By Harriet Blake

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a report earlier this week stating that global warming is increasing at an even faster pace than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in 2007. The report, “Climate Change: Faster, Stronger, Sooner,” was pegged to the Oct. 20 Luxembourg meeting of the European Union’s Environment Ministers.

Despite concerns about the global financial crisis, the ministers have chosen to stick with their environmental improvement plan – to reduce greenhouse gases 20 percent by 2020. The WWF would like to see that increased to 30 percent.

According to the WWF’s scientific data, there were six key findings:

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By Catherine Colbert

We all know the drill: “Paper or plastic?” But when it comes to receipts there hasn’t been a choice — until now. allEtronic, a Fullerton, Calif., company knows that paper receipts are a nuisance and wants to rid the retail experience of those paper tag-a-longs that billow out of your purse, bulge inside your wallet, and languish in Rubbermaid containers in your closet.

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By John DeFore

For a movie that explicitly addresses the perils of overconsumption, Pixar’s WALL*E is being used to promote an awful lot of consumer products.

One tie-in in particular is rankling Greenpeace. It seems that the lovable robot’s image has popped up on boxes of Kleenex, a product the activist group has criticized with a “Kleercut” campaign that asserts, “it takes 90 years to grow a box of Kleenex” because the product’s manufacturer Kimberly-Clark “all but refuses to use recycled paper in its products.” (Among other things, they’re trying to get parents and teachers to reject the company’s tissues in classrooms.)

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By John DeFore

The changing schedules of fall foliage may be a headache for nature lovers who time their forest vacations to maximize viewing of autumnal reds and oranges. But they could be good for the environment those travelers set out to enjoy.

According to a new article in the journal Global Change Biology, a team led by Michigan Tech forestry professor David F. Karnosky has established that increased levels of atmospheric CO2 “act directly to delay the usual autumn spectacle of changing colors and falling leaves in northern hardwood forests.”

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