With the U.S. East Coast virtually shutting down Monday with the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, the broader debate over transitioning to cleaner energy sources and slowing, if not halting, climate change is taking on ever greater urgency.
Tokelau, a small Polynesian territory in the central Pacific, has surpassed the rest of the world in replacing fossil fuels and raised the benchmark of achievement on sustainable development.
On the eve of the Rio+20 Summit in Brazil, the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report Monday ranking the world's biggest countries on their use of renewable energy.
The planet's climate recently reached a new milestone of 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the Arctic.