New Zealand is “off track” in transitioning to a low-carbon future amid increasing international pressure to slash emissions, according to a Government briefing.

As $100 million of shiny new craft go on display at Auckland's On the Water Boat Show, the Hauraki Gulf has received a damning report about its health.

No party in an election campaign has a monopoly on wisdom; most have something important to say.

New Zealanders are evenly divided about whether farmers are moving quickly enough to reduce their impact on the environment, a Herald DigiPoll survey shows.

Plans to build the world's largest solar power plant have been scrapped after the Australian govt's commitment to clean energy questioned.

In our view the policies announced will not be enough to constrain, let alone halt, degradation of waterways until they hit the rather lax bottom lines the Government has stipulated, writes Gareth Morgan and Geoff Simmons.

Australia's decision to repeal its levy limiting fossil-fuel pollution makes it the first nation to turn back from a market approach to fighting global warming.

India's ambition to skip a generation of electricity technology starting with solar panels on telecommunications towers is being hampered by dust and urban sprawl.

The Green Party has dismissed the new bottom lines as "weak" and argues the measures mean rivers will only have to be clean enough for wading or boating.

Two years ago the International Agency for Research on Cancer categorised diesel exhaust fumes as class one carcinogens in the same category as asbestos, arsenic and cigarette smoke.

Global warming is melting sea ice so fast that more than half of Antarctica's population of emperor penguins are set to be wiped out by the end of the century, according to alarming new research saying they should be listed as an endangered species.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown has seized on pollution from diesel buses as ammunition for early government funding of a $2.86 billion underground railway.

Not long after the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was declared missing, the world's attention was focused on a remote, poorly known area of the Eastern Indian Ocean as the possible location of the lost aircraft.

A chemical company and its engineering partner have been named winners of two Government-backed environmental awards for making big energy savings and cutting pollution.

Air quality in New Zealand has continued to improve over the past decade, but winter smoke from wood and coal burners is still seeing safety guidelines breached in some parts of the country.

High pollution readings indicate air at the bottom of Auckland's Queen St valley risks failing World Health Organisation standards designed to prevent respiratory and heart disease.

A damning report on stormwater practices at Auckland Council is being suppressed because some officers do not want to confront home truths, says councillor Chris Darby.

Dame Anne Salmond asks; "Is the headlong pursuit of short-term prosperity at the expense of our waterways a rational choice, or is it a foolish, deluded gamble."

Paris drastically reduced its smog problem by banning half of all private cars and motor-bikes and almost all trucks on Monday.

Aman from China's pollution-choked north has become the first person to attempt to sue the Government for failing to protect its citizens from the effects of toxic smog.

Millions of lives will be unnecessarily lost to rising rates of respiratory disease and lung cancer.

Like so many iconic American products, Los Angeles smog is now being made in China.

The equivalent of the population of the Wellington region dies each year in China because of air pollution, according to the country's former Health Minister.