In the midst of all the accolades, one wondered what Bill McKibben, one of the nation’s leading environmentalists (and Obama critics on the environment), would have to say about it. The head of the advocacy organization, 350.org, McKibben has sharply criticized what he has referred to as President Obama’s “waffling and contradictory” climate policy, particularly his refusal to take a stand on the Keystone pipeline, which would carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta 1,200 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Yet for McKibben, the speech on Tuesday seems to have represented a turning point in the President’s stance on climate change. “I thought he was straightforward, forthright, and clear,” McKibben told Salon.

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Look at the data, and one thing jumps out: A massive generational shift. Millennials just aren't as in love with their wheels as were their forebears. Between 2001 and 2009, the average number of miles driven by 16- to 34-year-olds dropped by 23 percent.

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I found the lady in the red dress a problematic icon for the unfolding events in Gezi Park. Not because she was doing anything wrong. Nor was the scene unrepresentative. With the benefit of hindsight her unresisting pose, arms by her side against an ostensibly unprovoked attack by a policeman seems perfectly to have foretold the waves of violence visited on unarmed protesters on the streets of Turkey’s cities in the days since. What troubled me was not the photograph itself but the caption beneath it, which would have its readers believe this was a fight all about trees. This compelling image seemed to be having much success in disseminating the tree narrative. By the 29th of May, the photo was everywhere. In the best tradition of Turkish churnalism, those few who reported the incident reprinted Reuters’ incidental analysis wholesale, even after the protests had plainly grown beyond the issue of the park’s redevelopment.

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Jackson is a career bureaucrat who received high marks from environmentalists for her efforts to take on coal companies, implement higher fuel-economy standards, and get greenhouse gases labeled a "pollutant" under the terms of the Clean Air Act. It is difficult to see her playing the same role with Apple that your typical government regulator assumes when moving into a cushy Wall Street job: helping her new employer game existing laws or lobby for weaker oversight.

To the contrary; it's much easier to envision Jackson actually empowered to steer Apple into environmentally-friendly waters. There are obvious branding advantages for Apple here. If the company wants to continue to remain perceived as "cool" by young consumers of (relatively) high-priced mobile devices, getting some real environmental street cred can't hurt.

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Kinder Morgan’s decision to walk away from the Columbia came after months of steady grassroots opposition, and the company made the announcement two days after locals turned out in large numbers at a hearing to oppose the project. For environmental groups in the region, this looks like the culmination of a well-coordinated effort to protect communities along the Columbia from coal pollution.

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As a sit-in movement continues at the office of Gov. Pat Quinn in Springfield, Ill., besieged southern Illinois residents who have been left out of backroom legislative negotiations over a controversial and admittedly flawed regulatory fracking bill are calling on the nation to contact Gov. Quinn and Lt. Gov. Lisa Madigan to "put a moratorium on drilling to investigate its full climate and health impacts."

Residents are also asking for concerned supporters to call members of Illinois' legislature to vote against a bill that health expert Sandra Steingraber has denounced as unscientific and unsafe.

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Meanwhile, environmental groups have decried Wednesday's House vote as further evidence that Congress has been bought by Big Oil. Oil Change International calculated that supporters of the bill had taken a combined $56 million from the fossil fuel industry, and that individual representatives in support of the bill had on average received six times from oil industry interests than pipeline opponents. Oil Change International highlighted the following findings:

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SAN FRANCISCO — Pollution and health have been on the Chinese mind as of late. From dead pigs in Shanghai to tips for avoiding bad air in Beijing, a clean environment can be difficult to find. Smog and water pollution have become a feature of China’s urban landscape, creating a hazard not just for Chinese citizens but people all over the world.

Traditional Chinese ink paintings are often known as shanshui, or mountain and water. Unfortunately, much of China’s water is no longer drinkable, and its mountains are difficult to find behind the smog. It’s a topic ripe for creative exploration.

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“None of us are against bikes — most of us have bikes that we stow in our building,” said Lynn Ellsworth, 54, from TriBeCa. “But why they put these giant racks in these little streets is crazy to me...”

Some neighborhood grievances have been predictable: complaints of lost parking and reckless riding, often from those who opposed cycling’s expansion in the city long before bike share. Resident groups that have promised legal action against the city over station locations in Manhattan — including groups from an apartment building at 99 Bank Street in the West Village and from a luxury condominium on East 55th Street — are seen as unlikely to affect the program’s introduction.

A representative from the city's Transportation Department told the Times that a majority of the 200 bike stations have been received without incident, and called concern over sanitation, transit access and other concerns largely unfounded.

Authorities from the Sanitation Department and Fire Department have not flagged the bike stalls for violations.

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Scientific monitors reported that the gas had reached an average daily level that surpassed 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least 3 million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.

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Taking this step depends on two men: President Obama and Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Both men want to leave an important legacy, and both are in a unique political position: they still possess real political power, but neither will ever face another election. (Obama, of course, is limited to two terms, and Baucus has just announced that he will retire.) Acting together, the two of them could completely change the odds of enacting a carbon tax this year.

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The Pilgrims called cicadas “17 year locusts,” because some of them survive for that long underground, sucking the sap from roots, between periodic emergences in epic swarms. Locusts are in the grasshopper family, however, and cicadas are garish relatives of spittle bugs and crickets. Beyond that we know precious little about cicadas' mysterious lives under the earth. And we don’t understand why they wait 17 years between appearances (for some subgroups it’s 13 years, and there are also annuals.) Why 17? Why 13? We also don’t have a clue how these brainless arthropods manage to keep track of the passing years. And how exactly do cicada nymphs know when to all come wiggling out of the soil on cue, emerging within hours of one another after spending over a decade interred?

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McGowan wrote about how between 2008 and 2010 he served time in the Communication Management Unit (CMU) at the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill. The unit, dubbed "Little Guantanamo," sees prisoners isolated from other inmates and severely restricted in their contact with their families and the outside world. In his column, McGowan charged that he was put in the CMU because of his political beliefs -- a court document revealed that he was apparently transferred in part because of his communications with the outside world, writing to contacts in radical and environmentalist communities.

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Of course, activists concerned with campaign finance reform and the undue influence of money in politics will not welcome Steyer's pledge. Others might be pleased that the Koch support for climate skeptical policy will have a match. In the parlance appropriate to an aggressive financier, the green capitalist told the Hill that he planned to "destroy" climate skeptics and sought a "smashing victory." Via the Hill:

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