Environment

The president alone can approve or reject construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which is designed to take crude oil extracted from Alberta, Canada, through America's heartland to refineries on the Gulf Coast. New Yorker journalist Ryan Lizza says Obama could use the decision as a "symbolic turning point in the kind of energy future he wants America to have."

In a series for The New York Times, environmental reporter Justin Gillis has been exploring whether harsh weather events are connected to global warming or if they are simply the random violence nature visits upon us.

If you ask climate scientist Radley Horton, it's difficult to say that Hurricane Sandy was directly caused by climate change, but he says there are strong connections between the two. He talks with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about climate change and preparing for severe weather.

"We've had time to act — and essentially we haven't acted," says science journalist Michael Lemonick. He describes the threats posed by climate change in his new book, Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas, and the Weather of the Future.

Kristen Iversen spent her childhood in the 1960s in Colorado near the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons factory, playing in fields that now appear to have been contaminated with plutonium. In Full Body Burden, she investigates the environmental scandal involving nuclear contamination around her childhood home.

In Private Empire, investigative journalist Steve Coll explains how Exxon Mobil has used its money and power to wind significant influence in Washington, D.C., concerning issues like climate change.

Americans generate more trash than anyone else on the planet: more than 7 pounds per person each day. Journalist Edward Humes explores how that happened in his new book Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash.

The once-booming clean-tech industry is facing hard times, in part because of cheaper natural gas, the effects of the financial crisis, China's growing solar industry and the Solyndra bankruptcy. Reporter Juliet Eilperin, who covers the industry's struggles in Wired's February issue, explains.

When Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1493, his journey prompted the exchange of not only information but also food, animals, insects, plants and disease between the continents. In a new book, Charles C. Mann describes the aftermath of Columbus' arrival in the Americas.

This summer of record-breaking heat followed a spring that brought some of the most extreme weather on record. In her book The Weather of the Future, climatologist Heidi Cullen writes, "It's time to face the fact that the weather isn't what it used to be."