Land in the American West is Vanishing at an Alarming Rate The natural landscape of the American West is vanishing at an alarming rate, and California has lost the most of all the Western states according to a new study from Conservation Science Partners. Urban sprawl is the major culprit in California. Oil and coal development, agriculture, and road infrastructure have also chipped away at natural areas in the West.

Water Wars Loom as World Supply Shrinks For decades, countries around the world have ignored warnings about upcoming wars over water and worked hard to build a global middle class — with growing prosperity that depends on what turns out to be a finite resource. Companies whose profits depend on water are worried that it’s running out. The chair of giant, multi-national Nestle told Pilita Clark that the shortage of water is a “much more urgent” than climate change. She’s an environmental reporter for the Financial Times, which recently published her series called, “A World Without Water.”

No Rain, No Water… No Problem? For the first time in its 54-year history, the State Water Project has cancelled all deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. For the moment, there's no rationing here. In northern California, it's a different story.

Condor Cam Goes Live in Big Sur The California Condor is a vulture and America's largest bird. After almost becoming extinct, condors have been raised in captivity and released to the wild. Now, in the remote reaches of Central California, there's a video camera where scientists can watch them feed. The condor-cam is located high in the hills of the Coast Range, east of Big Sur, California. Paul Rogers is a veteran of environmental reporting for the San Jose Mercury New s, who manages the Science Unit at KQED, the PBS station in San Francisco.

How Safe Are America's Natural-Gas Pipelines? Last week a natural gas explosion killed at least 4 people, injured many more and destroyed more than 37 homes in a quiet neighborhood of San Bruno, a suburb of San Francisco. Pacific Gas and Electric's 30-inch gas distribution pipe that exploded had been installed underground in 1956, some years before the houses were constructed. PG&E oversees more than 6000 miles of transmission lines in Northern California.

Today's Repercussions from Last Night's Failure in Sacramento As we’ve heard, all efforts at compromise failed last night in Sacramento, and today the Governor called the legislature back for another special session to deal with the budget shortfall -- now $26 billion, $3 billion more than it was yesterday. We get an update on the impasse and its repercussions.

58,000 Gallons of Oil Spilled in San Francisco Bay A tanker hit the San Francisco Bay bridge on Wednesday morning but until 9 o'clock that night officials were told that 140 gallons of oil were involved. It turns out that 58,000 gallons spilled into the water. Was a massive clean-up effort unnecessarily delayed? Spreading oil from the tanker Cosco Busan has forced closure of 16 beaches and shoreline parks from Richmond, Oakland and San Francisco out through the Golden Gate to Marin County's Headlands and the Farallon Islands.  Paul Rogers is resources and environment writer for the San Jose Mercury-News .

Going Green without Guilt From the covers of Newsweek and Outside to a heavily covered speech today in Washington, Governor Schwarzenegger is pushing a new kind of environmentalism.   At Georgetown University, claiming that environmentalism is at a "tipping point," he advocated that people work for more fuel-efficient forms of transportation rather than give up Hummers or private planes. He compared the evolution of environmentalism to that of body-building, which once was seen as the province of "weird fanatics" working out in gyms that were like dungeons. Can there be environmentalism without sacrifice?