Ecotourism is often presented as the savior for wildlife and wild places — providing local communities with financial incentives to preserve nature while also reducing poaching and development pressure.
But, lately, others question whether rich Westerners jetting around the world really help much at all: They disturb animals, create demands for new development and only employ [...]

My husband returns to the same reefs every year in the Bahamas, where he has been teaching a coral reef ecology class for the last 14 years. On his 2008 trip, he noticed that the reef fish were missing. The culprits were quickly identified — and during his 2009 course, he and his students were [...]

Of course this year’s Nobel Peace Prize got all the press — as that prize nearly always does. The Nobel Prize in economics, by contrast, went almost unnoticed.
That’s a double shame. First, because it was given to Dr. Elinor Ostrom of the Indiana University and Arizona State University — the first woman ever to win [...]

It’s indeed a bright green morning today, with positive news everywhere: International Climate Day of Action a big success! Smart meters galore! And here’s the big news: a new study shows your personal actions can make a difference in the fight against climate change! Take that, all you climate change pessimists.

Bill McKibben says we need to “stop whining [...]

How do you convince people that a river they’ve known their whole lives is not the river it once was…or could be?
That turned out to be my challenge last week, when I traveled to Zambia in support of The Nature Conservancy’s new project to restore the Zambezi River.  After several days of meetings with our [...]

In a recent New York Times blog, Mark Bittman points to a U.K. survey that says 90 percent of diners want sustainable fish on restaurant menus and claim they’re willing to put their money where their mouths are — but most of those people don’t currently choose fish from sustainable sources.
So it must be the [...]

It’s a doozy of a morning here at Cool Green Morning — we’ve got overpopulation vs. overconsumption, tropical rainforests, green brands and more. It’s all in a day’s news.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to climate change has cost it another member – power company Exelon is the third major utility to pull out of the chamber [...]

There might not be much hope for the Goose Creek milkvetch, but at least you can now heat your home with an ethanol fireplace. Read on for that and weightier topics like sunspots, the Peruvian Amazon conflict and REDD (one of the most important strategies in fighting climate change, says Conservancy president Mark Tercek).

Goose Creek milkvetch (pictured above) [...]

You’ve heard it before: Our oceans contain some of Earth’s most imperiled habitats. Shellfish beds, coral reefs and seagrass meadows once bustling with life have been depleted, and critical fish stocks have plummeted. Less than 1 percent of our oceans are currently protected. There’s even a giant garbage patch twice the size of Texas floating [...]

We’re all over the map today — from Bangladesh to London, Borneo to France (and the omnipresent Google), Cool Green Morning covers the globe to bring you the top green links of the day. 

What’s a low-carbon zone? And how will such zones help London reduce it’s overall carbon output? Environmental Leader explains the new system, which should help the [...]