Global

China has embarked on the greatest push for renewable energy the world has ever seen. A key element involves more than doubling the number of wind turbines in the next six years. Already the world's largest producer of wind power, China plans further massive increases. From a current installed capacity of 75 gigawatts (GW), the aim is to achieve a staggering 200GW by 2020. By contrast, the European Union countries together have just over 90GW of installed wind capacity. The far western province of Xinjiang is one of seven areas designated for wind development.

Following the close of the 11th Round oil auction on November 28th, 2013, plain-clothes officers in Quito, Ecuador summarily closed the offices of Fundación Pachamama, a nonprofit that for 16 years has worked in defense of the rights of Amazonian indigenous peoples and the rights of nature.

Between 2002 and 2011 the incidence of lung cancer in Beijing near doubled.

Nationwide, deaths from lung cancer have risen 465 per cent in the past three decades. Smoking remains the leading cause, but the number of smokers is falling while lung cancer rates are rising.

Mr Chen's commentary is particularly notable because in 2007 Chinese censors removed a claim that air pollution caused 350,000 to 400,000 premature deaths from a joint report between the World Bank and the Chinese government.

The Gateway Pacific Terminal, near Bellingham, Washington, is poised to become the West Coast’s biggest coal export project — but it will no longer have the backing of New York-based, international banking behemoth Goldman Sachs. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs sold its stock back to the companies proposing to build the terminal, which would transport 48 million tons of coal from Wyoming to Asia annually. Goldman Sachs had a 49 percent stake in the Gateway Pacific project before dropping out.

Would you enjoy the cosiness and warmth of Christmas with your children or grandchildren just that little bit less if you knew that other people's children were dying because of it? More than four million children under five years old are now at risk of acute malnutrition in the Sahel, an area of the world that is one of the clearest victims of the rich world's addiction to fossil fuels.

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide - have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region. The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

Here is a look back at some of the fossil fuel disasters that made headlines in 2013, along with several others that went largely unnoticed.

“Ecosocialism, meaning socioecological transformation, is a new synthesis to face the challenge of both social and environmental crisis, which have the same roots” The European Left, an association of 27 left-wing parties in the European Union, was formed in 2004 to run in elections for the European Parliament.

Fukushima continues to spew out radiation. The quantities seem to be rising, as do the impacts.

The site has been infiltrated by organized crime.

There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S.

But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Are fish from the Pacific Ocean safe to eat? It’s a question that’s back in the news after revelations of highly radioactive water leaking into the ocean from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.