If global biodiversity — the subject of a huge international meeting in Montreal this week — is too much of a mouthful, try thinking instead about the white-throated sparrow. 

As the federal government moves to tighten regulations on methane emissions, new assessments suggest the amount of the potent greenhouse gas escaping into the atmosphere has been significantly underestimated.

Alberta's new energy minister has promised to maintain an order protecting the Rocky Mountains in the province from coal development, for now.

A new report from dozens of international scientists says it's inevitable the Arctic will lose its entire summer sea cover at least once over the next generation and probably a lot more often than that.

The goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer use by 30 per cent kicked up more dust than a tractor on a grid road when it was first announced by the federal Liberal government last summer.

New Alberta government research has found windblown dust from mountaintop removal coal mines has polluted a pristine alpine lake to the point where its waters are as contaminated as lakes downwind from the oilsands.

Critics fear Alberta's new United Conservative premier is preparing to bring in a program that would use billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded royalty breaks to subsidize energy companies to fulfil their legal duty and clean up old wells.

First Nations and environmentalists say they are angry the federal and British Columbia governments continue to stonewall American requests for a joint investigation of cross-border contamination from coal mining as meetings of the panel that mediates such issues wrap up.

Supporters of open-pit coal mining say there's a chance new mines could be built in Alberta's Rockies after comments from the province's new premier.

An analysis suggests Canada is using questionable methods to dramatically underestimate greenhouse gas emissions from the forestry industry, which it says equal those from Alberta's oilsands in some years.