For almost three decades Mercy Corps has mastered the business of relieving the needs of disaster victims and suffering societies worldwide. Floods, earthquakes, poverty, famine-the organization responds to crises on the ground with swift and efficient work that produces immediate, tangible, and donor-satisfying results. When displaced people groups are without homes, Mercy Corps builds shelters. When disease ravages the world's poorest regions, Mercy Corps provides health care.

President George W. Bush has consistently opposed federal caps on greenhouse-gas emissions, a policy position many environmentalists say contributes to global warming and is an embarrassment to the United States around the world. But Bush is not the country's only politician with executive power. State governors are increasingly taking the matter of climate change into their own hands, many pushing legislation that mirrors the international Kyoto Protocol-the very kind of top-down restrictions Bush rejects.

Having once campaigned to the left of such Democratic presidential candidates as Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton, California attorney general Jerry Brown provoked little surprise last year when he carried out the plan of his predecessor to sue the world's six largest automakers for causing global warming. The surprise came Sept. 17 when a Clinton-appointed federal judge in San Francisco threw Brown's case out of court.

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and politician Al Gore took center stage at Hollywood's Kodak Theater earlier this year to announce that the 79th annual Academy Awards had officially "gone green."

More accurately, the show paid others to go green, so it wouldn't have to.

Between the telecast, the Governor's Ball, and the red carpet event, the Oscars released some 250,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to the energy emissions required to power 16 average U.S. homes for an entire year.

SEATTLE- Protesters, supporters, and media members clogged the sidewalk outside Seattle's Town Hall June 4, anticipating the arrival of Al Gore to promote his latest book, The Assault on Reason (The Penguin Press, 2007). Inside the building's 850-seat theater, which sold out in three minutes, an electric buzz echoed off the domed ceiling. Many in attendance sported "Gore 2008" buttons in hopes of prodding their man into another bid for the White House. The auditorium erupted in applause when the former vice president took the stage.

European company Arcelor Mittal, the world's largest steelmaker, is a model of environmental care. Since 1990, the manufacturing juggernaut has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 20 percent, exceeding European targets by two and half times.

As the 38th annual Earth Day approaches on April 22, many who care about both the poor and the environment are listening to calls for radical measures. The fear is that flooding in coastal regions could displace millions, mostly the poor; heat waves could kill many who are elderly or diseased; and decreased crop yields could lead to starvation in developing nations.