Twelve national parks in the West are under serious threat from climate change. That’s the message of a new report from the NRDC and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, “Losing Ground.” According to the report, the parks in 11 western states are “endangered” as a result of climate change-related phenomena including drought, decreased snowfall, and wildfire. The report says landscapes in these national parks could be “drastically altered” if nothing is done to stave off the potential impacts of global warming. (An RMCO report released last summer showed western temperatures on the rise and snowflakes in decline.)

Being susceptible to the appeal of adventure eating, I've embraced the consumption of oddities of brows both high and low in places across the globe. I've had foie gras in some of New York's finest restaurants, calf fries in Fort Worth, and street food in Hanoi, and never has my cast-iron stomach failed me. So as I shivered through gut-wrenching pain under a heavy blanket in a sweltering apartment in Hong Kong, my sense of betrayal was plaintive and vast. Even worse, I suffered at my own hands: I knew there was something amiss with the Chinese scallions I sliced into my tuna salad, but my better instincts abandoned me. Fortunately, like most sufferers of food poisoning, I was back in the saddle in a day or two, but I did have some lingering questions: would I have gotten sick if I'd spent another HKD $10 (about USD $1.30) for Japanese or Australian scallions? How does one go about trying to buy healthy and sustainably-produced fruits and vegetables in an unfamiliar landscape?

As a global economic powerhouse and pillar of military might, it's hard for the U.S. to accept second place in any international contest… much less 28th. Such is the dismal outlook of the Environmental