Reducing the human carbon footprint is a "moral imperative," University of California President Janet Napolitano said Tuesday as she vowed to turn the system's 10 campuses into a living laboratory for solutions that can be scaled up to state, national and global levels.

Napolitano made the comments at a two-day climate change summit at UC San Diego, where researchers discussed their blueprint for actions that they say the state and the world should undertake to tackle the problem — including reducing the carbon footprint of the wealthiest 1 billion people.

 It may have worked during the campaign, but the new PM won’t be able to please both environmental activists and Big Oil for long.

If you believe press reports, governments are preparing for “serious” climate negotiations at the upcoming December UN climate conference in Paris.  I put quotes around serious because there is good reason to believe that most governments, at least the most powerful, care little about the outcome.  One indicator is their commitment to protecting the environment in two so-called free trade agreements.

Like all proper scandals, the #Exxonknew revelations have begun to spin off new dramas and lines of inquiry. Presidential candidates have begun to call for Department of Justice investigations, and company spokesmen have begun to dig themselves deeper into the inevitable holes as they try to excuse the inexcusable.

(Worst idea: attack Pulitzer prize-winning reporters as “anti-oil and gas activists”)

If you believe press reports, governments are preparing for “serious” climate negotiations at the upcoming December UN climate conference in Paris.  I put quotes around serious because there is good reason to believe that most governments, at least the most powerful, care little about the outcome.  One indicator is their commitment to protecting the environment in two so-called free trade agreements.

[Website editor's note: Amazing photos and video with this powerful essay]

On the Greenland Ice Sheet — The midnight sun still gleamed at 1 a.m. across the brilliant expanse of the Greenland ice sheet. Brandon Overstreet, a doctoral candidate in hydrology at the University of Wyoming, picked his way across the frozen landscape, clipped his climbing harness to an anchor in the ice and crept toward the edge of a river that rushed downstream toward an enormous sinkhole.

They are still crunching the numbers, but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2015 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded.