The 14 Most Interesting Stories Of 2014

Better workplaces to environmental destruction, better diets to education reform, here are the stories that created the most buzz in the last year.

2014 was, by any account, not a great year. In looking back at the stories that drew the most interest from our readers, we found a few moments of inspiration and joyousness to cut through the constant drumming of bad news. But even so, there's one overarching theme to most of our most popular stories: That we're quickly running out of time to alter the course our planet is on toward total environmental meltdown, and we're starting to come to terms with what that destruction is going to look like.

We've tried to take a positive view of what London will look like after climate change (lovely beach weather!) and started preparing for the new layout of some of our cities once most of them are underwater. And the exact cause of this future is all too clear, in photos showing exactly how bad the pollution is in China.

All hope is not lost, though: 2015 is a new year with—we hope—better news. And even this year has seen its share ofingenious solutions, the kind we'll need more of (here is whatwe talked about at the end of 2013, to compare). So take note of a doll that doesn't make girls feel horrible about their body, or a sustainable apartment building that looks like a tree, or a water bottle that doesn't need a bottle at all. More of all of these, please.

World of Clean Energy ‘Feasible’ by Mid-Century - Truthdig

World of Clean Energy ‘Feasible’ by Mid-Century - Truthdig

Keeping it clean: a hydropower site at Holbuvatnet in the highlands of eastern Norway. Photo by Ximonic/Simo Räsänen via Wikimedia Commons

By Tim Radford, Climate News Network

This piece first appeared at Climate News Network.

LONDON—A global low-carbon energy economy is not only feasible, it could double electricity supply by 2050 while actually reducing air and water pollution, according to new research.

Even though photovoltaic power requires up to 40 times more copper than conventional power plants, and wind power uses up to 14 times more iron, the world wins on a switch to low-carbon energy.

These positive findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Edgar Hertwich and Thomas Gibon, of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Department of Energy and Process Engineering.