Daily Roundup

Tax Man: A prominent climatologist, James Hansen, is urging Obama to adopt a carbon-tax system instead of the cap-and-trade policy that the president-elect currently supports. Worldwatch

Matter of Degree: Though global warming is still a huge problem, it appears to have slowed just the slightest bit in 2008. Dot Earth

Continental Shift: Europe’s leaders have reached a deal about how to reduce the continent’s greenhouse-gas emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Nature News

Big Arachnid: A recently discovered spider species might be the world’s biggest. Researchers found it in northern Laos. National Geographic

Dry State: Water-strained California is subject to new federal restrictions on pumping water from the northern part of the state to the southern part. Officials hope the measure will save a fish species, the smelt, from extinction. L.A. Times

--Avital Binshtock