Thanksgiving is so close, you can almost smell the turkey roasting in the oven, even if you're trapped in an airport waiting to get to the snow-clogged East Coast. Over Thanksgiving alone, some 46 million Americans will be taking trips of 50 miles or longer to visit friends and family, according to AAA. A whopping 89.1 percent of them will be driving, with another 7.7 percent taking to the air. The rest will travel largely by bus or train (if...

Decades of illegal gold mining have transformed large expanses of virgin Peruvian rainforest into pocked, denuded, mercury-poisoned wastelands. Excavations to separate gold flecks from tons of earth have left holes big enough to swallow a half-dozen buses. Mercury, a neurotoxin used to bind the gold, pervades the local food chain, reaching humans through the fish they eat. The ruined lands scar the southeastern region of Madre de Dios, a mecca of biodiversity whose natural marvels lure eco-tourists and where several...

Leaders from countries across the globe are meeting in Lima, Peru,for the U.N. Climate Talks with the hope that they can agree on a draft to an international climate agreement that would reverse the course of anthropogenic climate change. With 2014 on course to become the warmest year on record and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently announcing that, due to carbon emissions, humans were on pace for a"dangerous" rise in global temperatures, scientists say a landmark international...