On Wednesday the Obama administration denied a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project. TransCanada, the company behind the proposal, hopes to build a 1,700 mile pipeline that will carry oil from the tar sands of Canada to the refineries lining the Gulf Coast along Texas. Although it will cost $ 7 billion to build, TransCanada claims the project will create ten of thousands of jobs. Environmentalist are most concerned about the water supply in ecologically sensitive in Nebraska's Sand Hills region, which TransCanada claims it has addressed by creating a new proposal that circumvents the Sand Hills.

On Wednesday, the European Union's highest court will rule on a lawsuit filed two years ago by two U.S. airlines and a industry trade association attempting to halt the E.U.'s plan to charge for carbon emissions pollution. It would include the industry in the worldwide cap and trade market. If the court decides to uphold the 2008 European law, on January 1, airlines will be forced to reduce their carbon emissions to an historic low, or buy emission credits from companies that pollute less than the base rate.  

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that fracking may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution. The controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells has been a source of debate across the country. The E.P.A. found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath Pavillion, a small community in central Wyoming where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals. Health officials last year advised them not to drink their water after the E.P.A. found low levels hydrocarbons in their wells.

Texas is in the middle of the worst drought on record in the state's history. Farm crops have been hit hard, and valuable grazing land has dried out, leading to heavy losses in the state’s valuable cattle industry. In total, Texas has suffered more than $5 billion in agricultural losses since the drought began.

It's the second day of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. For the next two weeks, delegates from 194 nations will meet in Durban, South Africa to discuss the future of international climate change legislation. But amid such concerns as the looming expiration of the Kyoto Protocol, a perennial question emerges: Why have actions to stanch global warming been so timid? And will this conference do anything to change that?

The markets responded positively to the news last week of a euro zone deal to try and turn around their two-year financial crisis. Marcus Mabry, editor-at-large of the International Herald Tribune, which is the international edition of The New York Times, tells us how he expects the markets to continue to go this week and to be on the lookout at Italy, which could be the next euro zone country to be in financial trouble. Charlie Herman, business and economics editor for WNYC and The Takeaway, looks at the upcoming G20 Summit in France this week, and if they can come up with a framework to deal with Europe's economic troubles.

The world’s population is set to reach seven billion on Monday, October 31, 2011. The Takeaway is talking about what this monumental number means for people, resources and the planet. One of the biggest questions is who exactly the seven billionth person will be and what his or her life will be like. Suzanne Petroni is vice president for global health at the Public Health Institute, and she has some surprising predictions on who this person might be.

A single map inside the latest edition of the well-respected "Times Atlas of the World" has caused friction between the cartography world and the scientific community. A map of Greenland in the book shows that the country has considerably less landmass than ever before. Harper Collins, which prints the "Times Atlas," recently circulated a press release that said Greenland had lost more than 15 percent of its coastline after nearby glaciers melted, thanks to global warming. Scientists say that number is incorrect. 

Last Friday, President Obama withdrew a new draft of the Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards. This means smog standards will not be updated but instead will remain at the same level since 2008 — levels that George W. Bush’s science advisers declared inadequate. Current EPA administrator Lisa Jackson declared this decision "not legally defensible." Obama cited regulatory uncertainty and burden as the reasons for his decision.

Alaskan waters remain off-limits to drilling, much to many oil companies' dismay. But Exxon has decided to hop over the Bering Strait, and make a deal with Russia to explore for oil in the Arctic Ocean in their territory. This deal may show how lucrative climate change has become to the oil business, since more oil is becoming available as Arctic ice recedes.

Montanans living along the Yellowstone River say they are worried and angry, following the rupture of an ExxonMobile pipeline which sent up to 1,000 barrels of oil gushing into the river. The pipeline had been shut down once before, in May, after residents of the town of Laurel raised concerns over rising river levels. 

Randy Newman captured a moment of national anger in "Burn On," a song about the polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in 1969. That environmental disaster pushed Congress and the Nixon administration to create the Environmental Protection Agency and pass laws like the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. But today's guest warns that these laws are woefully outdated, and that clean water is becoming increasingly scarce. Access to freshwater, he argues, is the most urgent problem we face in the twenty-first century.

The Souris River, which loops from Saskatchewan, Canada to North Dakota, has risen to record high levels and is spilling into the North Dakota city of Minot, causing more than 11,000 residents from there to evacuate for the second time this month. The flooding is said to have been caused by a heavy spring snow melt and heavy rains. The last major flood in the area occurred in 1969, which prompted the construction of levees. But this flood is five feet taller than the 1969 flood, and the levees are unable to contain it. 

Over the past few decades, an incredible amount of time and money has been spent trying to remove populations of "non-native" plants. But according to a panel of ecologists, climate change, urbanization and other changes in land use have largely invalidated the theory that foreign plants are inherently harmful to their newly adopted ecosystems.

More than 1.5 million acres have burned in what officials are calling the worst wildfires that Texas has ever seen. The Texas Fire Service reported yesterday that there had been some progress in fighting The Wildcat Fire, north of San Angelo, The Cooper Mountain Ranch Fire, east of Lubbock and the The Rockhouse fire, south east of El Paso. Some strides were also made at Possum Kingdom Lake, west of Ft. Worth. But two fire fighters have died in the fight to control the blazes, and federal teams have been called into help.

It's been a year since the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill and many questions remain about the long-term impact that the disaster will have not just on public policy, but on the fragile ecosystems of the Gulf Coast. To mark the one year anniversary of the disaster, two of our regular contributors reflect on what the future looks like one year later. Lisa Margonelli is the Director of the Energy Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation and David Biello is an editor at Scientific American.

Every day between April and August, Philip Connors climbs a 55-foot tower and settles into a 7-by-7 foot enclosed platform for the next eight hours. The tower is in the Gila National Forest of New Mexico, and his duty while there, is to look out for fires. But while Gila receives more than thirty thousand lightening strikes per year, Connors’s job is actually closer to Walden Pond than reality TV. Alone with nature, and his thoughts, he enjoys solitude, freedom and independence — independence which surely helped him complete a new book called “Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout.”

In 1853, a steamship named the Winfield Scott ran aground near the Channel Islands, which are off the coast of California. Unfortunately, when the ship landed, so did a certain foreign species that reproduced quickly, and ate the eggs of native birds and reptiles: the black rat. In 2001, the National Park Service began fighting the rats with poison. Members of a fringe environmental group responded by scattering vitamin K — an antidote to the poison. It’s this real struggle between warring environmentalists, humans, and animals that is at the center of T.C. Boyle’s newest novel “When the Killing’s Done.”

Over 249 million Americans live on the three percent of land that constitutes our cities. More than half of America’s income is earned in 22 metropolitan areas. And people live longer in New York City than anywhere else in the U.S. That being said, our nation continues to grapple with negative perceptions about cities. Images of loud, dirty, noisy, graffiti and crime-ridden urban wastelands persist. Economist Ed Glaeser wants to change that. He’s convinced that cities make us better, and that the proof can be seen everywhere from Minneapolis to Shanghai.

Thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky over the Arkansas town of Beebe just before midnight on New Year's Eve, leaving people in the area scratching their heads and speculating about the possible cause: a lightning strike? Aliens? A secret government project? We're joined by Keith Stevens, of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, which is investigating the incident.