U.S. oil companies already have permission to drill in millions of unexplored acres, but there is a push now to drill in one area where they don't have permission: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). A terrible idea, drilling in ANWR would:

• Not produce much oil.
• Not lower gas prices.
• Harm the environment.

If you (or someone you know) does not believe this, read on!

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You probably know that you should do what you can to reduce your carbon footprint - the greenhouse gas emissions produced by your lifestyle. After you've done that, you can negate what remains by supporting projects to reduce emissions elsewhere - that is, by purchasing "carbon offsets". This works because, from a global warming perspective, it doesn't matter where the carbon comes from.

Carbon offsets are a good idea, but it's hard to know whether a given project truly reduces carbon emissions. There are no unified standards. To help you make good choices, Environmental Defense Fund has just published CarbonOffsetList.org, a guide to high-quality offset projects for businesses and consumers. These are projects that we would turn to for our own offset needs. Check it out!

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

What lives when public transportation is used, and dies when it's not? Potentially all of us.

This message is hauntingly conveyed by a street art installation showing polar bears coming to life as a subway passes beneath them:

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

A month ago, July unemployment, at 5.7 percent, was the highest in four years. The August numbers just came in, and they're even worse - 6.1 percent unemployment, the highest in five years.

But as I wrote last month, there is a solution: the green economy. Jobs related to new energy technologies are the one area of the market that is growing, and at a rapid pace.

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Have Hurricanes Gustav and Hanna gotten you thinking about the possible link between hurricanes and climate change?

Check out our hurricane and clilmate change overview for the straight facts from EDF climate scientists. And Peter Black shares eye-opening maps over on ClimateAtlas.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

I live in New York City, and when I started riding my bike to work last year, I became acquainted firsthand with the obstacles to using this most efficient and green mode of transport. Here's the short list:

• No sheltered place to park my bike.
• No place to park my bike at all - other bikes chained to all available racks and poles.
• Rules against chaining bikes to city property like trees or poles.
• Theft of anything not locked down - seat, wheels, bell, bike rack, or the entire bike. (Check out this YouTube video: "How to Steal a Bike in NYC".)
• Drivers who ignore bike lanes and seem unaware of how easily they could kill a biker.
• Bikers who ignore traffic laws and come at you the wrong way in bike lanes.
• Car doors that open treacherously into bike lanes.
• Streets with no bike lanes at all.
• Jaywalkers who mistakenly think that bikes can stop as quickly and easily as cars.

Thankfully, help is on the way. New York City has turned decidedly pro-bike under Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Jeannette Sadik-Khan. And the non-profit group America Bikes is helping to bring bike-friendly changes to communities across the country.

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At first I was excited to escape the inferno of August in Washington D.C. for a vacation in Maine, but after three straight days of rain I started to feel a certain amount of self-pity. On the fourth rainy morning, however, a visit to a farmer I used to work for quickly put my woes in perspective. The rain put a minor dent in my vacation, but it put a major dent in the growing season for Maine's farmers.

Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have received exceptional amounts of rain this summer, seriously damaging certain crops. Maine's raspberry and green bean crops were devastated, and livestock feed crops (grain and hay) could not be harvested due to the wet weather. Many farmers will be paying high prices to truck in feed to replace what was lost.

No particular weather event can be reliably ascribed to climate change. But as I talked to my farmer friend, I began to wonder if this summer's wet weather was a glimpse into the future for farmers in the region.

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Another UN climate negotiating session has come and gone, the banners and tents swiftly dismantled, the delegates again scattered to the world's four corners. Most leave with a sense of progress - incremental, to be sure, but the meetings are slowly transforming into real negotiations. When the United States' new team hits the ground in January, the pace of negotiations will grow furious as we count down to the Copenhagen talks in December.

Here are the highlights from a week packed with negotiations, side events and planning sessions.

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Even if every industrialized country were to reduce its emissions to zero by 2050, atmospheric carbon levels would still be above what scientists tell us is dangerous.

That's a pretty powerful statement, and it leads to the question: How do we convince developing countries to set limits on their emissions? A possible answer to that challenge brought me to Ghana this week.

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This post is by Gustavo Silva-Chávez, an international policy analyst in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

Early this week, the team from Environmental Defense Fund started boarding planes for Accra, Ghana to attend the international Climate Change Talks. The official first day was Thursday, but Wednesday was busy with pre-meeting workshops.

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