Credit: Flickr via Michael Francis McCarthy. 2012 is a movie, the end of the Mayan calendar, maybe the end of the Earth. But, thankfully, it's all a myth. Or is it? The 2012 phenomenon gets a new spin from Lawrence M. Krauss in the March 2010 issue of Scientific American. The bottom line: 2012 could be the beginning of the end if we don't take steps to combat climate change, and call out naysayers like Sarah "Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo via flickr There's a lot of grim climate news, of course, but the EU keeps moving forward. On Friday, the European Commission announced that the EU, which is made up 27 member countries, is on track to meet its goal of generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2020. The Commission also says the EU will meet its other two goals of increasing energy efficiency by 20 percent and decreasing emissions by 20 percent of 1990 levels....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Sörn @ flickr On Thursday, the Trust for Public Land released a roster of Hollywood A-listers and companies--including Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, the Walt Disney Company, the LucasFilm Foundation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Steven Spielberg, Warner Bros., Fox, Sony, NBC Universal, and Time Warner--who have collectively donated more than $3 million to save one iconic piece of land: Cahuenga Peak....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: marfis75/Flickr Tanzania and Zambia, conservationists fear, may receive special permission from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to auction off a combined total of 112 tonnes of stockpiled ivory. Though such auctions are strictly monitored by international organizations and the revenue earned is required to be used for elephant conservation projects, many believe that the sale could drive market demand for ivory and Read the full story on TreeHugger

photo: chantrybee via flickr. Even if the sun entered a Grand Solar Minimum--like the one experienced in the late 17th century known as the Maunder Minimum, which brought about the Little Ice Age--it would still only offset less than a tenth of the warming caused by human release of greenhouse gases. That's the word from a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published in Read the full story on TreeHugger