Two coils of rope and a cowboy hat hang on bull horns mounted over Wayne Hage Jr.’s desk, the rest of his office dedicated to shelves upon shelves of law books. In the evening at his generator-powered Nevada ranch, Hage and his sister Ramona Morrison engage in repartee on court cases and property laws, as his three young children roast marshmallows in the living room fireplace.

Environmentalists often call China’s air pollution problem “Airpocalypse.” China ranks in the top tier of countries with health-hazardous air. And a recent U.S. study on Chinese maritime activity shows the biggest cause of air pollution in major Chinese port cities is what brings in their wealth—cargo ships. 

Enough is enough! July 4 celebrated independence from England, but today, July 12, is a day to repel the aggression of English ivy!

A WORLD reader sent me an article from a county newsletter: 

“You are invited to join members of the Georgia Native Plant Society on Saturday, July 12th, from 10 a.m.-12 p.m., to help make the park what it once was. Imagine when Native Americans managed the land we now call Heritage Park: There was no English ivy, Asian wisteria, Japanese honeysuckle, or Chinese privet.”

The 9th International Conference on Climate Change kicked off Monday in Las Vegas, featuring some of the most best-known skeptics of human-caused global warming. Among the speakers at the 3-day conference is Lord Christopher Monckton. He was once a policy advisor to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Now he is the chief policy adviser at the Science and Public Policy Institute in Virginia. He spoke with me on the telephone from the conference. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will retain powerful but limited authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from sources like power plants and oil refineries, under to a ruling issued Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices left largely intact the Obama administration’s only existing program to limit power plant and factory carbon emissions, but blocked the agency’s attempt to expand its regulatory power under the Clean Air Act without explicit approval from Congress.

The Obama administration announced a 645-page environmental plan today that would set the first national limits on carbon dioxide. Under rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and scheduled to be finalized next year, power plants will have to cut carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2030. All 50 states will be responsible for tackling their own emissions under customized plans that will have to be approved by the EPA.

In California’s Silicon Valley, drivers of electric cars are finding it increasingly difficult to access car-charging stations at work. The growing popularity of electric vehicles (EVs) is in many cases outpacing the number of charging ports that companies are willing to install for their employees. The soaring demand for charging ports is leading to incidents of “charge rage” at some companies, and giving rise to a new sphere of  workplace etiquette issues.