“An idol that doesn’t dissolve in the sea is just a tragic end for something you have worshipped for so many days,” said Abhijit Karandikar. “More people are realizing they can be more eco-friendly in our festivals.”

Rodney Russ lives for the times he is at the rudder of a Zodiac. For the owner of Heritage Expeditions, the more challenging the conditions the better.

Meet Marshall Swartz. A one-time door-to-door cemetery plot salesman and stage crew member for Grateful Dead and Velvet Underground concerts, he is the go-to guy for oceanographers who rely on the high-tech gear needed to gather and analyze water from the sea.

U.S. metals firm in row with Peru’s government

Once GPS pinpointed the location of data-gathering moorings to be plucked from the Bering Sea, the tech team in charge of retrieving the moorings sent the electronic signal that releases the chain of instruments and floats from the anchor on the ocean floor and waited. And waited.

Pakistan, an arid country, is running out of water so fast that the shortage may strangulate all water-based economic activity by 2015.

One of the most popular programs brought in by the administration of President Barack Obama, “cash for clunkers”, which offered rebates of up to $4,500 to trade in older gas guzzlers, wrapped up on Monday.

The biggest business lobby in the United States wants to hold a public hearing “to put the science of global warming on trial,” The Los Angeles Times reports.

A main task of a joint-U.S.-Russian scientific effort in the Bering Strait is to retrieve data-gathering moorings that were dropped 50 meters to the bottom during stormy weather last October. It takes technological and navigational know how and, it soon becomes clear, the lassoing skills of a cowboy.

Making copies. Ever wonder how the paper you use to make photo copies or print e-mail is made? Check out our visit to Stora Enso’s Nymolla Mill.

The world’s farmland has far more trees than expected, challenging conventional wisdom that agriculture and forests don’t mix.

It’s a mushroom mother lode for Russian scientists waiting in Alaska for bad weather to break so they can begin their Bering Sea expedition.

Two German ships set off on Friday on the first commercial journey from Asia to western Europe via the Arctic through the fabled Northeast Passage.

Scientists from the United States, Russia and elsewhere launch the latest in a series of environmental studies in the Bering Sea against a backdrop of hightened concern about Arctic sovereignty.

Sierra Club’s grades of U.S. college and university green credentials focus on how the institutions directly affect the environment. Building efficiency, where food is from, waste management; it’s arguably a list of which schools are walking the green walk.