UK Moves to Measure Products' Eco-Impact

Trading on eco-guilt, firms are selling worthless carbon credits

(NEWSER) - Carbon offsets—the credits gas-guzzling consumers buy to cancel out their carbon production—may do little or nothing more than assuage consciences, a Financial Times investigation concludes. Some companies sell worthless credits; others use them to finance environmental projects they had planned anyway. And consumers have no means to know when they're getting scammed. More»

Fido, Fluffy fetch bad news for environment

(NEWSER) - Forget the gas guzzler—it's Fluffy and Fido who are delivering a carbon blow to the global environment. That's the odd warning from a pair of New Zealand professors who claim the carbon pawprint of a large dog delivers twice the impact of a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 6,000 miles a year. A cat is more akin to driving a Volkswagen Golf, while a hamster is like owning a plasma TV. More»

Surcharge for large-chested women corrected after public uproar

(NEWSER) - British retailer Marks & Spencer has agreed to standardize prices across bra sizes so bustier women won’t pay more for their undergarments, the BBC reports. The store ran advertisements in UK newspapers admitting it had “boobed” by adding an extra $3 for bras over DD size. It was persuaded in part by a “Busts 4 Justice,” a Facebook protest that attracted 13,000 members. More»

(NEWSER) - Central Britain is under water after record rains, and scientists are now saying that the heavy downfall is caused by man-made global warming. Britain's sodden summer, with swollen rivers, thousand homeless and water plants failing, has been caused by a southward shift of the jet stream. Not unprecedented, the Independent reports, but just what a new study predicts with warming. More»

Outside the tropics, trees merely trap heat, study shows

(NEWSER) - Planting trees to offset your carbon footprint not only won't slow global warming, it may worsen its effects, a new study claims. Trees growing outside a small band of tropical zones don't cut the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by enough to offset the heat their foliage traps, says atmospheric scientist Govindasamy Bala in the Guardian. More»