Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is hovering at a landmark 400 parts per million, a level never before experienced by human beings. Scientists say we’re playing with fire, risking the planet’s future if we don’t start to lower the greenhouse gas levels forcing climate change. How should we react to this news? First, we need to envision climate change more accurately, as a deadly threat.

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Air pollution continues to plague many large U.S. cities, where coal plants and tailpipe emissions poison the air with asthma-aggravating, cancer causing ozone and particle emissions. But the picture, and the air, is much clearer in Peoria, Springfield and a few dozen other mid-sized meccas, according to the American Lung Association’s annual report. See what the air rates where you live.

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Wildlife poaching is soaring, and if bans and legal trading efforts do not stop it, the final hope for animals threatened with extinction may lie with consumers.

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Climate change will continue to worsen wildfires in the U.S., with the area burned each year expected to double by 2050, according to a report released this week by the USDA’s Forestry Service. But that’s not all. Profound changes are ahead for forests in the Midwest, Southeast and Northeast, as climate change rearranges natural habitats.

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Several homeowners in a Little Rock suburb were evacuated from their Mayflower neighborhood after a pipeline spilled an estimate 2,000 barrels of tar sands crude.

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Amid record-breaking levels of air pollution, a Beijing-based British artist has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect himself against the city’s foul air while making a political point at the same time.

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Gun control’s a sticky matter, but environmentalists are hoping bullet control can speed through the legislative system. A poll of Americans shows that 57 percent support nontoxic, lead-free bullets for hunting, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

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Hurricane Sandy’s attack on the New Jersey and New York coastlines was no freak of nature, according to a new report. The hurricane’s unusual westward turn was precipitated by extreme ice melting in the Arctic, revealing an ominous new pattern for hurricanes to come.

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Bornean and Sumatran orangutans face a lethal cocktail of threats that could drive them to extinction: Habitat loss caused by forest-clearing paper and palm companies; potential kidnapping by poachers in the exotic pet trade; and isolation. But you can help.

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This Valentine’s Day, spread the love, learn about endangered species, like the lovable bonobos of the Congo. They’re facing extinction, forced by humans, who could still also save them.

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Hopes for the reestablishment of the Mexican gray wolves rose in January when federal authorities released the first male wolf into the wild in four years.

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European researchers studying the effects of seven common agricultural pesticides on frogs report that exposing the amphibians directly to the chemicals resulted in rates of mortality from 40 to 100 percent.

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