all swept up in the convenience that synthetic polymers bring us, the trash has been piling up. Millions of metric tons of plastic enter the ocean every year, and no one really knows where it is and what damage it is causing. So ... what are we to do about it?

Animal protein consumption is rising worldwide. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Association estimates that the raising of livestock for meat and dairy products contributes to 14.5 percent of human-induced GHG emissions.

This month BNP Paribas, the world's seventh-largest financial institution, announced a new palm oil policy that sets responsible palm oil production as a pre-condition for financing. The policy requires that companies receiving financing protect forests and indigenous people. It also requires companies to adhere to strict human rights and labor standards, end the use of hazardous pesticides, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, among other significant measures. The move charts a new path for responsible financing that all major financial institutions should follow - or else face the growing consumer backlash against environmentally destructive institutions.

The International Tourism Partnership launched the first ever industry-wide global commitment to sustainability, focused on four member company-led goals: carbon, water, youth employment, and human rights. International Tourism Partnership member companies include Hyatt Hotels, Marriott International, Wyndham Hotel Group, and more.

Global warming will have a variety of effects on our planet, yet it may also directly impact our human biology, research suggests. Specifically, climate change could alter the proportion of male and female newborns, with more boys born in places where temperatures rise and fewer boys born in places with other environmental changes, such as drought or wildfire caused by global warming.

Drilling has been so intense near Fox Creek that its been linked to a series of earthquakes. One tremor measured 4.6 in magnitude, one of the two biggest human-induced seismic event in Canada's history.

Currently, around one-fourth of human generated carbon dioxide emissions are absorbed by oceans, making them the world's largest carbon sink. But researchers from Newcastle, Heriot-Watt and Exeter Universities found that surfactants, invisible biological particles on the ocean's surface, can reduce the exchange of gases between the ocean and the air by up to 50 percent.

oday marks Earth Overshoot Day - the day by which the human race will have used more of Earth's natural resources than the planet can renew in the whole year.

In June, C&A, the international Dutch chain of retail clothing stores, launched a line of T-shirts certified to the Cradle to Cradle standard, meaning that they were designed and manufactured in a way that is benign to the environment and human health, and whose materials can be recirculated safely back into industrial materials or composted into the soil.

Forget the romantic image of a lonely fisherman chasing his catch on the open water. Fishing supply chains have become sprawling, technology-driven operations rife with overfishing and human rights abuses.

Marriott International launched Serve 360, a sustainability and social impact platform designed to "guide the company's commitment and deliver positive results" across four priority areas: communities, responsible operations, workplace readiness and access to opportunity, and human rights. As part of Serve 360, the company announced new 2025 sustainability and social impact commitments including targets to reduce water use by 15%, carbon by 30%, waste by 45%, food waste by 50%, and more.

On Tuesday, the Humane Society of the United States introduced a ballot initiative called the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, which calls for a requirement that all pork and veal sold in California be produced without restrictive crates, and that all eggs produced and sold in the state be cage-free. It would make California the only state other than Massachusetts, which passed similar legislation last year, to have such regulations on farm animal welfare.

Chances are you don't prioritize your holiday wish list based on the chemical composition of the products on it. But informed shoppers are increasingly scrutinizing the items they're bringing into their homes with an eye to whether they include chemicals harmful to human health. That's inspiring more retailers to make meaningful changes to their chemical disclosure and elimination policies, according to a new industry report card released ahead of Black Friday. 

Scientists are still trying to unravel the damaging effects of ground-level ozone on life on earth. But as the world warms, their concerns about the impact of this highly toxic, pollution-caused gas are growing.